maverickJ

It’s all about positioning one’s career where one has max leverage which lead to relative higher career earnings; hopefully converting some of this to cash producing assets.

It’s similar to other advice I have heard such as one’s communication and general peoples skills tends to lead to favourable career success after a certain threshold.

A great article on why one should not depend on technical skills alone is https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/dont-hinge-your-care...

Interesting article. I had the same realisation which I coined the phrase ”everything is not for you”.

It’s the idea that even things termed as good might not be good for you; especially in the long term. Our time on earth is finite.

It involves choosing a focus and cultivating the attention to stay on track. It also involves being comfortable looking wrong in the short term.

The article below can be read adjacent to the one in this post

https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/everything-is-not-fo...

“Focus is doubly important for early stage startups, because not only do they have a hundred different problems, they don't have anyone to work on them except the founders. If the founders focus on things that don't matter, there's no one focusing on the things that do.”

Paul hits the nail on the head with this.

I like to think of this as the idea of everything is not for you. It’s very important to know what the goal is and ignore every other thing that does not align with it.

The article below helps provide a framework of focus and the idea that everything is not for you.

https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/everything-is-not-fo...

Marketing is very important.

As mentioned in my article on Nikola Tesla's breakthrough, "Doing brilliant work is not enough; Showing|demonstrating brilliant work is not enough. What is enough is showing your brilliant work to the right people. When your brilliant work is shown to the right audience at the right time, it triggers action for the next stage of the work. In Tesla’s case, it was the commercialisation of alternating current by George Westinghouse of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburg. When your work is shown to the wrong people, the merits of the work are typically dismissed"

If you want to read more, the link is below https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/cracking-the-who-you...

Are you not tired of this trope?

"You need to create for an audience of one that you understand well.

An audience of one is specific. Whether it’s you or someone you know well, there are clear preferences that you can cater to. They have a manageable number of needs and pieces of feedback. Which means that creating for an audience of one is specific and attainable. You have a goal post that can tell you whether you scored or didn’t, so failure and success are both explicitly defined. Now, you know what to make, but more importantly, you know exactly when you’ve failed making it."

Interesting quote. What was not mentioned is how to find the audience for what you create; whether it's a new thing with a new market to be created or an improvement on an existing thing with an existing market.

An interesting blog on why it's important to find the right audience for your work is https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/cracking-the-who-you...

Great write up Paul.

An interesting add in my opinion is that one can also do great work when working on a project not of your own origination but of an area where one's interests lie or where visions intersect.

"You have moments of happiness when things work out, but they don't last long, because then you're on to the next problem. So why do it at all? Because to the kind of people who like working this way, nothing else feels as right. You feel as if you're an animal in its natural habitat, doing what you were meant to do — not always happy, maybe, but awake and alive."

While the above does ring true to some extent, one can also approach all tasks with a sense of being awake and alive; This is something some eastern religions preach about. I do admit that this will be hard to implement in practice though. i

One person who was able to test out their own ideas while working for others is Nikola Tesla. He might be used a case study by others with grand visions who want to do great work. Although, it can be argued that Tesla had to at some point seek independence.

"In 1883, Nikola Tesla was sent by his employer - The Continental Edison Company- to fix the problem that had occurred in the powerhouse and electric lights installation at the railroad station in Strassburg. This presented him with the opportunity to test out his theory of a two phase alternating current motor encompassing his rotary magnetic field discovery [at that time, everyone who had tried to make an alternating current motor used a single circuit]. He set to work and tested his theory in the power plant. He was successful in starting up the power generator with this new system. This meant that Tesla now had a novel electrical system that utilised alternating current."

The above was taken from https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/cracking-the-who-you...

1. You might be leaking energy: Try write down the different activities you have done during coding over the past 10 years and see if any of theses activities has been antagonistic with each other. If you have found antagonistic activities, try eliminate them and give yourself a year to work on complementary activities in coding. It might reveal a thing or two to you.

2. It's incredible hard to predict an accurate version of the future. A better alternative might be to set yourself to quickly adapt to changing scenarios and being strong on timeless foundations.

3. Align your strengths with the output of the company: Find your strengths are and what you enjoy and figure out how to align it with the outputs of the company and serving humanity. I find that having a goal bigger than ourselves tends to energise us.

4. If you need to move to something different, it might require you paying a price; I think of it as paying a premium on your first deal.

5. Have a personal motto:I have observed that organisations tend to become the motto they ascribe to themselves. Maybe individuals can leverage this?

Some posts from leverage thoughts that my help below:

https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/do-not-engage-the-mi...

https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/early-career-tactics...

https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/paying-a-premium-on-...

https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/humans-and-work-thre...

I hope this helps and I wish you the best.

What a fascinating story.

I think of success as having infinite patience for doing a few boring things repeatedly.

Some other parts are having a higher mission to embrace the grind;Some call this purpose.

Something else I have observed by studying other engineers is the theme of not depending on your technical skills alone. One needs to market/show their work to the right audience, own equity in businesses/business.

"As a technical person in your career, you must not rely on your technical brilliance or rest on your laurels. You must acquire some financial education. There is a tendency for technical people to think that they are the best; That they will always be on top; That will be always be creative; That their inventions won’t be usurped quickly by newer inventions. However, history says otherwise. Life was quite unpleasant to Tesla; He died alone and poor depending on handouts from former associates. A tragic end for one the most creative minds of the early twentieth century."

https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/dont-hinge-your-care...

Great thread.

It reminds me of reading Bezos annual shareholders letters.

The culture of the place could be seen from reading those letters.

A couple of those values since day one are:

1.We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers.

2.We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions.

3.We will continue to measure our programs and the effectiveness of our investments analytically, to jettison those that do not provide acceptable returns, and to step up our investment in those that work best.

This blog https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/jeff-bezos-amazon-an... breaks it down further.

Interesting article.

One place where one needs to build resilience is in how we work and how we learn new things. The key thing is developing skillsets that enable us to go through life. Some key tools are:

1. Understanding how humans work: On why the early stages of work tend to be stressful.

2. Pushing through pain points: On the power of mental reframing.

3. Seeking motivation from within: Especially on large projects where you’re just a cog in the wheel.

This article https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/humans-and-work-thre... explores this further.

Hehey.

Interesting idea. I am a firm believer in understanding ourselves through our actions.

I wrote a bit about it in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/three-actionable-ins...

There were those who saw his play. However there was another group of people that wondered the Amazon approach at that time.

Some did. It's quite easy using hindsight bias to see how everything worked out.

Love him or hate him, Jeff Bezos has been a legendary figure in the world of business for over 25 years now. His focus on the long term has led to the tremendous success Amazon has undergone.

When he started selling just books, he was laughed at by some people; but he had a why behind starting off with books. One thing is certain, Bezos has stayed consistent on his principles. His annual letters to his shareholders contain a lot of business wisdom.

I wrote about him covering the theme: Thinking as a means of leverage in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/jeff-bezos-amazon-an...

Yup. I have a problem with “single most important”

Being able to think quantitatively is very important but saying being capable of thinking quantitatively as the single most important thing is a abut suspect.

There is also qualitative thinking which is criminally underrated. I reckon that one needs to combine qualitative and quantitative thinking. Qualitative thinking can drive quantitative thinking. Some research on qualitative factors was done on Olympic swimmers. This link below shows its application for excellence for anyone interested.

https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/what-is-excellence

Very interesting article.

Focus, especially in our modern society, is a quality/trait that is quite difficult to re discover as adults.I say re discover because I "think" children have more focus than adults.

My hypothesis is that we lose focus as we get older due to the amount of interests and setbacks we get as we grow out of childhood.

What I am trying to say is that we should not find focus but choose our goal/interest and just focus on it.

An interesting article on focus and achieving personal goals is https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/set-your-personal-go...

Concentration is indeed a powerful skill for any human to have. It gives one the ability to apply themselves at the task at hand.

One thing that I have discovered is that one can’t concentrate intensely on different hard things at the same time.

The why behind the concentration is also very important.

The blog article here https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/do-not-engage-the-mi... explains this further.

Attitude is what I like to think of as a qualitative marker for success. The defintion of attitude is quite nuanced. Attitude determines how you go about actions that can make or break your career.

I wrote about this in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/what-is-excellence

Being willing to be in a low status role that either grants you an opportunity to learn quickly or an opportunity to solve hard problems is a super power in my opinion.

Nikola Tesla is one of the greatest inventors in recent memories and he had this gift. His first job under Edison in America had a not so glamorous title. I actually wrote about it in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/take-the-role-and-pr...

On the flip side, being comfortable staying in a low status role over a long period of time where the role does not provide opportunities for learning and doing hard things might be a sign of lack of ambition.

Interesting points raised.

This ties in with the theme of this newsletter https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/take-the-role-and-pr... about Nikola Tesla and starting your first job in an industry you're new too.

"Many a-times, brilliant young people join an organisation and want to start right at the top or at a glamorous role. They get aggrieved when they are not given the shiny, glamorous role that commands respect or gives social proof. This tends to result in them doing a poor job of whatever role they have been given.

I posit that we can learn from the Tesla story described above. Take the job and prove yourself once an opportunity presents itself. It might not be what you envisioned last year before the pandemic and lockdown. It’s important to get into the door and then set the standards to where you believe you belong."

The following books below might be of help to you.

1. First You Write a Sentence by Joe Moran - https://amzn.to/3m2Hq8N

2. Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose - https://amzn.to/3dEXY3M

3. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King - https://amzn.to/3mfLFhF

In terms of technical content, there is a course for technical writers on pluralsight - https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/technical-writing-softwa...

Sometimes you just have to copy what worked for someone else in their venture and apply it to your own venture. I know that the world tells us that we need to be original; that we need to come up with new ideas to apply to our lives, careers and businesses; that we are special. However, I believe that sometimes, we can achieve tremendous success not by trying to come up with new ideas but by leveraging ideas that have already been tested by someone else.

The article https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/originality-is-not-t... provides a case study.

Some of the key points for early career progress are:

1. Seek the counsel of trusted mentors.

2. Pick accelerated learning over money at the beginning of your career.

3. If given the opportunity to take remuneration in form of equity, take it.

4. Go work in an industry for a fixed amount of time to pick up some skills.

5. Learn early on what industries your personality type is not suited for.

6. Know what you want and go for it.

7. Don’t get too hung up on the job title when you first start out; Especially if the opportunity to learn is enormous.

There is an interesting article on this https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/early-career-tactics...

You're welcome.

I can't wrap my mind around why would anyone pay for what are you doing, let alone so many people

Your mental model of the world is not the mental model everyone has of the world. Your quoted sentence above comes from the result on one thinking their way of the world is the only way. This is surprisingly common in a number of intelligent people. The result of this is that it prevents them from creating products.

One person might pay because the course provides a structured way to learn a topiC. Another person might pay because by paying, they are more likely to learn the subject.

In life, we tend to sometimes believe that once we have done great work and even shown great work, that the bright lights of Vegas will come illuminate us like the sun illuminates the earth. What a painful and unproductive belief!!! What became obvious to me from observations in my career, life and others is that you must intentionally choose who you show your work to. Who sees your work is incredibly important. Always remember WYSYWC.

The paragraph above is what I wrote in my article in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/cracking-the-who-you...

Don't give up.