Newsletter 84: How to become the kind of person who attracts opportunities?
Early career years are painful. You feel lost, insecure, and confused most of the time. I wish I had a cheatsheet of principles when I was starting. So I followed my gut and made a ton of mistakes. Mistakes that could be avoided to an extent if there was someone to point me in the right direction. To help me understand what is within my control and what I should ignore.
That chain of thoughts, an event in which I was invited to speak, and supporting my younger brother to secure his first office job led me to write this essay.
When we are about to take on our first job, we rarely have a clear understanding of ourselves. Questions like which vertical, what line of work, which brand to work for, and where to develop your career are daunting.
Each answer will come with considerable implications on your career trajectory. So naturally, people feel confused.
I wish there was an easy answer to help all young professionals who feel lost. But life taught me that any career path could lead to success. In turn, asking “where to start” is not as valuable as it seems. A better question is, “how do you become the kind of person who attracts opportunities?”
Asking “where to start” limits you. The question itself assumes that there is one job that would be the perfect fit for you. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. A broader question like “how to attract opportunities” is better because:
It does not assume any specific path to success.
It inverts the question, so it focuses on you. It helps you to understand what to do to position yourself for success. Irrespective of what success means to you.
How to become the kind of person who attracts opportunities?
Re-phrasing the question makes it easier to answer. After a few weeks of reflection, I have three tips to share. You can think of them as principles that have helped me and most probably will serve you well too:
Engineer good habits.
Study mental models.
Nurture timeless skills.
Engineer good habits
In my experience, habits are more valuable than goals. The objective of setting goals is to guide your journey. But goals are followed only when we consciously think and act on them. That’s hard. That’s why so many people set new year resolutions but fail to act on them. As time passes, the rules of the game change. We grow, learn, and face unforeseen events. In turn, our goals may become irrelevant.
That’s not to say that goals are not valuable. Of course, they are. But I am questioning if there is a better way to ensure that we are going in the desired direction?
So habits naturally come to mind. After all, habits determine our behavior a lot better than goals. Habits drive our actions on a subconscious level. We do not have to spend any mental energy embracing our habits. In fact, the opposite is true; going against habits, it’s painful. So would not it be better to engineer the proper habits and then let them guide us?
Let’s take an example and talk about building the habit of reading books. Imagine a scenario where you do not like to read. In fact, most people struggle to read. They think of it as a chore. Yet, we all acknowledge that reading is good. So you set a goal to read more. That’s a significant first step, but it does not guarantee success. To increase the odds of success, you have to reverse engineer the process of how to become a person who reads a lot.
Most likely, you will conclude that readers enjoy reading. It’s hard to consume book after book if you hate the activity. Everyone I know who is an avid reader loves to read.
Another conclusion you may reach is that we all have unique interests. Whether that’s sports, history, tech, startups, etc., everyone has a type of content they enjoy consuming.
Now, let’s put the two conclusions together. What if you start reading books that interest you deeply? Perhaps history is the topic that excites you naturally. So read history, then. Buy the best books in that genre. Your objective is to build a habit. Eventually, you will get bored of history books, so you may start reading fantasy. Then pivot to science fiction and eventually non-fiction. Whatever it is, follow your interests and then slowly move to the next thing, again and again.
Jumping straight into non-fiction books early on would not have worked. After all, your genuine interest lies in history, so start there. By indulging your interests, the probability of developing a solid habit grows. Through consistent reading, you will come to enjoy the process of reading.
Congratulations, you are now a person who loves to read. All it took was to trick your brain by doing what you actually enjoyed in the first place.
All habits are built that way. Figure out what you want to do. Then reverse engineer it. Ask yourself the question: how can you create an environment that nurtures the correct behavior, again and again? You can apply it to fitness, learning, writing, whatever you deem important. In my case, I have built habits to read books, listen to podcasts, write essays, and visit the gym daily. The habits have grown so strong that it pains me physically not to follow them. Over time I start seeing how all those efforts start paying back. I stumble on opportunities a lot easier than other people in my circle. But the best part is that I do not need to put in any effort. I crave those behaviors subconsciously. If you want to explore the topic further, I recommend reading “Atomic Habits” by James Clear.
Study mental models
Another powerful yet relatively easy to implement tool is mental models. Studying mental models will inevitably help you. Irrespective of your job title, years of experience, industry, or geography.
Whether you are aware of it or not, we have all developed mental models over the years. Without mental models to guide us, we need to invest much mental energy every time a new problem arises. Mental models help us make decisions fast by relying on past learnings and systems.
That’s helpful most of the time, but not always. The more challenging problems you face, the less probable that existing mental models will be effective. So be careful in letting your subconscious mind dominate your decision-making.
“Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.” 2
That’s why you need to update your operating system every once in a while. To be successful, you need to revisit your tool kit of mental models. That involves studying how successful people approach decision-making under a lot of uncertainty.
How do people at the forefront of progress develop frameworks to guide their thought processes?
Otherwise, you are risking following poorly-engineered systems. Outdated operating systems that will inevitably crash.
Throughout the past two years, I have written several essays on the most impactful mental models I have encountered so far:
Rock, sand, and water. A framework for attention.
It helps you understand a) how limited time we have, b) how to pick our battles, and c) how to assess new opportunities.
My favorite mental model. It breaks down the steps you need to take to attract opportunities disguised as luck.
Reasoning from first principles.
Elon Musk is often given credit for thinking through first principles. We need to think like a scientist to apply reasoning from first principles. Start with: 1) What are we absolutely sure is true? 2) What has been proven? Dig deep until you have uncovered undeniable truths about a situation.
We are all driven by incentives. Therefore, the better you understand the principal-agent problem, the easier it will be to align teams when working towards a common goal.
A simple framework used at YouTube to understand who is capable on your team. Who is ready for promotion? And how to recruit great talent.
If you want to explore more mental models, check out these two resources here and here.
Nurture timeless skills
Today’s world is changing faster than ever before in human history. I can see it with my parents. In the past ten years, they have struggled to understand any of the roles I held. That’s not surprising. After all, all those roles did not exist when they entered the labor market. In turn, the world has become quite scary in their eyes.
Yet, some timeless skills have survived the impacts of technological progress and globalization.
One example of a timeless skill that comes to mind is communication.
In the past, you could not leverage text, video, or audio the same way you do today. Instead, that privilege was reserved for media corporations or wealthy people.
The internet has changed that. All forms of communication have become more accessible. I like to think of them as permissionless. Additionally, technology has enabled us to iterate on all popular forms of storytelling.
Let’s take video as an example. We used to think of video as a medium geared towards long-form communication (e.g., movies, tv-series, news, documentaries, etc.), but platforms like Vine, TikTok, and Instagram have changed that. We are moving slowly but surely towards shorter forms of communication. The same is valid for text. We started with books. Then moved to articles and blogs. Today, many use Twitter to communicate complex ideas in 280 characters.
So yes, the way we communicate has gone through some changes. We have become better at competing for attention. Shorter forms of storytelling are on the rise.
While all those new mediums are somehow different one from another they have one thing in common. To be great, you need to be good at communicating complex ideas in an easy-to-understand way. That’s the essence of all forms of storytelling.
My advice is to work on your communication skills. Get good at communicating complicated ideas in a concise and easy-to-understand way. The medium (video, audio, text) does not matter. Instead, pick a vertical and master it. That may take time, but it is worth the effort.
One of the things I regret not doing earlier is writing consistently. The process of researching, writing, and storytelling has proven to be quite rewarding. In fact, a lot better than I could imagine. Internally, it has made me a better communicator in my role. Many colleagues and clients reach out to compliment the clarity of my emails. I am often asked to spearhead complex projects because of my clear communication. Even strangers have been reaching out. To offer job opportunities, ask to work for me, or express support.
As mentioned earlier, writing is permissionless. I do not need anyone's permission to start. Yet, it compounds. The more I write, the more value I get from it. People who follow my journey feel more connected. I can build trust faster, show what I am good at, and differentiate myself.
To conclude, get better at storytelling. Expressing complex ideas in a compelling and easy-to-understand way is an underrated skill. All you need to do is a) learn from people who are great at communication, b) practice. Create content, even if no one consumes it. Just keep on practicing, sooner or later you will be noticed and the effort will payback.
We are still in the early days of the internet. There are many opportunities for content creation or curation. It will serve you well whatever you decide to do.
So those are, I think, great characteristics that have helped me to attract opportunities in my career. As you evaluate one career path versus another, do not lose track of building the proper foundation.
Good habits will help you with consistency. Studying mental models will help you revisit your habits and update them every once in a while. Timeless skills are vital because you do not know where your journey will take you. So, nurture skills that will be valuable no matter what you decide to do.
Then remember, the only hack to a great career is brutal, relentless consistency. Rinse and repeat until you get there.
It's not easy to stay relevant in ever changing world, and in my case, I also have the need to be ready for the constant changes of geography and how it will affect my career. Knowing there are frameworks that can help me thrive in my professional life definitely helps. Thank you for putting a great piece of advice. :)
Thanks Victor - I've been reading your stuff for a while, you're one of the few newsletters that keep coming in my inbox. Although I'm not an early career stage anymore, I'm at the start at my entrepreneurial journey, mindset shift and dealing with uncertainty. This post resonated with me deeply. Thanks for the reminders the clarity of thought!