In the first part of this post, I defined inputs and outputs in the context of progressing your career. The main point is that you should consider the degree to which inputs enhance outputs when evaluating how you spend your time. Reading 850 books might sound cool, be fun and make you feel good, but it might not yield the highest return on your time if you looking to become the startup sensai you set out to be.
I think a much more effective way to become a badass is to focus on outputs. Here’s why:
Real Learning and Behavior Change Occurs
Consuming content (inputs) in terms of building skills allows me to familiarize myself with things. I can learn what …
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Amidst the barrage of publicly broadcasted New Year’s resolutions I’ve consistently noticed the aspiration to read a ton of books. Reading is awesome. I thoroughly enjoy it. But I wonder if the people that are planning to take down a small library this year aspire to do this for the right reasons. This trend is in direct alignment with a pervasive behavior I’ve decided to leave behind in my journey to progress my career.
I like to think about how I spend my time professionally bettering myself in terms of inputs and outputs.
Input noun definition: something that is put in. In this context, I think about inputs as things I consume ranging from blog posts, …
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Two things that I love are learning and businesses that create surplus from uncaptured value. A space that particularly intrigues me is the Knowledge Economy.
So much of the incredible knowledge that people have gained through experience lies dormant. People always want to improve, gather more data points, and find things faster so there is a continuous demand for this knowledge. The supply is equally abundant: Odds are someone else has done what you’re trying to do or found what you’re trying to find. Yet despite someone really smart inventing the internet, there is still a disconnect between knowledge supply and demand. I attribute this to the fact that the channels through which knowledge is exchanged are still not fully matured …
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I’m not sure if you can become smarter, but I think there are things we can do to be more effective thinkers. Here are things that have enriched my thinking ability in my own life:
Value thinking and Give Yourself Permission To Do So:
I write about this a lot, but the pervasiveness of smartphones, email obsession, and information portals often diverts our minds from actually thinking. Many people these days correlate digital activity with “getting ahead”. They assign value to it. “I’m going to respond to emails faster. I’m going to be more engaged on social media. I’m going to read more blog posts, thus absorb more information. If I do all of this I will be a better …
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A few months ago I had the painful realization that I had lost sight of my primary life goal in the process of trying to achieve it.
I have a lot of life goals, but the most important one to me is to build something that benefits the less fortunate at a grand scale. Whether this will manifest itself in a charity, social enterprise, school or church I’m not sure.
With this goal in mind, I’ve felt like my time is best spent learning as much as I can about how to build a company. I still feel this way.
I’ve tried to squeeze as much output out of every day in order to maximize my learning …
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I’m on my 4th job since graduating in June 2010. So yeah…compared to most of the people I graduated with, I’ve had an extremely unconventional career thus far. In short, I look like a Mexican jumping bean.
When I ask a good portion of my classmates what the plan is, I often hear a familiar ring: “I’m going to spend two years banking/consulting, than go to a private equity/hedge fund, than go to business school…than some day I’m going to be happy in Greenwich Connecticut!”
That sounds exciting and fulfilling.
At one point during my undergraduate years this sounded pretty good. But my benchmark of good was everyone else in an atmosphere where the blind followed the blind. Looking back, its strange to …
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Its been just over 2 months since I’ve started carrying a small moleskin notebook everywhere I go.
I have it on me at all times to record ideas, thoughts/themes I want to remember, and action items. This practice has been profoundly enriching and I’m proud to say I’ve devoured 2 1/2 full books over this time period. In the process, I’ve made a few observations about the practice that I’d like to share:
Creating Room to Think
One of the amazing things about using a moleskin to capture fleeting thoughts, is that you give yourself permission to stop focusing on something. Often we think of something that we don’t want to forget and spend an unnecessary amount of time focusing on remembering it. This …
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I love the internet. It solves many of the world’s problems and enhances the lives of countless people. What’s even more awesome is it’s now in the palm of my hand. But as great as the mobile web is, I think there has been some less than beneficial side effects on human behavior. Mainly, the mobile web has contributed to a culture obsessed with instant gratification and digital stimulation. They’re often one in the same. I know because I’m getting shelled in the trenches by these forces constantly.
Six months ago my mornings went like this: Wake up to to silence my phone alarm. Check my email while I’m already there. Efficiency! This inspires me to think about the …
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