Author: Dad

  • Stories You Can Tell

    Stories You Can Tell

    Life moves quickly. Years can slip by unnoticed. Unless you are consciously pushing yourself, you may find with regret that you have squandered some of the best years of your life.

    I try to imagine myself at 80, hanging out with my grandkids. What stories will I tell? What life did I live? Imagining that makes me want to take advantage of the time I have now as a younger man to live the life that’s worth telling in the future.

    A slightly different idea in the same vein: I have a recurring reminder on my calendar: Goal setting for what it will make of you to achieve it. Set your goals big so the journey improves

    Don’t let the years go by in unremarkable routine. Do crazy things. Take risks. Have fun. Make memories. Create stories. Life your life so you have great stories that you’re proud of in the end.

    Here are some good quotes capturing this idea:

    “The memories of a man in his old age; Are the deeds of a man in his prime.” – Roger Waters, Pink Floyd

    “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin

  • Passion

    Passion

    It’s hard to think of an example of a very successful person who wasn’t also VERY passionate about his or her work. There are so many quotes about the importance of being passionate about your work if you want to be truly great. Don’t settle on a work path for money or security. Instead, focus on your passion first and foremost. Through that passion, you will find greatness.

    “If you love the hell out of what you’re doing, you’re usually pretty good at it and you wind up making your own breaks.” -Chuck Yeager

    “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. It’s a lot of hard work… and if you don’t love it, you’re going to fail.” -Steve Jobs

    According to Steve, the path forward towards greatness is so hard that the only way it’s possible to persevere and continue against all odds is to be so passionate about your work that nothing can stop you.

  • Employee Advice

    Great advice for new employees to the workforce from https://andrew.grahamyooll.com/blog/Try-to-Take-My-Position/

    My CTO leaned back in our 1-on-1 and said something that sounded almost threatening: “You want to get promoted? Try to take my position.”

    I must have looked confused because he quickly added, “I don’t mean literally.” Though I still wonder sometimes…

    What he meant was simpler and more powerful: start doing the job before you have the title. Take on more responsibility before you’re officially given it.

    This advice has stuck with me through years of career growth, and later when I became a manager myself, I saw exactly why it works.

    The Responsibility-First Mindset

    This advice flips the typical approach to career growth. Most people wait to be given more responsibility before they start taking it on. They wait for permission, for the title, for explicit direction.

    But that’s backward.

    If you want to be promoted, you need to demonstrate that you can already handle the role you’re trying to grow into. Not occasionally. Consistently. The title follows the behavior, not the other way around.

    So if you want to get promoted: try to take your manager’s position. Start thinking about the problems they think about. Make the proposals they would make. Expand your vision to the team’s problems, not just your individual tasks.

    Do it for six months, not six days.

    That’s how you get promoted.

  • Social Media

    Some sage advice on social media and the distraction of phones:

    Even if you have social media and a phone — especially if you have social media and a phone — the most important thing is to learn to have yourself as a best friend. You need to be able to be happy and confident in yourself. You also need to be comfortable sitting alone in a dark room with your thoughts should be OK being alone without distraction of a phone for more than 30 minutes.

  • Never Satisfied

    The common trait among all successful people as they are never satisfied. They always keep pushing to get better and better and improve themselves, their companies, or the people aroudn them.

  • Complexity is the Enemy of Scale

    Complexity is the Enemy of Scale

  • Grow or Be Comfortable?

    Grow or Be Comfortable?

    In life, you can either grow or be comfortable. Not both. You choose.

    Growing means you’re doing things that you are not good at or haven’t yet mastered. You’ll probably feel like a fool starting something new. But you’re growing. If you can can last through the discomfort then you can grow to new heights.

  • Power of Discipline

    Power of Discipline

    Discipline is the path to accomplishment. With discipline, you can accomplish anything. Without it, accomplishment will always be out of reach.

    Here’s a great quote on discipline from none other than Mike Tyson:

    Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but doing it like you love it.

  • Go without…

    Go without…

    “Go without and see what you really need.” This is a stoic philosophy of “voluntary hardship” nicely summarized. Too often we get used to living a certain way and develop a dependence on things in our lives. Many of the things in your life you may not actually need. After all, what do you really need to live a good life? Not much if you pair it all down to the basics – safety, shelter, food, health, and family. What else is there?

    You can simplify your life and understand your true needs by going without something to see if you really need it. This especially applies to material things, but it can also be routines or people in your life. If after a brief experiment you find that you don’t need something then you can eliminate it from your life.

  • Nothing that has meaning is easy

    Nothing that has meaning is easy

    “To get anything of value, you have to sacrifice. The harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing. Nothing that has meaning is easy. Easy doesn’t enter into grown-up life.”

    -The Weather Man (2005)