What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 (9 page)

This is true in all endeavors. For example, most major discoveries in science come from paying attention to surprising results and interpreting unexpected findings. Successful scientists quickly learn
not
to be afraid of data that leads them into uncharted territory. Instead of throwing away data that doesn’t fit the expected results, writing them off as artifacts, the best scientists latch on to anomalies, knowing this is where true breakthroughs are made. In fact, by being alert to inconsistencies, scientists often open entirely new fields of research and make remarkable discoveries. For example, from the early days of microscopy, in the mid-1800s, scientists saw that there were two general classes of cells in the brain, which they called neurons and glia. They assumed that all the real action happened in the neurons and that the glia, which literally means glue in Greek, served only as a kind of “scaffolding,” or structural support for neurons. This idea held for over 150 years, and scientists spent most their efforts studying neurons.

However, over the past twenty years, glia, which are more abundant in the brain than neurons by a factor of ten, have been found to serve an enormous number of important roles in the nervous system. Bruce Ransom, the founding editor of the scientific journal
Glia,
is a pioneer in this field. He and other scientists around the world have demonstrated that glial cells are active participants in virtually every function of the brain. Even synaptic transmission, the most studied interaction between neurons, involves glial cells. Bruce, who is also a neurologist, believes that glia have not yet given up all their secrets and are critically involved in many neurological diseases.

This is an important reminder that ideas can be so attractive that they actually impede progress. People latch onto them and don’t see the other viable alternatives; they unconsciously “adjust” conflicting observations to fit prevailing theories. In retrospect, it seems obvious that glia serve an important role in the brain. But those who began doing research in this area two decades ago were taking a risk by stepping off a clearly defined path to explore uncharted territory.

Most events and findings snap into focus when looked at in retrospect. Randy Komisar claims that his career makes much more sense when viewed through the rearview mirror than through the windshield. This statement is true for most of us. When you look back on your career path the story makes perfect sense. The road ahead, however, is always fuzzy and full of boundless uncertainty. It’s easy to get frustrated by the lack of visibility ahead. You can, however, do things to increase the odds that great opportunities will come your way.

Randy has spent considerable time thinking about how to craft a career, and his insights are powerful. He suggests that you build a career in such a way that you optimize the quality of the people with whom you work, which ends up increasing the quality of the opportunities that flow your way. Great people support each other, build valuable networks, and create a steady stream of new opportunities. Essentially, the ecosystem in which you live and work is a huge factor in predicting the types of opportunities that will present themselves.

Many seasoned professionals echo his ideas. They know it’s a mistake to try to manage your career too closely, and that you should instead work in organizations that grant you access to a stream of interesting opportunities. Teresa Briggs, the managing partner of the Silicon Valley office of Deloitte, a large international professional services firm, gave up the notion that she could plan everything in favor of being much more opportunistic. Teresa began her career in the audit practice of Deloitte and after eighteen years reasonably assumed she would be there forever. However, she eventually found herself in an unpredictable situation. New laws required auditors to rotate on and off assignments with individual clients so a fresh set of auditors could ensure the business was being managed legally. Teresa had been working with a very large client, and when she rotated off the team there weren’t other comparable opportunities. But she learned that a new Deloitte group was forming that focused on mergers and acquisitions. While mergers and acquisitions was not her area of expertise, she was offered the opportunity to take a key position. She found that her skills transferred beautifully. Even though Teresa would not have planned this path herself, she realized that her ability to build relationships with clients and lead teams allowed her to excel in this new role.

After a short time, Teresa was transferred to the Deloitte national office in New York, where her leadership and management skills again allowed her to shine. Teresa was then asked to head up the Silicon Valley practice for the firm, where she had to learn new strategies and a brand-new vocabulary, this time for high technology. None of Teresa’s steps could have been predicted, and yet, by excelling in an organization that presented a continuous flow of new opportunities, many exciting roles and challenges materialized.

It is important to reassess your life and career relatively frequently. This self-assessment process forces you to come to terms with the fact that sometimes it’s time to move on to a new environment in order to excel. Most people don’t assess their roles frequently enough and so stay in positions for years longer than they should, settling for suboptimal situations. There isn’t a magic number for the amount of time you should stay in one role before evaluating whether it’s right or not. But it makes sense to think about how often you do so. Some people readjust their lives daily or weekly, constantly optimizing. Others wait years before noticing that they’ve ended up far from where they had hoped to be. The more frequently you assess your situation, looking for ways to fix problems, the more likely you are to find yourself in a position where things are going well. It’s best to address small problems that crop up in your life early and often, as opposed to waiting for problems to get so big that they seem intractable. That can only happen when you pay attention and figure out what actually needs to change.

Some situations literally force you to reevaluate your life. For instance, once you decide to start a family, the entire game changes. You’re suddenly faced with the need to figure out how to balance parenting with your profession. As everyone knows, caring for young children takes an enormous amount of time and focused energy. It’s both physically and emotionally demanding, and incredibly time consuming. Keeping you on your toes, a child’s needs change dramatically as they get older. Each year brings a brand-new set of responsibilities and a fresh set of challenges. As a result, parenting provides an ever-changing opportunity to be creative and helps build skills that are extremely valuable in any setting. It exercises your ability to multitask and to make decisions under pressure, and it certainly helps you master the art of negotiation.

Women especially face the daunting puzzle of figuring out how to fit together career and family obligations. From my experience, this challenge really is a great opportunity. Instead of considering traditional jobs that have limited flexibility, being a parent forces you to be innovative. Additionally, as your child’s needs change, you can experiment with different jobs with different responsibilities. Although it is hard to see up close, one’s career is long, and children are small for only a few years, allowing you to accelerate your career as your children grow up. The following excerpt from a 1997 edition of
Stanford Magazine
puts a sharp point on this idea.

A 1950 [Stanford] graduate earned her law degree here in ’52, and took five years out of the paid workforce after her second son was born, keeping herself busy and visible in volunteer work for the Phoenix Junior League and the Salvation Army. Later, when her youngest went off to school, she went back to work part-time in the state attorney general’s office.

Staying home with her children during those years ultimately didn’t hamper her career…. She added that today’s young graduates could fare even better than she did. “One help is that nowadays women live longer,” she says. “We spend more years in employment and really have time for a couple of careers. So if a few years are taken out, all is not lost.”

The woman, by the way, is Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

From my experience, this is absolutely right. My only recommendation is that if you intend to stop working while your kids are young, consider finding a way to keep your career on a low simmer. If you haven’t stepped all the way out for too long, it’s much easier to get back in. You can do this in an infinite variety of ways, from working part-time in traditional jobs to volunteering. Not only does it keep your skills sharpened, but it provides you with the confidence that you can gear up again when you’re ready.

Consider Karen Matthys, who has four young children and is part of a group of part-time marketing consultants. Karen takes on projects when she can, and hands them over to her partners when she’s too busy. Or take Lisa Benatar, who with young three daughters turned her attention to her children’s school. Lisa, an expert on alternative energy, started an educational program at the school that focused on teaching children about conservation.

Taking on the puzzle of balancing work and parenting ended up being the best career decision I ever made. I wanted to be intellectually stimulated without compromising the time I had for my son. As a result, each year I evaluated how much time I needed to devote to each and found ways to take on projects that allowed me the most flexibility. I took on assignments I probably wouldn’t have considered if I didn’t have a child. I started writing children’s books, launched a Web site for science teachers, and even taught science in a private elementary school. In the long run, these experiences proved to be amazingly helpful when I did go back to work full-time. I gained credibility as a writer, learned how to design Web sites, and got valuable experience teaching—all skills I use every single day in my current role.

Looking back, I see many things I wish I had known about crafting a career that were counter to the traditional advice I was given. Most important? The need to find a role in the world that doesn’t feel like work. This only happens when you identify the intersection between your skills, your passions, and the market. Not only is this the most fulfilling position, but, by tapping into your passions in a constructive way, your work enriches your life, as opposed to taking time away from it. Finding the right roles requires experimenting along the way, trying lots of different alternatives, testing the messages you get both explicitly and implicitly from the world, and pushing back on those that just don’t feel right.

As you move through your career, you will be well served by frequently reassessing where you are and where you want to go. Doing so allows you to make course corrections quickly, especially when things don’t turn out as planned or exceptional new opportunities arise. Don’t worry that the path ahead appears out of focus—squinting isn’t going to make it any clearer. This is true for everyone. Don’t be in a rush to get to your final destination—the side trips and unexpected detours quite often lead to the most interesting people, places, and opportunities. And, finally, be wary of all career advice, including mine, as you figure out what’s right for you.

I called my son, Josh, during his first semester at college to wish him luck on his final exams. His response was, “There’s no such thing as luck. It’s all hard work.” He’s a driven kid, who throws himself at the things about which he is passionate, especially athletic competitions that require a tremendous amount of training and preparation. At first I thought his response was extreme. But, on further reflection, I believe he had it right. Even when we think we’re lucky, we’ve usually worked remarkably hard to put ourselves in that position.

I’ve watched Josh with admiration as he has strived to meet goals others might think impossible. At nineteen, he decided to try his hand at competitive powerlifting. This wasn’t a natural choice for a former cyclist and track sprinter, but he was determined to break the national record for dead lifts. Josh identified the best trainers in northern California and drove two hours each way, several times a week, to learn from them. He read everything he could about the sport, carefully crafted a diet to build more muscle, and spent hours training at the gym. After several years of weight training followed by months of focused effort, he entered a competition to see how he stacked up against others. We arose at 5:00 a.m. and drove three hours to Fresno for a formal meet. The gym was filled with weight lifters who’d been competing for years. I was worried he would be disappointed with his performance. But Josh, weighing in at 190 pounds, blew away both the federation’s state and national records by lifting 589.7 pounds—this was 50 pounds more than the previous record holder. Was he lucky? Of course he was lucky. All the cards aligned for him that day. But he would never have succeeded unless he had put tremendous effort behind his goals.

Josh’s comments on luck echoed the message I frequently heard from my father when I was a child—the harder you work, the luckier you get. His mantra was a stark reminder that you need to put yourself in a position to be lucky. Even if there’s a low probability of success and a tremendous amount of competition, you can maximize your chances by being well prepared physically, intellectually, and emotionally.

We often hear inspiring stories about people who start with nothing and by virtue of incredibly hard work are able to draw luck their way. Here are two quick stories that probably sound familiar, of people who worked incredibly hard to overcome tremendous hardships.

Quyen Vuong was born in Saigon, Vietnam, where her father worked for the Vietnamese government and her mother ran a pharmacy. As the daughter of professionals, her young life was very comfortable. However, when the Communists overran the country in 1975, Quyen’s world was turned upside down. Her father was sent to a reeducation camp, her family’s pharmacy was shuttered, and her mother was sent to prison for being a “capitalist” because she ran her own business. Within a few years it was clear their situation wasn’t improving, and her father left for the United States with two of Quyen’s siblings. The rest of the family stayed behind in Vietnam.

The following year, 1980, Quyen’s mother felt compelled to send Quyen, age sixteen, and her younger brother, age eleven, in search of a better life. She tearfully put them on a boat with other refugees, hoping they would ultimately make it to the United States. She had little confidence that they would complete the journey or that she would ever see her children again. Following many days at sea, dodging pirates who tried to steal the few belongings brought by the refugees, the boat finally landed on an island off the coast of Malaysia. There the boat’s passengers joined more than forty thousand refugees, each struggling to survive and trying desperately to obtain permission to immigrate to another country.

After four long months, Quyen was permitted to join her father in Texas. She spoke no English and was subsequently held back in school by several years. Her family was so poor that she and her siblings each worked at least thirty hours a week after school. Quyen often thought about dropping out to better support her family, which was surviving on a week-to-week basis, often forced to call upon relatives for loans.

Despite the hardships, Quyen worked as steadfastly as she could. She had nothing but her self-motivation to pull herself out of poverty. She finished high school near the top of her class and went on to Yale with a full scholarship. After studying economics and then earning an MBA, Quyen now runs ICAN, a not-for-profit company that serves the Vietnamese community by helping immigrants bridge cultural gaps, so they can thrive in their new country. She now provides the services she wishes she had available when she made it to her new homeland.

As a young girl, Quyen had no idea what she wanted to accomplish as an adult, but she did know with certainty that she wanted to pull herself out of poverty. She feels that by setting the table with time and effort you ensure that something appealing will land on your plate. Quyen’s experience has taught her that, as she says, “You can make your own destiny by focusing on your goals and working incredibly hard.”

I heard a similar story from Quincy Delight Jones III, aka QD3, a successful music and film producer who has worked with well-known artists such as Tupac Shakur, LL Cool J, and Ice Cube.
¹
As the son of the music legend Quincy Jones, you might think QD3 had an easy life. He didn’t. His parents divorced when he was young and his mother brought him to Sweden, her native country, where they lived in near poverty. His mother had an alternative lifestyle and struggled with drug addiction. She didn’t particularly care if QD3 went to school, and she often didn’t come home from partying until 4:00 in the morning.

From the time QD3 was exposed to break dancing in his early teens he was hooked. He started performing on the streets in Stockholm, putting out a hat to collect donations from passersby. He practiced his dance moves day and night, perfecting each one. With “luck” he was discovered by a scout from Levi’s, who asked if he would be interested in going on a performance tour. QD3 jumped at the chance.

Once he had his foot in the door, QD3 continued to work as hard as he could. Besides dancing, he started developing music beats for rap artists. A big break came when he was asked to write the sound track for a movie about the rap scene in Stockholm. One of his songs, “Next Time,” written when he was sixteen, became his first gold record and sold over fifty thousand copies. QD3 went on to produce a triple platinum documentary about Tupac Shakur, which sold more than three hundred thousand copies.

Just like Quyen, QD3 was driven to pull himself out of poverty, to be self-sufficient and, ultimately, the best in the world. He “taps the fire in his heart” to motivate himself, and once the flame spreads, charges ahead with incredible commitment and effort. Both Quyen and QD3 throw everything they have—physically, intellectually, and emotionally—at the problems confronting them, demonstrating that hard work and dedication are key to tempting luck your way. However, hard work is just one lever at your disposal when it comes to making your own luck. There are many other tools in your toolbox that can serve as luck magnets. And I’m confident that both Quyen and QD3 used these, as well.

Richard Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire in England, has studied luck and found that “lucky people” share traits that tend to make them luckier than others. First, lucky people take advantage of chance occurrences that come their way. Instead of going through life on cruise control, they pay attention to what’s happening around them and, therefore, are able to extract greater value from each situation. They’re more likely to pay attention to an announcement for a special event in their community, to notice a new person in their neighborhood, or even to see that a colleague is in need of some extra help. Lucky people are also open to novel opportunities and willing to try things outside of their usual experiences. They’re more inclined to pick up a book on an unfamiliar subject, to travel to less familiar destinations, and to interact with people who are different than themselves.

Not surprisingly, lucky people tend to be extraverted. They make more eye contact and smile more frequently, leading to more positive and extended encounters. These actions, in turn, open the door to more opportunities. Lucky people also tend to be optimistic and to expect good things to happen to them. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because even when things don’t go as expected, lucky people find ways to extract positive outcomes from the worst situations. Their attitude affects those around them, and helps to turn negative situations into positive experiences.

In short, being observant, open-minded, friendly, and optimistic invites luck your way. Take this simple story: several years ago I was at a small local grocery store frequented mostly by those who live nearby. A man and his young daughter approached me in the frozen-food aisle and politely asked how to prepare frozen, canned lemonade. The man had an accent I couldn’t identify, and I was pretty sure he must be new to the area. I told him how to prepare the lemonade and asked where he was from. He said Santiago, Chile. I asked his name and what brought him to our town. I had no ulterior motive. I was just curious. He told me his name was Eduardo and that he and his family were in the area for a year so he could learn about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. He was in line to run his family’s business and was in search of tools to make it more innovative. I told him about the entrepreneurship program at Stanford’s School of Engineering and said I’d be happy to do what I could to be of help. Over the next few months I introduced Eduardo to various people in the entrepreneurship community, and he expressed his thanks for my assistance.

Fast-forward two years. I was heading for a conference in Santiago and sent Eduardo a message asking if he wanted to get together for coffee. At the last minute, he wasn’t able to make it, but invited me to go to a specific location in downtown Santiago with a few of my colleagues. We showed up at the office building and were led to the roof, where we were picked up by Eduardo’s family’s private helicopter for a simply spectacular ride above the city, up to the surrounding mountains, and over his family’s ski resort. It was incredible! And to think that it resulted from helping him figure out how to make lemonade. Of course, I didn’t help Eduardo because I wanted a helicopter ride. But by putting myself out there, being open to helping someone, and following up years later, I became quite “lucky.” Earlier I discuss the art of turning lemons (problems) into lemonade (opportunities). But luck goes beyond this—it’s about turning lemonade (good things) into helicopters (amazing things!).

The world is full of doors through which we can find a staggering array of opportunities—we just have to be willing to open them. Carlos Vignolo, from the University of Chile, likes to say that if you go somewhere and don’t meet someone new, you have certainly missed out on making a friend as well as on the possibility of making a million dollars. He tells his students that every time they walk onto a city bus, a million dollars is waiting there for them—they just have to find it. In this case “a million dollars” is a metaphor for learning something new, making a friend, or, indeed, making a million dollars. In fact, this book is the direct result of my talking with someone sitting next to me on an airplane. If we hadn’t started a conversation, I most certainly wouldn’t have written this book. But that’s another story.

Echoing this point, Tom Kelley, author of
The Art of Innovation,
says that every day you should act like a foreign traveler by being acutely aware of your environment. In everyday life we tend to put on blinders and cruise down well-worn paths, rarely stopping to look around. But as a traveler in a foreign country, you see the world with fresh eyes and dramatically increase the density of your experiences. By tuning in, you find fascinating things around every turn.

James Barlow, the head of the Scottish Institute for Enterprise, does a provocative exercise with his students to demonstrate this point. He gives jigsaw puzzles to several teams and sets a timer to see which group can finish first. The puzzle pieces have been numbered on the back, from 1 to 500, so it’s easy to put them together if you just pay attention to the numbers. But, even though the numbers are right in front of them, it takes most teams a long time to see them, and some never see them at all. Essentially, they could easily bolster their luck just by paying closer attention.

Paying careful attention to your environment actually takes a lot of effort. You have to teach yourself to do it well, and even when you’re paying attention, you can miss really interesting and important information that’s right in front of you. A widely distributed video shows this all too clearly. An audience is asked to watch a group of men and women tossing around a basketball. They’re told to count the number of times the team in white shirts passes the ball. At the end of the video, viewers can easily answer that question, but are oblivious to the fact that someone in a bear suit moonwalks right through the game.
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Even when we think we’re paying full attention, there’s usually so much more to see.

I do a simple exercise in my class that illustrates this clearly. I send students to a familiar location, such as the local shopping center, and ask them to complete a “lab” in which they go to several stores and pay attention to all the things that are normally “invisible.” They take the time to notice the sounds, smells, textures, and colors, as well as the organization of the merchandise and the way the staff interacts with the customers. They observe endless things they never saw when they previously zipped in and out of the same environment. They come back with their eyes wide open, realizing that we all tend to walk through life with blinders on.

Lucky people don’t just pay attention to the world around them and meet interesting individuals—they also find unusual ways to use and recombine their knowledge and experiences. Most people have remarkable resources at their fingertips, but never figure out how to leverage them. However, lucky people appreciate the value of their knowledge and their network, and tap into these gold mines as needed. Here’s a powerful example from the 2005 commencement address that Steve Jobs delivered at Stanford. In short, he’d dropped out of college after six months because he wasn’t sure why he was there, and the tuition was much more than his parents could afford. Here’s how Steve tells it: