Vol. 11; Modern Life Skills

Table of Contents

• Mindset: Starter

• Life Skill: (Avoid) Misaligned Expectations

• Career Advice: Do the Job

• This is Cool: Willow

• Bonus: Bundle Up Buddy

MINDSET OF THE WEEK
The World Rewards Starters

Beg for forgiveness > ask for permission.

**within reason of course. With any situation there can be extremes. It’s important to highlight those cautionary tales (i.e. Elizabeth Homes and Martin Shkreli) where disregarding permissions can lead to people getting hurt.

That’s not what I’m advocating for. If your action can lead to harming others physically, financially, or otherwise, you should probably shouldn’t take that action.

But I share it with young people (with context - i.e. cold email an engineer you want to talk with) because it acts as a pattern disrupt. They’ve often never heard language like that before.

Their whole lives as young people they’ve been told to follow the rules, wait for instruction, and go to an adult when they need help.

Unfortunately, many people don’t grow out of that. Maybe it just becomes habit at some point. Or maybe it’s tied to perfectionism.

Whatever it is, it’s debilitating.

The people that you consider successful, or are doing the things that you one day want to do, are in that position because they took action.

This is one of those truths about how the world actually works that more young people would benefit greatly from understanding.

The world rewards starters, not waiters.

And certainly not perfection.

There will be no perfect time or day to get started.

Reps. Reflection. Repeat. That’s the formula.

Sanchit, a Modern Life Skills subscriber sent me a note on LinkedIn saying how he appreciated hearing the stories of how these mindsets and life skills are applied in the real world.

Thought of a personal story this time around.

When I started working at TKS a few years back, I didn’t apply with a resume (they don’t ask for one anyways lol). My journey at TKS started because I launched a podcast.

No one told me to start a podcast. It wasn’t one of my responsibilities. But I understood the value, so I started one.

I didn’t know much about what TKS was at that time, but I knew it was interesting. A connection of mine made a warm referral, and one of the cofounders came on to record an episode with me.

It was a great conversation. It led to another one. And then an invite to officially apply to the company; something I wasn’t even considering at the time.

Fast forward to this past summer. The role I am in at myBlueprint didn’t exist before.

But I had an idea about how I could leverage my learnings/experience at TKS to better support our school board partners in preparing more confident, and prepared young people ready to take on the world.

I emailed the founder of myBlueprint with an idea, and after several conversations later, we got it done.

That podcast episode from a few years back. Not the best. Didn’t need to be.

That first conversation about coming back to myBlueprint. I was nervous. It was obvious.

In both of those scenarios, I didn’t wait. I didn’t ask for permission. I just got started.

💡 What is an action you can take tomorrow, to just get started? That thing you keep putting off… just. get. started.

LIFE SKILLS
Misaligned Expectations

I recorded a conversation this week with the two brothers who are the founding engineers of Boardy; the AI networking companion that took over LinkedIn a few weeks back. I wrote about it in Vol 5.

The brothers are 19, and 24, but because of this Boardy experience, and the projects and companies they’ve worked on before, carry a maturity that is well beyond their years.

With Boardy, they’re working with a well-respected entrepreneur Andrew D’Souza who brings a couple more decades of experience.

I asked them to share a life skill they had learned working with Andrew, that would be helpful to the audience of high schoolers that would eventually hear that clip.

Ankur spoke about the importance of developing strong communication skills, and within that, how most problems on a team, or in a relationship stem from misaligned expectations.

When one person expects you to complete A, but you had understood you were supposed to be focusing on B, that’s going to cause problems.

I would venture to say that misaligned expectations are the root cause of most of life’s problems. Whether professional, or personal.

My expectation is for Meredith to put her dirty oatmeal bowl in the dishwasher. Her expectation of where that bowl should end up is beyond me. This creates (manageable) conflict.

Oatmeal bowls are one thing. Financial expectations are another.

If you’re one of the Gen Z subscribers looking at the chart below, and this seems about right to you, I would challenge you to revisit and potentially realign your expectations.

I’m not saying you can’t earn that much. You definitely can. And if that’s your goal, I’m all here for it. In fact, here’s a post from Sahil Bloom with his Honest Advice to Someone Who Wants to Make A Lot of Money.

I’m more curious about where that 587k number comes from in the first place.

Sahil’s guess is social media. Which makes sense. A bigger network of comparison, and a whole bunch of people claiming they earn more than they really do.

Money will solve money problems, but it won’t buy happiness.

Yes, I get that life is more expensive these days. I’m feeling it too.

But before you decide on some arbitrary number to chase, and create unhappiness from the misaligned expectations that are likely to follow, do some reflection.

• Who are the people in your life that you look up to, that you consider successful? Ask them about their salary.

• If they make a lot of money, ask them how they use it. Does it make them happy?

• Do some research to figure out what types of jobs even provide a salary like that. They exist. Or figure out if you need to create your own.

• Talk to a few entrepreneurs, and you’ll soon find that most aren’t doing it to chase money.

If you want to make bank, make bank. I’ll be your biggest cheerleader. But know why you’re playing the game before you step out on to that field.

CAREER ADVICE
Do the job

The reason I love portfolios so much is that they display evidence of skills. They can provide proof that you did the thing.

I said as much in the myBlueprint x World Economic Forum webinar we hosted the other week. A question was asked about the value of micro credentials as we’ve moved into a skills based economy.

Here’s a 2 minute clip of what I had to say about portfolios being more important than any credential 👀 .

The students I coach will tell you that I am constantly repeating “show, don’t tell”.

Resumes and cover letters can’t show; they just tell.

I’m a little surprised we rely on them so much still. I assume it’s for the same reason universities won’t move away from admissions based on grades and test scores.

It’s not a perfect system, but we don’t like change, and it’s easier to handle at scale.

At some level I get it. If you’re a well known company, you’re sifting through a lottt of applications for each role. Reviewing individual portfolios that have no consistency in formatting can be a lot of work.

Let me introduce you to Option C.

If proof that you can do the job is the goal, show them that you can literally do the job. Like Juraj.

This may seem impressive (and it is), but it’s not actually that big of a lift.

Getting 10+ of your friends and colleagues to email a company you’re applying to, to say nice things about you doesn’t require a big lift. Give them a few bullet points about what to say, and who to send the email to and you’re done.

The Notion page he made below is a nice touch. It’s essentially a website; each one of those titles will open up into a new page full of content he put together exclusively for this position. This is a little more work, but nothing you couldn’t take care over a rainy weekend.

What is so awesome about this approach is that it immediately demonstrates that he wants to be there. At OpenPhone.

Imagine you’re Daryna, comparing resume after resume, and then you get this Notion doc introducing himself with a video, why he wants to work on your team, followed by a swarm people hitting up your inbox with positive notes.

At a minimum, something like this cuts through the noise and gets you a seat at the interview table.

If you want someone to do something for you, make it easy for them to do it.

If you’re asking someone for a meeting, suggest dates/times. If you’re asking for a job, do this.

The sad reality is that the reason this is so impressive is because so few people will take the action required to do it.

Would you trade a weekend of work for your dream job? A lot of people wouldn’t.

💡 Instead of blindly applying to 100s of companies and crossing your fingers, find 5 companies working on challenges that excite you, and think about what you can do to demonstrate that you can do the job, and why you want to be there.

THIS IS COOL
Willow

I’m not going to try and pretend like I understand quantum computers.

Even during our quantum computing TKS sessions, I knew enough to explain Schrodinger's Cat, but not much beyond that.

I did however come up with this modification to a box of timbits that I thought was hilarious. And useful. I could instantly tell who did the pre-session reading and who didn’t, based on who got the joke.

Most didn’t.

I might not fully understand these next level computers, but I understand a breakthrough when I see one.

And Google just made a big one with their quantum team.

Okay, super fast computer. I’m following so far.

Lower error rates, more timbits qubits. That makes sense. But so what?

What does this mean for us as humans?

Nothing yet…

But 2030 ain’t that far away. And with this breakthrough, that might lead to others.

Here are a few specific applications I’m generally excited about:

Buckle up.

BONUS
We’re Going to Antartica

About a month ago in Vol 7, I shared a screenshot of some coaching advice I gave to one of the TKS students I still keep in touch with.

She was in the middle of finalizing her application for this all-inclusive, opportunity of a life time trip to Antartica.

She had sent me what she had written so far, looking for some feedback. I didn’t have ton of time that week, so I threw the text into ChatGPT with some prompts, and gave that to her.

But I also included my own personal feedback.

My feedback was to employ the same strategy as Juraj used in his application to OpenPhone above.

Cut through the noise. Stand out.

I knew this student would actually follow through on at least some of that advice. Fortunately for her, turned out that was the right call.

By this point, we had our interview and were placed firmly in the top 10.

I was now emotionally invested.

As you could probably tell from the title of this post, she recently found out she was picked.

There’s no real takeaway here other than to celebrate her accomplishment.

Celebrate Others was actually one of my low key favourite mindsets to talk about with students at TKS.

We’re often always so caught up in our own lives, that we forget to celebrate those around us.

We live in a world of abundance. This ins’t a zero-sum game. Because she won this opportunity, we all win as a result.

Knowing her, she’s going to find a piece of plastic floating in between icebergs, and use that as motivation to end our dependence on plastics once and for all.

—

ps. do yourself a favour and pick up a copy of Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to read over the holidays. It’s about a boys trip to Antartica in 1914.

Imagine The Hangover movie took place 100 years earlier and in Antartica instead of Vegas. Same same, but different.