Keep Your Life in Perspective

Future of You

Finally something to give credence to my varied career tract!

What's the future of You?

It's over. No more vertical. No more ladder. That's not the way careers work anymore. Linearity is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It's full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes sense. (It often does.) A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.

And how to measure success?

No matter what you're doing today, there are four things you've got to measure yourself against. First, you've got to be a great teammate and a supportive colleague. Second, you've got to be an exceptional expert at something that has real value. Third, you've got to be a broad-gauged visionary -- a leader, a teacher, a farsighted "imagineer." Fourth, you've got to be a businessperson -- you've got to be obsessed with pragmatic outcomes.

From Tom Peters in The Brand Called You.

The Brand Called You

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Johnny Bunko Career Advice

I recently read a creative, non-traditional career advice comic book called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need" by Daniel Pink. It was a quick, refreshing read compared to most career advice books, with its comic book story line. Its key lessons were:

1. There is no plan.
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses.
3. It's not about you.
4. Persistence trumps talent.
5. Make excellent mistakes.
6. Leave an imprint.
7. Stay hungry (from his website).

I'd highly recommend it for anyone thinking about what to do when they "grow up." Here is a "trailer" they made for the book.

Read this in an op-ed in the FT on Wed titled, "Stop making excuses and just get started."

He quoted Confucius:

"Our greatest glory lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail."

Reading List

I found this reading list on Greg Mankiw's blog and thought they looked interesting.

• Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
  
• Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers
  
• Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity
  
• Steven Landsburg, The Armchair Economist
  
• P.J. O'Rourke, Eat the Rich
  
• Burton Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street
  
• Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff, Thinking Strategically
  
• Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics
  
• John McMillan, Reinventing the Bazaar
  
• William Breit and Barry T. Hirsch, Lives of the Laureates