The reason you feel stuck is that you’ve been trying too hard with the same set of tools. How can successful people like you become even more successful?
If you are reading this article, chances are you are very successful, even if you do not realize it. You have conquered a number of uphill battles in school and at workplace to get to where you are now. In Artificial Intelligence (AI), hill-climbing algorithm is an algorithm that increases in value continuously until it achieves a peak solution. It can’t use the same set of parameters to reach the peak. Sometimes in a plateau region, it requires a huge jump to find the next hill moving up.
Similarly, you may feel stagnant at times, especially when you keep trying to solve problems with the same tools (e.g., work hard, follow instructions perfectly) that have made you successful in the past. Counterintuitively, using these tools that were once helpful is actually hindering your success.
1. The “Good Student Syndrome”
I have worked at several of the FAANG companies that are considered prestigious in the tech industry. Over the last decade, these companies have hired tens of thousands of overachieving talents. Admittedly, most of them used to be top students at the best colleges, but many suffer from “good student syndrome”. You could be a victim if you have these symptoms:
- Always desire to be perceived as the first and receive the highest rating
- Prioritize receiving praise over actually learning knowledge, skill
- Excessively concerned with external expectation and validation
Your previous traits and tactics may have helped you to get to where you are now, but they may hinder you in reaching your next goals:
- The students who follow directions and follow guidelines perfectly in high school often have difficulties adjusting to college.
- Those who did what was expected of them and placed their personal progress in the hands of others often didn’t get the recognition and promotion they expected.
- Senior engineers who are always seeking to “be right” or prove they know more often have difficulty transitioning into a leadership role, which entails using your position to empower others and build a collective vision together.
- Leaders who used to lead smaller teams often find their communication tactics hard to scale when trying to influence larger organization with additional layers of abstraction.
- For someone who want to achieve FIRE but only focusing on their day-to-day job, not building assets and passive income streams, it’s unlikely that they will have a diversified portfolio with sufficient passive income to stop working for money anytime soon.
2. Know Your Ultimate Goal
Where do you want to be? Not where your parent, spouse, manager, or friend wanted to you be.
Your time is limted, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
Steve Jobs
Write down your top 3 goals in life, post them on your desk or screen. You have less than 25,000 days to live, even if good health is one of your goal. Before committing to new activities, ensure you are investing these remaining days toward your ultimate goal.
3. Have a Climbing Strategy
In mountaineering, climbers create strategies that map out multiple paths to the summit. You should have a strategy when climbing your life-long professional journey:
- The Summit. You see the summit of a mountain, or the CEO of a company from afar. It’s there, seemingly achievable. But you are not sure exactly how.
- Your Next Peak. You have somewhere to start. There is always the next peak or position for you to climb. The way to climb the peak right in front of you is much more clear than the far-away summit. As you get to the highest nearby point,
- Taking a Step Back. Sometimes you climb the wrong hill when it’s foggy. Or you feel stagnated. You might have to backtrack like a DFS algorithm. It may feel demoralizing to descent, but you have to get down this hill to climb the next. Mountain climbing is different from an airplane that is taking off and constantly ascending, sometimes it requires you to step down to get to the next trail. I have seen people missing great opportunities because they are unwilling to take a step back or even sideways to accept a lateral position offer that reveals new path to the next peak.
- Getting Harder. As you get closer to the summit, the peaks above certain altitude will have snowcaps year-around. Although you are a more experienced climber now, conquering these peaks often require different tactics, and a much longer time frame. Don’t be surprised when you spend a day and feel that you haven’t made any traction. Each milestone in your second half of career journey will have a significant learning curve, a slower feedback cycle, and a more rewarding result.
- Seeking Help. You can ask for advices from people who did it before. It’s helpful, but your story may differ as your opportunity window, weather, and peer can’t be the same.
4. Constantly reinvest yourself
Unlike half a century ago, the days of sticking with one job and one employer until retirement are over.
Life will always be in Beta, and will not have a full version until it ends. You have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.
Reid Hoffman
Focus on what creates meaningful value for your employer that also excites you. Map out a series of stepping stones between different roles and companies that can lead to where you want to go. You can reinvent yourself by learning new skills proactively and by being more open to feedback from others.
5. Failure is always an option
Experiences are inevitable. Learning is not. It’s ok to fail but unacceptable to not learn a lesson. Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions. If you fail to get a recognition, promotion or new job offer, look at it as an opportunity to review your skills. Take a break and get stronger!
Success is a series of well-managed risk-takings and failures. In fact, neuroscience shows that the act of seeking itself, rather than the goals we realize, is key to satisfaction.
When your environment is too comfortable and safe for you to fail, you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough. Attend a new event, meet new people, read a new book, change your daily routine, or start a new side business to stretch your comfort zone.
In the end, I recommend the book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” by Marshall Goldsmith. I learned about his book from a Google Talk when he was invited to speak at Google years ago, and it has been inspiring to me in pursuit of next goals.