Vol. 7; Modern Life Skills

MINDSET OF THE WEEK
Bias to Action

I’ve already made the mistake once of impulsively getting a tattoo that I thought would motivate me to take action.

Would not recommend. Lol. Stick around until Vol. 100 and I’ll share a pic with you.

If I was going to do it again though, this is an image of the tattoo I would get.

I’m firmly of the belief that your habits are your future.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older wiser now, but I can visualize the conversation I’m going to have with myself in 3, 6, 12 months out from wherever I am at the moment of having to make a go/no-go decision on the thing I know I should be doing.

And 99 times out of 100, future me would have wanted me to take action.

It’s cliche, but we rarely regret the action we took. We often regret the action we didn’t take.

💡 Pro tip. That signal - when you get that feeling in your stomach that you don’t want to do the hard thing, you’d rather take the path of least resistance. Train yourself to recognize that means you now have to go do it.

That signal became the part of why I failed out of a week long skydiving summer camp.

It’s also the same reason I need to close this laptop, and get outside for a run in the cold, dark, Canadian November afternoon 🙄. Lean into it.

Future you will be grateful for it.

LIFE SKILLS
19 Words

I get chills imagining me saying those words. Or imagining someone saying them to a younger me. They’re powerful.

Listen to the 30 second clip below, and then write them down on your favourite orange sticky note.

I was invited to speak to students at Queens University last week about the importance of effective communication as part of a pilot program they’re running with TKS.

I wish I had those 19 words prepared before I gave students feedback on their presentations; the vehicle we used that night for displaying high standards.

Like a good coach, I helped raise the bar for them. Moving forward, every time they present, the bar is now the TED stage. It’s a mindset shift.

The presentations I saw that night were not worthy of the TED stage. But with the feedback they received, and many more reps, they will be.

I’m a firm believer that young people can rise to the occasion when given the opportunity. You are too.

Sometimes it’s up to us to raise the bar - to show young people what they’re capable of, and why that’s relevant.

In fact, that’s a key part of how Bezos described high standards in a famous 2018 shareholder letter. There are 4 key components from his perspective:

• Teachable - You’re not born with high standards, you learn them.

• Recognition - Being able to recognize what good looks like in a given domain

• Domain specificity - Understanding that high standards are not universal; someone can have high standards in one area but not another

• Scope/scale understanding - Realistic understanding of how much effort/time is required to achieve high standards in a specific task

Think about an opportunity to raise the bar for your students.

💡 Pro tip: lead by example.

Here’s a 30 second clip 👇️ of Jennifer Garner asking Adam Grant if he has any wisdom for someone who mentors younger members of a team.

He replies with those 19 words. It’s worth the watch for Jennifer’s reaction alone.

CAREER ADVICE
Rise Above

Brett Adcock reminds me of a younger version of the most interesting man in the world from those Dos Equis commercials back in the day.

Not because of how smooth he is, but from the diversity of perspectives he’s involved with. The man is a physical representation of lifelong learning.

• He started and sold a software company called Vettery that operated in the HR space.

• Then he went back to school as a mature student and learned about aviation because he wanted to start a flying cars company. He did. It’s called Archer and is very cool.

• Then he decided he wanted to tackle the labour shortage issue in the manufacturing industry, so he started Figure AI; building humanoid robots with advanced AI.

• He’s also now involved with Cover. They’ve licensed tech from NASA’s JPL that is similar to the underlying technology full-body scanners you’d find at many airports. “Our system is very similar to that, but it’s, like, 10x more powerful and accurate”. They want to use it to keep guns out of schools.

All of that is to say this man has thought a lot about hiring the right people at scale over the last 20 years.

Here’s his summarized advice for people applying to his companies.

Whether you agree with him or not isn’t really relevant. It’s another data point that many companies do operate like this.

Many also don’t. I’m not personally a fan of resumes or cover letters in general, but I wouldn’t tell a student to not learn how to make them. A lot of companies still use them.

What is clear, however - is that candidates applying for competitive roles need to learn how to take action, and communicate their intentions in a way that stands out.

Why do you want this role? Prove it.

I share an example of coaching advice I gave to a young person in a similar position, below.

Shelly was one of the students I coached in the TKS program. One day, she’s going to make the world a better place. But right now, she’s trying to secure her bag and win a spot on a sponsored trip to Antartica.

A trip to Antartica is unconventional. My advice to her was to do the same. Be unconventional.

At TKS, that means to be a red dot in a sea of sameness (white dots). A red dot stands out. It is different.

Unconventional doesn’t necessarily mean extraordinary. It just means different.

In this scenario (a written essay style application), my advice was to think of actions you can take that will allow you to prove initiative, display effort, and show the selection committee that you want this the most.

What can you do to make it easy for them to say yes?

Rise Above.

THIS IS COOL
Underwater Gardening Drones

One of my favourite launchpad activities for students exploring career/life opportunities is to start researching problems that need to be solved.

These could be local problems like helping to organize a food drive for the food bank. Or bigger problems like climate change.

If you join my small towns Facebook group, you’ll soon realize there’s no shortage of local problems that need solving…

By learning about the challenges involved, the companies in the space, the roles at those companies, etc. students start to get a better idea of what exists, and what they might be interested in exploring in real life.

JP Michel actually has a great book that explains this Challenge Mindset in more detail, called The World Needs You.

💡 Pro tip: You should read it.

I like to imagine that’s where this company idea came from. A couple young guys from Ireland researching global problems. From there, they learned about carbon sequestration, how sea grass is an elite tool to capture carbon, and that we don’t have enough of it.

And then after a little bit of reasoning from first principles, decided that the simplest way of solving this problem was to teach underwater drones how to plant and forage different sea grass species.

Watching the first 5 minutes of this conversation could be a great starting point for a discussion with your class. See below.

For example, I could use what I’ve learned from that introduction to jump into other activities designed to help me research related careers, or to learn more about related challenges and how to solve them.

I gave the AI a little bit of context, and then asked why seagrass restoration is important in that scenario, aka “so what?”.

From there, the AI gave me 4 paths to explore.

If I wanted to turn this into a class activity, here’s what I would do.

Divide students into 4 groups, and assign each group one of those 4 paths.

For example:

• Prepare a 4 minute presentation that highlights the leading companies working to tackle <Carbon Sequestration>. What is unique about their approach, or technology? What progress is being made overall?
  
  OR
  

• Find 3 companies working to tackle <Coastal Protection>. Explore what type of jobs they are hiring for, and the types of roles that already exist there. In your Career Exploration Portfolio, reflect on the specifics of the job posting. Have you heard of the skills they’re asking for? How would you develop them? What are other roles where those skills could be utilized?

In either scenario, you’re giving students the ability to develop legitimately valuable skills.

In the first example, students are learning to research, synthesize, and communicate effectively. In the second tool, students are familiarizing themselves with LinkedIn, in-demand career skills, and more importantly - a playbook for how to do this on their own.