Purpose driven wandering > following the herd. 

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• "Sometimes (often actually) in business, you do know where you’re going, and when you do, you can be efficient. Put in place a plan and execute it. In contrast, wandering in business is not efficient … but it’s also not random. It’s guided – by hunch, gut, intuition, curiosity, and powered by a deep conviction that the prize for customers is big enough that it’s worth being a little messy and tangential to find our way there. Wandering is an essential counter-balance to efficiency. You need to employ both. The outsized discoveries – the “non-linear” ones – are highly likely to require wandering.” - Jeff Bezos

Insatiable curiosity is a good sign you're working on something that has the potential to be your life's work.

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You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

• Choose wisely, and don't be afraid of outgrowing people. Not everyone who comes into your life is meant to be in it for multiple decades.

• Fill your life with people that fill you up & do your best to put some gas in their tank, but don't force it

Read (good) Books.

• This requires reading bad books so you learn what good looks like. Don't put a book on your night stand so the person you bring home thinks you read or you feel entitled to gloat at the bar. Instead, buy lots of books, read lots of books at once, and the second you don't feel like continuing a book, throw it in the corner & grab the next one.

Develop EQ

• Level 1: managing your own emotions --> leveraging your own emotions

• Level 2: being aware of others emotions --> adjusting your approach to optimize their performance

  • "The best leaders don't know just one style of leadership - they're skilled at several, and have the flexibility to switch between styles as the circumstance dictates" - Daniel Goleman)

• Level 3: being aware of the team's emotions --> understanding what's needed to maximize the business.

  • This often takes the form of understanding where & why friction exists from an organizational design perspective. Does the deal team tread the ops team like second class citizens? Does the analyst not understand how their work fits into the broader strategy? Is the managing partner a 'general too far removed from the foot soldiers'?

• Useful tools: 16 Personalities (link), Principles You (link), Talent Smart EQ (link), ghSMART (link), The Table Group (link)

• Useful books: Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence, Robert Cialdini's Influence, Patrick Lencioni's the Five Dysfunctions of the Team

• Practical advice: beginning 1on1's with "what's on your mind?"

​What's your why? Find a driving force for why you do what you do.

• It's okay to not know exactly what that is when you're 21, and it's okay for that to change b/w 25 and 30. But, post-college, folks' lives increasingly take divergent paths based off their decisions - some for the better, some perhaps not, but who are we to judge? What matters is that the hamster wheel hula hoops become less reliable as you get older (i.e., get good grades in AP classes > get into target school > get job in banking / consulting > [?!?!?!?]). The sooner you spend time reflecting on what you want out of live, why you want that, and taking actions to make that happen, the better. 

• "Those who have a why to live can bear almost any how" -- Viktor E Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)

• "Everything I do is for the 17 year-old  version of myself." - Virgil Abloh

• Simon Sinek's book (What's Your Why)

Stay humble - arrogance kills.

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• "But nothing—I repeat, nothing—could be worse for your decision-making skills than that feeling of being invincible." - Brad Jacobs

Respect those who came before you.

• Those long dead

• Those decades your senior

• Those a few years your senior (and, yes, especially the "unreasonable" VPs)

• And, even, those an "experience your senior." Approach every conversation with open ears & from the bias that the person on the other end has something worth teaching you. Of course not everyone will teach you something & learning how to avoid those who twaddle will do wonders for your time management. However, here's some examples of serendipitous learning that served me well:

  • A middle-office expert on retail transaction data (enabling me to crunch data for the client in a manner my boss didn't know was possible

  • A middle market VP of finance on the intricacies of treasury services/working capital management

  • A college student on the best resources for coding, vastly accelerating my Python learning curve

Try as hard as you can to not lie - to yourself, to others you know, and to those you don't know.

• Life lies

Love deeply. Life is fleeting. Deep belly laughs can't be too frequent.

Get educated through whatever means necessary and recognize that learning doesn't stop at graduation. 

Believe in yourself. "People crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

Become truly excellent in your craft. If done right, this is far, far more than 10,000 hours.

Have a cross discipline approach.

Evolve / adapt. Via introspection, via market feedback, via necessity.

Work really, really hard. Have a white hot will to win that jumps off the page. Persistence compounds. Will you be ready when the opportunity arrives?

• Michael Milken: wore a surgeon's headlamp on the 4am bus he took to work so he could read 10-k's during his commute. Even during vacation in Hawaii, far away from the 9:30am bell, he'd work 2am-9am.​

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Be kind. Endeavor to make other humans smile - at chick-fil-a, at work, at home, online, offline. You'd be surprised the good karma that comes from putting "love vibes" out into the universe.

Learn to network

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• "Network intensely. Luck plays a big role in life, and there is no better way to increase your luck than by knowing as many people as possible. Nuture your network by sending articles, books and emails to people to show you're thinking about them... organize discussion groups to bring your thoughtful friends together."

• "What's the real secrete? People, people, people. Real secrete relationships with absolutely the highest quality people." - David Swensen

Keep perspective, do your best to see the forest from the trees, be aware of your own conscious & unconscious biases, and tread lightly in echo chambers.

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Do what makes you happy, especially when it's hard. This especially applies to break ups + quitting jobs. I'd say choosing life partners + careers but the reality is where most people struggle, and end up with regrets, is not moving on from bad decisions / energy drainers in their 20s/30s.

Two Balls

Learn to cry. Be in touch with your emotions. Maybe this takes a therapist, maybe it doesn't. Maybe this involves growing closing with your parents, maybe it means learning to protect yourself as you get older. Only you will know what's right for you, and only if you process the noise & find the signal in your emotions.​

• Executive Coaches can be great / have useful resources (Link).

• Some incredibly helpful notes from a session I had with my prior Exec Coach (Jason Waller) that I re-visit often (Link)​

Learn to think for yourself. This is a lot harder than it sounds for you most be both a sponge climbing the learning curve in your field of choice and a curious skeptic looking for what others may have missed / misinterpreted.

• "Does not matter if you have a business card denoting a position of authority or if you just started a month ago. If your ideas make sense, then you can sell yourself. Embrace the challenge of convincing old people you have something of importance to say." - Henry Kravis​

Get outside your comfort zone.

Travel.

Have fun, give back, and never forget - "The race is long, and in the end it is only with yourself."