Your Sorting Hat: Shikita Ga Nai, plunging into experience and carrying a burden differently
Career Tuesday
Careers, Life and Questions (Nov 08, 2022)
Wish you a Happy Career Tuesday!
3 Career Ideas
I.
"Shikita ga nai - 'It cannot be helped' - in Japanese, OR
C'est la vie - 'That's life' - in French, OR
Accept what you cannot change and move on."
II.
"A sure way to grow and own your work is to ask yourself -
What would my manager say if I took this problem to her?
What would my rockstar colleague do if he faced this situation?"
III.
"Ability to Focus - or Concentrate at Will - is a superpower for your career
Find a meditation practice that works for you, and train into this power."
2 Life Quotes from Books
I.
Ernest Becker, cultural anthropologist and author, highlights the necessity of both experiencing and contemplating, in his 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book - The Denial of Death:
"Beyond a given point man is not helped by more “knowing,” but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way.
As Goethe put it, we must plunge into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it.
All reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all plunging and no reflection, and we are brutes."
Source: Book: The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
II.
Chip Heath, Professor at Stanford, talks about effective communication and the lack of it at the workplace, in his business bestseller - Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck -
"Stephen Covey, in his book The 8th Habit, describes a poll of 23,000 employees drawn from a number of companies and industries. He reports the poll's findings:
Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why
Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team's and their organization's goals
Only one in five said they had a clear "line of sight" between their tasks and their team's and organization's goals
Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals
Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for
Then, Covey superimposes a very human metaphor over the statistics. He says, "If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent."
Source: Book: Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
1 Question
What is the burden that you are carrying? How can you carry it differently to make it easier?
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Until next week,
Devashish Chakravarty
Author of YourSortingHat
Columnist for Careers at The Economic Times
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