Mapping the Frontier/Addendum: My Favorite Career Lectures

As we enter mid-year of 2021, in my reflections I decided to go back to the career lessons that had the largest impact on my current career trajectory. Given some of my friends are still at the early stages of their career/ studies I thought I would add an addendum to my research preparations. (There might be a bit of male-bias, but as I identify as male, these were the ones that spoke to me).

I think below advice is ever more relevant as options become plentiful, it’s been shown that when given too many options, people don’t take action. Perhaps below advice will help.

Summary of Advice

The only thing that will keep you going through the tough times at work is love of the work.

Passion is the pursuit of a dream, the greatest fascination(s) of your life, it will help you create the highest expression of your talent.

The consequences of not doing work you love is spending the majority of your time wasting it and your time is limited. You will die. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, have faith in something, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. You have to trust that things will connect for you in the future. This will give you the courage to take leaps of faith. You cannot connect the dots looking forward.

A passion is not merely an interest. You need twenty interests, and within that, one might grab you and engage you more than anything else, and you keep thinking about it. The rule for finding your passion is easy: the mind cannot stop thinking about what which it loves

Don’t be afraid to think big, think idealistic, think great notions. If you settle for “just interesting”, your friends will gather around your gravestone which will say here lies a distinguished engineer, who invented Velcro. But what it should have said is “Here lies the last Nobel Laureate in Physics, who formulated the Grand Unified Field Theory (i.e. unified the grand truth of all physics) and demonstrated the practicality of warp drive (i.e. faster than light travel which would allow for practical long-distance space flight). One was a great career. The other was a missed opportunity. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. 

Why do we fail to find our passion? Fear of not finding it, fear that it does not exist, fear that one has to be lucky/ smart, lazy, too hard. Fear that it will negatively affect our relationships. Do you really want to use your family, do you really ever want to look at your spouse and your kid, and see your jailers? Great friend, great spouse, great parent, great career. Is that not a package? Is that not who you are? How can you be one without the other?

If you haven’t found your passion yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle. Get outdoors, do it all. Plug yourself into the whole array of human experiences. Don’t just do one of them, do all of them.

• Talk to as many different people as you can. Talk to people outside a narrow band of a few friends.
• Read as much different stuff as you can. Go outside a narrow band of books.
• Go out and see things. Industrial tours, museums, walk on the streets.Do all of them.
• If you do, how can you not find something that you can’t stop thinking about.

Ben: I would personally add that a fear of pain is not a good excuse not to do something that would be truly special. E.g. Politics being a pain, the general population bemoaning your mistakes, etc.

Notes of the Advice

How to have a great career

1. Find your passion
2. Use your passion
3. Then you’ll have a great career

The Consequences of Loving Your Work

1. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
   1. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. (NeXT, Pixar, finding his wife, bringing NeXT back to Apple)
   2. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.
   3. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love.
   4. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.
   5. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
   6. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

What are the Consequences of Not Looking for then Doing your Passion?

1. Living for the weekend. A grisly thing. Two days out of a week you have a life and the other five days you wait to have a life.

What is your passion?

1. Pursuit of a dream, pursuit of the greatest fascination in your life
   1. It is your greatest love
   2. Passion is what will help you create the highest expression of your talent
2. A passion that cannot put a roof over your head and food on your table is not enough
3. A passion is not just an interest
   1. E.g. are you going to go to your sweetheart and say “marry me! you’re interesting”
   2. You need twenty interests, then in one of them, one of them might grab you, one of them might engage you more than anything else.
   3. In that one, you may find your greatest love, in comparison to all the other things that interest you, and that is what passion is.
   4. Alternatives are needed to find your destiny (do not fear the term)
   5. If you settle for “just interesting”, your friends will gather around your gravestone which will say here lies a distinguished engineer, who invented velctro. But what it should have said is “Here lies the last Nobel Laureate in Physics, who formulated the Grand Unified Field Theory (i.e. unified the grand truth of all physics) and demonstrated the practicality of warp drive (i.e. faster than light travel which would allow for practical long-distance space flight). One was a great career. The other was a missed opportunity.

Why do people not look for their passion?

1. Fear that they will never find one and wasted their time.
   1. We live in a world where people think that finding a passion is so rare that if you find even one you are the luckiest person on the planet and the possibility of finding two is just bizarre
   2. It isn’t, we have multiple passions. Once you taste how sweet it is, you will want more.
2. That passionate work only comes to those who are lucky
   1. Many people have decided that luck is the main reason for success and it is a great excuse to avoid applying effort to an endeavour.
   2. He doesn’t wish a person luck, but rather he wishes a person success.
3. Because they have never tasted what it is like to get up in the morning and be pleased to go to work (you don’t know what you’re missing)
4. Lazy
5. It’s too hard
6. I’ll just find a “good” career
   1. A “good” career no longer exists.
7. I’ll just find a “good” career and work really, really hard and it will become a great career
   1. You want to work? You want to work really, really, really hard? You know what? You’ll succeed. The world will give you the opportunity to work really, really, really, really hard. But, are you so sure that that’s going to give you a great career, when all the evidence is to the contrary?
8. I will not pursue my passion at the cost of my relationships (family, spouse, children, friends)
   1. The easiest excuse, because no matter what you do you are still the hero
   2. But one day, the kid interrupts you and says, “But it is my dream. It is my dream to do this.” And what are you going to say? You know what you’re going to say? “Look kid. I had a dream once, too, but — But –” So how are you going to finish the sentence with your “but”? “But. I had a dream too, once, kid, but I was afraid to pursue it.” Or are you going to tell him this: “I had a dream once, kid. But then, you were born.” 
   3. Do you really want to use your family, do you really ever want to look at your spouse and your kid, and see your jailers? There was something you could have said to your kid, when he or she said, “I have a dream.” You could have said — looked the kid in the face and said, “Go for it, kid! Just like I did.” But you won’t be able to say that, because you didn’t. So you can’t. 
   4. Great friend, great spouse, great parent, great career. Is that not a package? Is that not who you are? How can you be one without the other? But you’re afraid. 

Why hold yourself back?

And that’s why you’re not going to have a great career. Unless — “unless,” that most evocative of all English words — “unless.” 

But the “unless” word is also attached to that other, most terrifying phrase, “If only I had …” “If only I had …” If you ever have that thought ricocheting in your brain, it will hurt a lot. 

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

What is the Scope of Work We Are Talking About?

• If you settle for “just interesting”, your friends will gather around your gravestone which will say here lies a distinguished engineer, who invented velctro. But what it should have said is “Here lies the last Nobel Laureate in Physics, who formulated the Grand Unified Field Theory (i.e. unified the grand truth of all physics) and demonstrated the practicality of warp drive (i.e. faster than light travel which would allow for practical long-distance space flight). One was a great career. The other was a missed opportunity.
• …amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
• When it ran its course on the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

How to Find Your Passion/ Your Life’s Work

1. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.
   1. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.
   2. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
2. Get outdoors, do it all. Plug yourself into the whole array of human experiences. Don’t just do one of them, do all of them.
3. Talk to as many different people as you can. Talk to people outside a narrow band of a few friends.
4. Read as much different stuff as you can. Go outside a narrow band of books.
5. Go out and see things. Industrial tours, museums, walk on the streets.
6. Do all of them. If you do, how can you not find something that you can’t stop thinking about.
7. The rule for finding your passion is easy: the mind cannot stop thinking about what which it loves
8. Take Leaps of Faith and the “Dots”
   1. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made
   2. You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Lectures Themselves

1. The best career advice I have had: Larry Smith’s “Why You Will Fail to have a Great Career”

Ref: https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career?language=en

Overview: Larry is an Economics Professor with a passion for helping his students reach the peak of their career success. What gives him a distinct advantage as a career adviser is his understanding of economic rationalism and a flair for narrative.

Notes: He has added a bit of narrative flair which may turn off some viewers while energizing others. If it turns you off, ignore the flair and listen to the words.

Further reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/07/09/why-you-will-fail-to-have-a-great-career-the-interview/?sh=4b23e1314466

2. The most impactful career advice I have had: Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech

Steve Jobs speaks during the 114th commencement at Stanford University in Stanford, California on Sunday, June 12, 2005. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios gave the commencement address. (Jim Gensheimer/San Jose Mercury News) (Photo by MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images)

Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&t=601s

Overview: Steve probably needs no introduction.

Notes: Steve Jobs was (in my opinion), arguably, one the most important commercial leaders of that time period. With that, he also had all the major stigma and issues related to commercial leadership which some would argue are unavoidable in competitive capitalism so I avoid discussion of that point. In this speech, focus more on his well-considered philosophical view of career.

Transcript: https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/