twenties

Little Known Ways To Become A Harder Worker

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Hard Work, What Exactly Is It?

We experience it all the time- from motivational posters, sports crushes, and cliché movie lines, “Work Hard!” (Along with its partners, “Stay Positive!” and “Don’t Give Up!”) has gradually become one of the default phrases of advice for anyone pursuing after a dream or goal.

But if we were to peel away the surface level understanding of what hard work means, what would we find?

For some time now, I thought I fell into that category of a hard worker. I always nodded diligently when I was prescribed the “Work Hard!” advice and preceded to do my best to not be a failure in the expectations that I had set for myself.

However, during this past year and a half of mingling with entrepreneurial, techie nerds I couldn’t help but think that I was doing anything but the opposite of working hard. Standard 40-45 work weeks was a mere shadow of what these Silicon Valley Savants were juicing out of their 24 hour daily lives.

Which then raises the question -“Does hard work always equate out to x number of hours put in?” What if there’s more to that equation?

Questions needed to be asked. Perspectives needed to be introduced.

So, over the last week I sent out an email to a diverse group of individuals about what hard work meant to them. CEOs, teachers, therapists, and parents all responded with answers that would help mold and break down what I thought hard work meant.

And it turned out to be pretty simple equation:

(not my best Shepard Fairey creation, I know)

Let’s break down each component of this equation.

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I Left One Of The World’s Best Companies- And I’m Excited. Here’s Why.

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I’ll never forget the last meal I had at Linkedin.

Take a moment and visualize (hungrily) with me…

Blue Cornbread Waffles + Maple Whipped Butter + Fried Chicken with Rosemary, smoldered in sweet Maple Syrup. It was the best Chicken Waffles I ever had.

But wait! I still had to drain down this masterpiece. I grabbed my cup of strawberry mint, from-the-tap Kombucha and slowly sipped down the bubbly, sweet tasting liquid.

Perfection.

This may have been my last meal, but it painted a vivid picture of the shielded, and admittedly, confused life I’ve been living the past 14 months between my employment at Linkedin and Google.

But today, along with all future chicken & waffle consumption, it ended. I’m leaving the world of Big Tech, Big Brand companies for a smaller recruiting agency. I’ll be Employee #14. And I couldn’t be happier.

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5 Powerful Ways Coffee 1-on-1’s Can Impact Your Social & Professional Life

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It starts with four words.

These fours words, like the Keymaker in the Matrix, has opened up unknown doors and opportunities for me that I once thought, wasn’t possible.

You probably already know these four words.

In fact, just today, or maybe even sometime this week, you have already uttered and said these words yourself!

So here they are, plain and simple, are you ready?

Let’s. Grab. Some. Coffee.

(or Beer, Or a Cocktail, Or a Bite, I think you get the idea). 

In college, I loved grabbing lunch, 1-on-1 with friends. It was so nice to have a solid hour to just give to each other. To be free from all the noise and clutter that our daily schedules harassed us with and to just be fully immersed in what each other person was saying and listen. To just be physically present, made all the difference.

Then I started to wonder, why can’t I apply this same model of 1-on-1 communication with those outside my social circle? With people who worked in an industry I was curious about? With people who had a similar interest with mine? With people who just seemed…interesting?

And so that’s what I did and continued to do. I’ve been lucky to speak with the homeless, managers, entrepreneurs, fathers, mothers, bloggers, and a whole bunch of other people.

Everyone has something helpful that they can impart to you, and vice versa. Though at times, it doesn’t materialize itself till later on.

It’s been a couple years now since I’ve started asking people out on 1-on-1 coffee meetings and it’s been a helluva ride. After scheduling a beer 1-on-1 with a marketing manager at Cisco last night, I started to reflect and think about what exactly I had gained from all these connections.

What had I gained from taking the initiative to ask these 4 simple, powerful words?

Here are  5 ways these 1-on-1’s has impacted my life, both professionally and socially, and hopefully with bit of motivation, can start impacting yours too.

PROFESSIONALLY

1. Insight Into A Particular Job/Industry Reality check. I’m 22. I’ve only been in the workforce for one, short year. What the heck do I know about…anything? Sure, I could do a simple Google search about a certain job and its pros & cons in a manner of milliseconds, and sure, I could easily go around the Linkedin community creeping on the profiles of potential positions I would be thrilled to be in…but is that really enough to get a clear picture?

When you are sitting down, face-to-face with someone who has been through the trenches, literally experienced the victories and the failures of their jobs, persisted and sacrificed time and time again to become an expert in his/her job/industry, you’re going to get a real good and genuine outlook into what it is all about.

2. Introductions Maybe the person you reached out to turned out to be a total nut-head. You’re waiting and waiting for the conversation to be over, you’re practicing your listening skills to its umpteenth potential. Then at the very end, Person X happily says, “Wow – thanks for listening. You know, there is someone who I think fits right into what you are trying to do with that idea. I’ll be glad to introduce him to you!” And the person turns out to be your future employer. Sure, it’s a bit of a dramatic example, but the fact is, we live in a very very connected world. Disney phrased it best, “It’s a small world after all.”

Here’s a trick for you – if you know Person X is connected with Person Y and you just KNOW Person Y is the key to your success/question/curiosity, but for whatever reason  Person Y has just been impossible to reach… all you have to do is sit down with Person X, buy them the beverage/food of their choice, and at the end, politely ask if you could get introduced to Person Y. Simple math right?

3. Mentorship What’s a mentor? “A mentor is a trusted adviser or guide. Usually, a mentor is successful and has what you are trying to achieve. Your mentor can teach you what worked and what didn’t work.” – Jaime Tardy.

Can you think of a mentor in your life today? Is there someone you admire but just haven’t been courageous enough to approach and talk to? Maybe you don’t. And that is OK. But when that moment comes and you get that internal urge to reach out, you’ll know the 4 words to begin laying the bricks down towards a strong relationship.

SOCIALLY

4. Becoming A Better Listener and Communicator In one of my first 1-on-1’s during college, I was speaking with the Founder of a microbiology plant club on campus and I thought it be a good time to exercise some listening skills I had read about. I challenged myself to see if I could get him to talk for a majority of the time and to just give him the time and space to share his life’s story. 2 hours passed and I had learned a bit more about microbiology…as well as how the entire educational system in China worked and the advantages that it had over America’s. Woah, awesome.

Being in a 1-on-1 setting gives you the opportunity to invest wholeheartedly into what that person is saying.  It’s a personalized time to ask the right questions and to improve on the quality of a conversation, without needing to feel pressured about how the third/fourth person feels on the matter.

It forces you to adjust to the flow of a conversation because there isn’t another person to peep in when there is a long and uncomfortable silence.

5. It Builds Your Confidence I’ll be honest, I still get nervous when I get the calendar reminder to meet up with ___ for lunch. But heck – it’s definitely been a major improvement. We get nervous and scared because of two reasons:

1. The person is a total stranger – its the unknown and the lack of information about this person that causes us to feel uncomfortable.

2. The person might react negatively to you. The What-If’s. What if he thinks I’m weird, What if he doesn’t like my shirt? Etc.

But more often than not, these are our own silly thoughts that we manufacture so that we can take the easy route out and avoid confronting these problems.

And here’s the cool part- with each meeting that you complete, your confidence builds stronger and stronger. Past pillars of fear gets toppled down and your tolerance level just becomes higher and higher. You slowly embrace the unknown and turn that fear into adrenaline. Exciting stuff yea?

3 Sources To Help You Find People For Your 1-On-1 Invitations

Now that you have a better grasp on the benefits of these 1-on-1’s, you might be asking yourself – where can I exactly go to start setting up these meetings?

I got you covered.

1.   

Do a simple search for people around your area who have a job title you might see yourself have in the future. Then just hit Connect and write a personalized message. If they accept your invitation to connect, write a personalized message about a recent blog post they posted on their updates, a question about something they have written in their summary, or even feedback on a personalized site that they have. Just get creative. Then slowly introduce the fact that you want to buy them coffee for 15 minutes of their time. Why 15 minutes? Because 15 minutes always turns into 30minutes, and 30 minutes sometimes intp an hour. No one is going to constantly glance at their watch…(unless they are some high-level executive, billionaire, celebrity, whatever.)

Tip 2 – Join Groups that your intended contact is in. Once you are in that Group, you can message ANYONE without needing to connect with them. Cool right?

2.

There are literally events of ALL kinds on Meetup.com. Find a category that fits your needs and desires ad make it a goal to make one solid connection at whichever event you attend. By solid I mean, a 5-10 minute conversation. Then ask for their Linkedin profile/or number if it feels comfortable and make sure you follow up with them to grab coffee.

3. Your Current Network 

Take a look around you. Are you at work? At the gym? At a family gathering? Is there something about them and their jobs that you want to learn more about?

There’s people all around you! All it takes is a little courage and curiosity in making the first initial contact.

What’s The Worst That Can Come Out Of This? 

Think about that the next time you hesitate on deciding if you should ask someone out to coffee or not. What do you lose by trying? And what do you lose by NOT trying?

The world has never been as connected as it is today, thanks in large part to technological advances. But what we’ve sacrificed for a more convenient and efficient way to communicate through all these digital tools, we’ve forgotten what it is like to expose ourselves, as we are, to another human being in our true and imperfect form. So be different and take advantage of this current digital generation. Show them that they are worth more than just a few email exchanges online!

So dear reader, what are you waiting for?

Take a risk.

Dive into the unknown.

And emerge as a better and improved version of who you were just moments before.

I’ll leave you with two final questions to set you off on this new journey:

Who are you going to reach out to? Who do you need to grab coffee with?

Feel free to comment below and I’ll do my best to keep you accountable!

Good luck.

-AL

The Most Important Number That Every College Grad Needs To Care More About

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I’ve never been a magician with numbers.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten anything higher than a B++ (the extra + for emphasis) in any of my math classes.

But theres always been a number that I’ve been acutely aware with.

It’s a number that’s more often than not surprised people.

It’s a number that motivates me to do better, to do more, to aim higher.

It’s a number that constantly has me on my tippy toes, always dancing around with a sense of urgency.

Can you guess what that number is?

That number is my age.

At 22, with 23 quickly approaching on the horizon, I couldn’t help but reflect back on the past 8 years of my life. Phrases like, “It Just Seemed Like Yesterday, and “Where Did The Time Go?  have been repeated again and again with each passing stages of our lives.

In high school, they told me live it up in college because there will never be a time like that again. And I did.

During my Junior year of college, they told me make the most of my Twenties because there will never be a time like that again. And I am. (or so I hope I am)

But it feels different this time. And the fact is, it is different. Prior to my graduation date back in April, I, along with the rest America have been hand-held and marched through an institutionalized style of learning since we were wittle, tiny, kindergardeners. And it wasn’t until relatively recently where they finally let our hands go…into an opportunistic, competitive, yet awesomely beautiful world. But if there’s ever time to learn from the mistakes of the past, now is the time to correct them and to turn them into workable tools for our mindset.

And what are those mistakes?

Purposely allowing time to be squandered on insignificant investments that in hindsight now, have disintegrated to nothing but a small hole in my monetary, relationship, and memory wallet. In high school, I devoted hours on hours perfecting ways to get a “Headshot” which usually ended in me rage quitting. In college, I made an internal pact with myself to watch every single minute of every single Lakers game. In case you didn’t know, a regular NBA basketball game runs 90 minutes long, (that’s without commercials, stoppage of place, halftime, etc.) so long would be a massive understatement.

But I’d like to think that I’ve grown wiser. To realize that 23 will quickly turn into 24, then 25. And another 5 years, just like it has recently, will fly by again into 30.  And walla! my Twenties will essentially be over.

Now, I do apologize for the depressive tone that I might be painting this timeline with, but I do hope you can understand the deeper objective at hand here.

Each of these next years, all 7 of them, can and will have some of the most significant impacts on our lives moving forward. The habits that we establish, the YOLO trips we take to a foreign country, the careers that we build, the relationships that we get into…all have a certain degree of influence for the rest of our lives.

And what an INCREDIBLE asset it is to have.

We have more time than we ever will to pursue a new hobby, to write a book, to do something uncomfortable…

We have more freedom to become who we want to be, go where we want to go…

We have more room for failure to think in “worst case scenarios” and still be able to recover…

Friends, we have the freaking Internet. We have more access to technology than any other generations before us!

They say that we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others’ success because by doing so, we lose perspective and depreciate the good things in our lives. But like anything else in our lives, how we filter that information and use it towards our benefit is up to us. Which for this very reason is why I always get irked when friends tell me that I am doing GREAT for my age. Though I genuinely appreciate their intentions, I just can’t help but gaze in wonderment at this list of:  Forbes 30 Under 30 Who Are Changing The World. Or networking with Stanford undergrads whose drive and mission to build Silicon Valley’s next hottest iPhone app has left me speechless, multiple times. Or gushing over all the inspirational National Geographic travel videos of explorers who go on epic trips to unknown caves. THESE are the people whom I’m placing myself in competition with. These are the people I put my measuring stick against. And why shouldn’t you?

Four questions to consider:

  • Define for yourself what the meaning of success is. And ask yourself, “How and What are you going to do in these next years to achieve that definition of success?
  • What is the number 1 thing on your mind that you WISH you can do but just don’t have the time/energy/money to do? Now think of the worst case scenario if you ended up doing that. Did it match your expectations?
  • Take a look at your current circumstance, every part of it. Now ask yourself WHY you are where you are/you are doing the things you are doing, etc. And now ask yourself WHY four more times till you really dig down into the root of things. (It might scare you)
  • Is there someone whom you just admire and just hope you can be some day? Take a look at where they are when they were your age and see if what you are doing now measures up to that.

Friends, just do something with your Twenties and do it to the best of your focused, creative abilities.

Take a risk.

We can’t all stay 22 forever. (Unless you are Taylor Swift… :P)

-AL