Happy 100th!
When I was a newspaper reporter in Michigan, there was a rule that when someone in town turned 100, we wrote a story about them.
There was a rotating list of reporters, so when the next 100-year-old’s birthday came up, that person wrote the story.
The stories were either fascinating or sad, depending on the state of the subject.
Well, this is the 100th edition of “Mighty Forces.”
I guess I will leave it to you to decide if this is fascinating or sad.
To mark the occasion, I thought I would share with you some thoughts I’ve had for my upcoming book. They are built around my focus of “becoming a student again,” but I think they are also good ideas for job hunting in general.
Small moves. Nothing happens instantly, or all at once. Anything that matters takes a bunch of small steps, all building on each other. One example of this is the newsletter you are reading right now. When I started, I wasn’t sure how I could sustain an effort of writing every week, or exactly what I was going to say. But with each week, my confidence grew. Everything became potential fodder for the newsletter, because it was based on my life. Small moves add up.
Habit over motivation. My friend Ronnie Noize taught me that depending on motivation is a failed strategy. Motivation is great when it works. You’re fired up and everything feels amazing! But when motivation fades, which is common, what are you left with? What replaces it is habit. Get into a schedule. Make weekly and monthly plans and figure out how to get accountability for meeting them. I have set myself the deadline of writing a newsletter post every week on Tuesday, and that structure has gotten me past a lot of missing motivation.
Casting a wide net. Especially when we’re older, it’s easy to get into a rut. We read the same things. We watch the same things. We have the same daily routine. But that’s death for the student mindset. Just one example: find new things to read – especially in genres and subjects that you think you don’t like. Stretch in every way. Engage with people you disagree with. That teaches a lot of things: patience, clarity of thought, empathy. All the things that are so easy to overlook when we get older and set in our ways.
Getting outside your comfort zone. Similar to the last point, as we get older, we are often so unwilling to try to do things if we think we might fail. That’s one major reason why job hunting is so challenging at this age. It’s not fun to put yourself out there. I know personally for me, I have suffered through more rejection in the last three years than I have the entire rest of my life. It’s painful. But with pain comes growth. We have to become more comfortable with taking chances, no matter the outcome. Stretching is the only way to learn and get past our barriers.
Finding mentors. In the 1980s video game “The Legend of Zelda,” an old man you meet in a cave gives you a sword and says, “It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.” I’ve learned that one of the most important tasks in the journey of becoming a student again is finding the right people to guide me. One of my mentors has become author Eric Koester, who wrote the book “Super Mentors.” He taught me that one of the most powerful tools in networking is asking people to collaborate with you on a project. That’s a powerful twist on the old advice to do information interviews. You aren’t just asking for advice; you are asking them to become a member of your team - to create something together.
Finding a community. Sitting in a room alone sometimes feels like the default post-pandemic position. But that’s not the right way to become a student again. I’m a hardcore introvert, and even I have felt pretty lonely at times in the last few years. But learning is so much more effective and more fun when you have other people doing it alongside you. Find teachers, classes, message boards – whatever works to bring more people into your orbit who can help you learn.
Always be researching. Once you start looking, everything can be part of your learning process. Find new books in your field. Watch documentaries. And I would recommend keeping a notebook, either electronic or (especially) good old fashioned paper and pen to document what you are learning. A recent Japanese study showed that people retained information 30 percent better when they wrote it out by hand vs. typing on a computer. There’s something special about that physical connection.
Thank you all so much for being here on this journey with me.
Next week, a few more lessons I’ve learned along the way. See you then.
Happy 100th! Great points for your book.