The Life Advice I Wish I Got

Table of Contents

• Mindset: Donkey Mindset

• Life Skill: Process > Product

• Career Advice: The Advice I Wish I Got

• This is Cool: Zipline Platform 2

• Bonus: Koru Hackathon

MINDSET OF THE WEEK
The Donkey Mindset

I wouldn’t say I’m a donkey expert.

But I have been called synonyms for donkey before.

After I moved out to university, my mom rediscovered her love for horses, and over a few years, ended up adopting a couple horses of her own.

She boards them at a farm, where there’s at least one donkey.

I’m told this donkey, like many others, is stubborn, stoic, and strong-willed.

He embraces his donkey mindset.

Whether dirt gets thrown on you in life is more of a when vs an if.

That’s part of the ups and downs of what makes life beautiful. The highs wouldn’t feel so high, if we didn’t have the lows to contrast against.

Dirt is coming. That’s out of your control. But how you choose to respond is up to you.

That Donkey made a choice. We all have the ability to make a choice.

You are the CEO of your response factory. It does take some practice and self awareness to ignore the knee jerk reactions, but it’s very possible.

Think of it more like your response muscle. It will get stronger, but you have to train it.

The sooner you realize that, take ownership and responsibility of that, the sooner you find yourself climbing out of that well.

The most well known display of this mindset in action, that I can think of, comes from Oprah. I learned about her life story on this deep dive podcast episode recently.

• Her struggle: Overcoming a childhood marked by poverty, abuse, and instability. Was actually pretty rough.

• Her asset: She transformed her early hardships into a deep empathy and resilience that became the foundation for her success and philanthropy. Her ability to connect with others and share inspiring stories helped her build an empire that has impacted millions around the world.

You don’t have to have had the same childhood as Oprah to utilize this mindset.

Think back to the last experience where you’ve had dirt thrown on you. And the one before. And so on.

What happened after each one? You overcame them. You always do.

Put these experiences in your cookie jar. David Goggins uses this term when he’s doing crazy athletic feats to remind himself he’s been there before. He’s experienced pain before, he’s run further before. He has done that, so he can do this.

Next time life throws dirt on you, remember that you’ve had dirt thrown on you before. Then shake it off, and step on top of it.

tl;dr fill your cookie jar with dirt 🍪 

LIFE SKILLS
Assess the Process

It’s the best advice to receive, but also some of the hardest advice to follow.

Fall in love with the process, not the outcome.

If you’re constantly focused solely of that shiny outcome:

• you’re not happy until you get it

• there’s a chance you don’t get it

• that happiness is short lived; time to chase the next thing

And ultimately, that outcome is out of your control. There might be a whole bunch of factors, that despite your best efforts, prevent you from getting there.

Instead, the idea is to make the process the goal, not the outcome. The process is all you can control.

• Did you show up?

• Did you put in maximum effort?

• Did you embrace your donkey mindset?

Everything else is largely outside of your control.

If you can find happiness in the process, you’ve won at life. Stay consistent, and the rewards will follow.

Unfortunately, that’s not how we’ve been trained in life. We want the outcome. And we want it now. That’s what we focus on.

• Yeah, we played really hard, but we lost.

• Yeah, I studied really effectively, but I didn’t get the grade I wanted.

So I when I saw Jason, a post-secondary educator talking about how he uses process-bases assessments, he had my attention.

Processfolios doesn’t exactly have the ring to it that will make it a household name, but maybe it will grow on me.

This is something I have personally been championing for years.

This whole concept of growth > grades. Showcasing progress over time.

As a hiring manager, I’m actually more interested in the process you took to get to the outcome, and the struggles you overcame to get there, as much as I am the final product that you’re showing me.

Product without process is essentially a black box. It doesn’t give me the whole picture.

If you document your journey and reflections through your processfolio (no, still doesn’t sound right), now I can get a window into how you think.

It’s kind of like when your teacher asks you to show your work.

Even with AI, I want to know your process. I want you to be able to tell me a story about your process, about how and why you’re using it. I’m not alone.

AI proficiency obviously isn’t the only skill you should be prioritizing, but it should be one of them.

For the adults reading this, just like we prioritized Microsoft Office skills 10+ years ago, you should be building out some generative AI skills that you can point to in your processfolio.

Speaking of which…

After all, the degree might get you in the door.

But it’s no longer what gets you hired.

Skills pay the bills today.

fyi - if you’re a student reading this, you don’t need to wait for your teacher to start asking you to create a processfolio portfolio that showcases evidence of growth. They might not. That’s not within your control.

You can take ownership, and take action to create your own portfolio of process, growth, and skill development over time. That is within your control.

Stop waiting for other people to give you permission, and start taking responsibility and action over the things that you believe will give you a competitive advantage and set you up for success in life.

Speaking of advice for young people…

CAREER ADVICE
The Advice I Wish I Got

Patrick shares advice for young people up until their 20s. And then Austin picks it up from there.

This is the advice that knowing what I know now, I wish I heard when I was younger.

That being said, I’m not sure I would have listened, understood it, or applied it. These types of conversations were foreign to me back then.

Hindsight is funny that way; 20/20 vision when you’re looking backwards.

I highlighted the points that stuck out most to me.

For Patrick’s advice, I really resonate with the idea that young people should try more things, until you get to the point where you have a general idea that you enjoy that discipline.

It’s often said that 100 years from now, people will look back with in awe of how we would drive cars in opposite directions from each other at high speeds, with humans in control of the wheel. Or how we treated animals like we did with factory farming.

My version of that is how we ask 17 year olds to commit to programs and pathways before knowing who they are, and what they’re truly interested in.

I’m a firm believer in the power of experiential learning. If it weren’t for the 3 month summer program I enrolled in at Ryerson (now TMU) which was 100% hands on, pass if you build a business, fail if you don’t, life would look very different for me right now.

Those 3 months lit a fire under my ass, and exposed me to a world that I had no idea existed.

(If you want to see a funny 2 min video of 21 year old me in the program, here you are. At least watch until the voice crack.)

The reason that program was so influential to me is for the same reason experiential learning is so beneficial in general.

You figure out what you like, or don’t like by actually doing, or trying the thing. Not by going through university pamphlets and websites.

If I had a magic wand, gap years are mandatory.

Half of the year, you travel. You create memories, meet people, get into good trouble, and develop some real world social skills. You live life.

And then when you come back, the second half of the year is mini work placements. One month at a time in different industries/roles that you found interesting while in high school.

In this scenario, grade 12s aren’t applying to university, they’re deciding which industries they want to dabble in before committing to further education/training.

If at the end of the gap year, you still don’t know enough about yourself, and what you want, you can do it all over again.

We’ve normalized ‘try before you buy’ in so many other areas of life. It’s about time we figure out how to make that work with higher ed.

Here’s the advice from Patrick and Austin:

Once you have an idea of what you’re interested in and you’re 20 years old now, it’s time to take intentional, deliberate action.

Fewer things in life will create the life you want to live, than developing a bias to action.

If I could go back and time and drill anything into my head it would be that. And that I should invest in Google.

For the young people reading this, remember, like always - these are individual perspectives.

Just because someone else said it, doesn’t mean it’s right for you, even if they’re popular on the internet, or someone you consider successful.

The goal is to become someone who is independent minded. Someone who can take in multiple different data points/perspectives, and use that information to make decisions for yourself. And to understand why you’re making that decision.

THIS IS COOL
Zipline Platform 2

The picture (and video below) is Zipline’s new Platform 2 delivery system.

At 1 million deliveries a day, what changes?

So what?

BONUS
Koru Ecosystem Hackathon

Earlier this week, this education focused hackathon officially kicked off.

My team have decided to work on creating a solution that would better support the process of collecting and reporting on student observations, at a middle and high school level.

If you’re an educator reading this, and can find 20 minutes this week, I’d love to hear what you have to say.

I had no idea Koru existed. And from everyone I’ve shared this with, they didn’t either.

Koru is a venture studio that lives within the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.

A venture studio is essentially a company designed to create and invest in startups internally, using shared resources.

It’s one of the bets the OTPP is making to bring in some more money for their pensioners. Right now, it doesn’t look like many of their portfolio companies have anything to do with education.

Not that they need to. Their directive is to make money for the pension plan, and if your goal is to make money, there are many other markets that are more lucrative, and less restrictive than selling into education.

So it’s curious that now, for the first time in their 5 year history, they organize this education themed hackathon.

But I’m not here to ask questions. I’m here to build a couple products, make some memories, and win all the prizes.

Something for the old processfolio 😅

Wish us luck 🤝