Springboard: Start with Why (Simon Sinek)
The Macro/Big Why View: What are you working for? The Medium Why View: What your working on? The Immediate/Tight-Knot Why View: What you’re working on now?
What is a great career?
- Money is important; but it is the least important (vs. fulfillment, etc.)
- Providing value
- Nothing can help you rise faster in your career in delivering value
- Junior Designers: Your job is not to make things pretty, but to deliver value
- Seek excellence
- Whatever you do, seek excellence
- This is difficult, easier said than done
- Kaizen - The act of constant improvement
- What you do outside of the office is important and will help you perform
- Find joy
- If you have a talent, figure out how to enjoy that
Finding Joy (in your career)
- Your career is your job
- Your job is 8 hours a day - what you do at work is just as important as what you do outside of it
- #TGIM - the mindset to have everyday
- Changing your mindset is needed to achieve this
- See The Happiness Advantage
- Do you have a job, career, or calling?
- Job = the money
- Career = presence of a trajectory
- Calling = having a purpose
- “People with a calling view work as an end in itself; their work is fulfilling…these are the people who are generally more likely to get ahead” - Shawn Achor (Harvard Psych Professor)
- “There are doctors who see their work only as a job, and janitors who see their work as a calling” - Nick Campbell, Founder, Grayscale Gorilla
- To find joy, find balance
- Figure out what you’re doing and why you’re doing it
- Finding joy makes you are more interesting person (and hence, interesting work)
- The birth of my daughter has given me to tally different perspective
- “If you love what you do you will never work a day in your life. But be careful not to let what you love rule your life. It’s easy to overwork when you’re having fun being creative to the point that you don’t have a real life outside of work” - Shane Mielke
Seek Excellence
- How you do anything is how you do everything
- When it got hard, what would Kanye do?
- Know what you’re trying to do and what you want to get out of it
- What is the goal, what are you working for?
- “All the Way Up”
- E.g. whydontwetry.com
- A willingness to try everything an explore
- They add up and contribute to the quality of their work
- Present your own work
- If your boss doesn’t allow you to present your work, at least ask to be in the room - this will expose you to feedback
- Ask for brutal/direct feedback
- “Fail fast”
- You want to fail in a controlled environment
- See Julie Zhou’s Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers diagram
Provide Value
- We all have the potential to be great designers
- Set the agenda
- When you decide what’s being talked about you before the conversation
- You’re controlling the narrative, setting the mission
- Take notes
- Action items - get that down, who is doing this
- Decisions made
- Outstanding questions
- Key information shared
- It’s not about you
- You have to learn to frame your conversations around what you want
- Make a business case
- Every project has a goal, so as you speak about a project every decision should have a reason relating to that goal
- What you’re delivering + Why you’re delivering it + How it works
- Learn to Pitch
- If you work in client services, you are in sales
- You are selling, you are crafting ideas
On Money
- “Cash is oxygen for your organization” - Gary Vaynerchuk
- Understand your boss’s bonus
- Ask yourself what is the big picture, things you’d like to learn.
- On job hopping: Job hopping does increase your pay potential.
We think our career is a linear mission. But for as long as your working towards a goal, you are going to get there.
Pro Tips
- Understand how the company is making money or missed opportunities and how you can contribute