Career Advice

How To Study People You Admire And Ask For Their Advice

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I often talk about how I like to learn from other people. The primary way I do that is by just studying them.

In most cases, you don’t even need to contact people to learn from them. That’s why people write books and blog posts. That’s also why entrepreneurs speak at events or create courses.

It’s far more effective to use a medium that allows you to reach a lot of people to spread ideas. Otherwise, people would spend their whole lives to do 1-on-1 conversations and emails.

When someone writes a book, they can reach everyone who is interested.

And yet, a lot of people believe they should randomly email people and ask for advice. Why? You can get most of the advice you need by reading the person’s book or blog.

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Personal Development, Writing

The 7 Best Books I’ve Ever Read About Writing

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Writing has helped me to become better at thinking, speaking, and making decisions. And I’ve used books about writing to improve myself.

I firmly believe that anything worthwhile in your career should start with writing.

From creating resumes to business plans. If you don’t start with writing, you often lack clarity in your messaging.

And that was also the story of my life. In fact, it still is. Most people never think about it, but it’s damned hard to express yourself. Do you have a clear answer to questions like:

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Career Advice, Life Lessons

Why I Don’t Believe In Work-Life Balance

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Do you get drained trying to find work-life balance? It’s hard. There’s work, promotions, goals, making money on one side of the equation.

And on the other side, there’s health, family, friends, holidays, you name it. Here comes the main challenge: How do you balance everything?
When we talk about work–life balance, we talk about the prioritizing between work related things and lifestyle related things.

What do you do?

  • Chasing career vs settling down
  • Taking risk vs being conservative
  • Chasing money vs intrinsic rewards
  • Working vs resting
  • Giving vs taking
  • Thinking of yourself vs others
  • Spending time with family vs friends

Deciding seems impossible. Result? Stress, worry, anxiety.

Research even shows that people who believe they don’t have time for their personal life, feel drained and distracted at work.

Recently I was talking to one my friends. He and his wife recently had their second baby. And he was saying how he struggled with balance when they had their first child. But now, he decided to simplify things.

90% of his time goes to family, work, and himself. All the other things in life he ignores. No balance. All or nothing in a few areas.

And I’m exactly the same. I don’t think balance is a good strategy.

A pragmatic view.

Let’s look at this work-life balance situation.

Let’s say you have 9–5 job. But you want to be in the office by 8.30am. So you leave the house at 7.30am. You want to leave early and you finish up work at 5.30pm. It’s 6.30pm before you get home.

That whole work aspect of your day takes 10 hours in that scenario, which is not uncommon. Let’s say you sleep 7 hours. That gives you 17 waking hours.

That means you spend 59% of your time on work related things.

There goes your balance.

Plus, we spend most of our free time thinking, worrying, and talking about work.

It’s safe the say there’s no such thing as a work-life balance.

You see? Work-life balance doesn’t exist. Work is life.

  • If work is holding back your personal or spiritual growth, find different work.
  • If work is screw up your relationships, again, find different work.

Don’t make things harder for yourself. 

You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to have it all.

To me, there are only a few important things. My health, having good relationships, and that’s about it. It’s pretty easy to balance that.

We spend too much time balancing things we don’t need in our lives. That turns our life into a circus act.

Trying to find work-life balance only makes life complicated. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mind complicated things. I like math and econometrics.

But I don’t like it when people complicate very simple things. Work-life balance is only an issue if you turn it into one. And why do you even need to balance a thousand things?

Henry David Thoreau said it best:

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.”

If you oversimplify your life, and decide what your life is exactly about—you will find there are only a few priorities that matter.

You don’t need to do everything. It’s fine if you only have time for a few things in life.

Don’t worry. Don’t balance. Simplify.

Business, Career Advice, Leadership

What’s Your Strategy For 2017?

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Every year around this time I stop almost everything I do and focus on one thing, and one thing only: Strategy.

I’ve been doing that for the past 5 years in October. It’s the perfect time I’ve found. Because it’s not too late to make shit happen in the current year. And it’s not too late to plan the next year.

You and I both know what happens when December comes: Shenanigans. Busyness. End of year blues. Whatever. December is just not a good time for strategy. 

Life is pretty tactical in nature.

  • You answer emails,
  • You do groceries.
  • You drive your mother to her doctor’s appointment,
  • You talk to clients.
  • You do taxes.
  • You pay bills.
  • You create landing pages.
  • You write code.

That’s pure execution. And that’s the only way to get work done.

However, that’s also simple day to day stuff. But life is bigger than that.

What about your long-term life and career? When do you think about that stuff?

For most of us, the answer is never.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not letting the outcome of my life over to chance. I might go to the casino sometimes and roll the dice, but I’m definitely not doing that with my business and life.

Why? It’s not only my life. It’s my family’s life and half a dozen employees.

That’s why every person and every business needs strategy.

What is strategy?

Most people don’t even ask that question. They just come up with something and call it a strategy.

One of the best books on strategy is 33 Strategies Of War by Robert Greene. He says:

“The word “strategy” comes from the ancient Greek word strategos, meaning literally “the leader of the army.” Strategy in this sense was the art of generalship, of commanding the entire war effort, deciding what formations to deploy, what terrain to fight on, what maneuvers to use to gain an edge.”

Based on Greene’s book, I define strategy as follows:

  1. The art of getting results
  2. And putting ideas into practice.

That’s it.

And when you strategize, you think about all the stuff you’ve learned and how you can use it to get results in your life.

How does the process look like?

For me, it goes a little like this:

  1. Delegate or stop all tactical tasks for the next week.
  2. Read a little from strategy books.
  3. Look at the strategy you made for 2016.
  4. Look at what went well.
  5. Look at what you didn’t do well.
  6. Why?
  7. What can you improve?
  8. Now, it’s time to look forward.
  9. What are your high-level priorities for 2017?
  10. For your life, business, relationships, and health.
  11. Be realistic.
  12. But don’t think too small.
  13. Don’t worry about execution yet.
  14. Read more strategy books.
  15. Look at the high-level priorities you want to work on in 2017 again.
  16. Second guess yourself.
  17. Why do you want to do that stuff?
  18. If you’re clear on your priorities, it’s time to start thinking about the how.
  19. Break it down to daily actions.
  20. Put that stuff in your calendar.

Like you can see, it’s more art than science. It’s my personal approach. For instance, last year around this time, I decided to publish 2 articles a week in 2016. That turned out to be a good strategy.

Some people come up with excuses like, “I don’t have time for strategy.” Well, it’s your life. If you want to be short-term focused, that’s also a strategy.

The emphasis is on deciding what I’m going to do next year. Deciding is the most important aspect.

You can do a million things in your life. But you know what they say about the person who tries to do everything, right?

“A man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”

That’s a Chinese proverb. Never forget that. If you try to do too many stuff at the same time, you will lose.

If strategy is the art of getting results, you should ask yourself: “What will get me results?”

The answer is one word: Execution.

That’s why I created a full course on productivity and achievement. I didn’t create a content marketing course, a blogging course, or build a business course.

All that shit is useless if you don’t know how to achieve things in your life.

Be real with yourself. Are you a finisher?

Yes? Or no?

If you’re not a finisher: LEARN.

I was not a finisher in school. But then I learned.

And then I got my master’s degree, started a business, got a job on the side, wrote a book, etc. It’s not rocket science. Just execution.

Anyway, it’s time for me to retreat and think about 2017. I’m not coming up with big things or anything. No world changing stuff. I’m not Pinky and the Brain, who always say:

“Pinky: Gee, Brain. What are we going to do tonight? The Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.”

No. For me, it’s probably going to be more of the same with a few minor changes and new things for 2017. Maybe a podcast. Maybe a new book. Maybe a new course. Maybe a new business.

I don’t know yet. Oh yeah, that’s what this strategy period is for.

How about you?

P.S. Here are three other good strategy books I recommend:

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