Build Your Skills, Not Your Resume – Sandberg
- If you’re offered a seat on a rocketship, don’t ask what seat, just get on.
- Build your skills, not your resume.
- Don’t plan too much, and don’t expect a direct climb.
- Your strength will not come from your place in some org chart, your strength will come from building trust and earning respect.
You are going to need talent and skill and imagination and vision, but more than anything else, you’re going to need the ability to communicate authentically – to speak so that you can inspire the people around you, and to listen, so that you continue to learn each and every day on the job.
- All of us – especially leaders – need to speak and hear the truth.
- As you get more senior, not only will people speak less clearly to you, but they will overreact to small things you say.
- Three, that you remain true to, and open about, your authentic self.
QOTD – Career
Once you have an inkling about what truly makes you happy, it becomes a lot easier to reprioritize and spend your most precious asset – time – on the qualitative experiences that fulfill you. And that’s more satisfying than squandering time on meaningless work just so you can acquire the redundant artifacts of material success.
When all is said and done, perhaps I am not really in a great position to give career advice given the fact that I haven’t had one. But for what it’s worth, here’s a final bit anyway: If you can do anything setting out, or along the way – because it’s never too late to start again – figure out who you are. What do you love to do? How do you want to live? Then, don’t let a career drive you, let passion drive your life. that may not get you up any ladder, but it will make your trip down a long and winding road more interesting. And in the end, if it makes you feel better, go ahead and call it a career. It doesn’t matter. A career is what you make of it.
QOTD – Things That Are Exciting And Inspiring
“The sale of Paypal gave me the capital to start a rocket company and a car company – cuz they are high capital endeavors. Actually, we almost ran out of money – it was a close call for both SpaceX and Tesla.
Initially, I had to provide all of the funding for SpaceX and Tesla myself because rockets are pretty far out of the comfort zone of most venture capitalists.
And the other reason is one that actually gets me the most excited, which is that there have to be things that are exciting and inspiring – life cannot just be about solving problems. And I think this would be the most exciting adventure I could possibly imagine.”
- Elon Musk, on the Daily Show (source one, two)
Very inspiring guy, love how he’s cool as a cucumber through the entire interview and in life in general.
If you want to be inspired, watch this episode that Bloomberg did about him – his story is absolutely amazing.
QOTD – The Law Of Change
The law of change says, “Things do not stay the same. If they don’t get better, they get worse.” If relationships do not get stronger, they will get weaker; if they do not become closer, they will become more distant; if they do not become more productive, they will become less productive.
- source (reading for a class)
QOTD – Consensus = Bad?
When everyone agrees on a solution, you can be almost certain that it’s not the best solution. Too much agreement brings things down to the lowest common denominator.
QOTD – A Hedge Fund Game
““We used to rely on the public making dumb investing decisions,” one well-known Manhattan hedge-fund manager told me. “but with the advent of the public leaving the market, it’s just hedge funds trading against hedge funds. At the end of the day, it’s a zero-sum game.” – The End of Wall Street As They Knew It (source)
Wireless Electricity – Witricity
I just finished reading a case on the company Witricity (wiki), which came up and patented a new way to transmit power wireless-ly. Power transmission using their technology is much more efficient (and also safer) than through other sources like microwaves, radio waves, lasers and such.
The applications are limitless – from using it for simple mobile/laptop charging to having the system in your garage so your electric vehicle just starts charging once you drive in. Turns out drilling companies really need this technology – power wires break often when drilling miles underground, and these outages cost them millions of dollars to fix. Who would have thought?
It’ a fascinating case. This is an example of a technology company that truly changes the way we are used to living life – the type of company that makes the Jetsons’ future seem-not-so-imaginary.
Below is a short but comprehensive TED talk by the CEO Eric Giler. I definitely recommend watching it, if only to get a glimpse of what the future has in store.
