Good Work—Edition Nº 4

🎶 Everything is Free by Gillian Welch

True self-awareness remains in short supply. When I mentor on career, the first question I ask is what are you optimizing for? Ends up being a difficult question to answer, with folks looking to me for what they should be optimizing for. But only looking within can answer that.Sachin Rekhi*

Answers to what we’re optimizing for can be troublesome. They’re often not even the real answers. “I want to move to New York City” can really mean, “I want to work with people who challenge me to think in new ways.” “I want to start a company” can really mean, “I don’t want to work for my boss anymore.”

In their book, Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans talk about the importance of finding your “north star.” The phrase is a bit too Disney for me, but I like the distinction that a north star is something you optimize for over decades whereas goals are stepping stones towards your north star. We’re never optimizing for one thing, and these layers of wants, goals, and north stars interact with each other. Knowing what we’re optimizing for can be the real challenge, and the most rewarding one to figure out.

It might feel like a lot of work to look within, to ask uncomfortable questions, to find habits that keep you tuned in to what’s important to you, but if we don’t look within, we’re likely to find ourselves bouncing around the world like a pinball hoping not to fall into the gutter. Whether you’re starting a team, joining a team, or hiring onto a team, knowing what you’re optimizing for will help you determine whether an opportunity is a fit or not, possibly saving you months or even years of time spent working on the wrong thing.

So how do you figure any of this out? In the next two editions of Good Work, we’ll share thoughts, ideas, and frameworks. Stay tuned.

This Week

USING TWITTER TO LEARN

Continuing on one of last week’s themes, I came across a tweet by @MicahPpls this week. He asked how many followers one needs to be able to effectively use Twitter as a learning and career building tool. I believe it’s less about follower count and more about a person’s willingness to engage with people they find interesting.

• Ryan Hoover asks Twitter, “What’s the most interesting or useful “how I did X” blog post you’ve read in the past year?” Check out the thread for tons of interesting replies.
• [2m] All of this Twitter stuff can sound ridiculous, but “Finding my tribe: a love letter to Twitter” by Ben Basche is an example of just how much of an impact using Twitter well can have on a person’s life.
• [3m] Yet another example, and a slightly deeper one at that, “To build an identity for today you’ll need more than your resume,” by Zach Kahn suggests that using Twitter can be more valuable than a shallow list of accomplishments.
• [5m] “Twitter: A Home For Us All” by Jeremy Shure is the last example I’ll share this week of someone finding real community, relationships, and career benefit on Twitter.

REMOTE WORK

• [2m] In a tweet, Jonathan Siddharth shared the results of a poll on remote work by Ryan Hoover: “Out of 8.7K votes in a poll by Ryan Hoover, 62% picked ‘ability to work remotely’” (over “401(k) retirement plan,” “Infinite vacation time,” and “Paid lunch and dinner”).
• [12m] Buffer, in partnership with seven other companies, published their “State of Remote Work 2019,” a survey of 2,500 remote workers.
• [3m] Ryan Hoover (he was busy this week, okay), tweeted about how the ProductHunt team ideates and shares ideas with a distributed team.
• [4m] “How to Create Belonging for Remote Workers,” by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West-Duffy, authors of No Hard Feelings.

WORK

• [8m] In “The End of Employees,” Lauren Weber of The Wall Street Journal shows the dramatic increase in companies use of contract labor over full-time employment. Short on time? Check out the chart.
• ​video​ [11m] In his TED talk “What is the meaning of work?” Roy Bahat of Bloomberg Beta shares his story of how, as a venture capitalist, he set out to understand the impact of automation and economic growth on the future of work. After examining hundreds of studies and traveling all over the United States, Roy’s findings are worth the eleven minutes.
• ​video​[19m] For a great primer on how to make sure you’re getting a fair shake with your boss, watch “7 Annoying Boss Behaviors That Are Actually Illegal,” by Chelsea Fagan of The Financial Diet.

That’s Good Work for this week. Looking forward to what’s next. See you next week.

Andy and the Holloway Team

Good Work is written and curated by Andy Sparks, Courtney Nash, Dmitriy Kharchenko, Hope Hackett, Joshua Levy, and Rachel Jepsen.