“Just have one good day. Then repeat.” — James Clear

I love this short piece of advice from James Clear, best-selling author of Atomic Habits. There are lots of things to unpack in one sentence, so let me do that work for you.

One good day

First, you may wonder what a good day is. Unfortunately, I can’t define it for you — it’s something you will have to figure out for yourself. But, what I can help with is how to figure it out for yourself. My suggestion is to think about a good day you have had in the past. Maybe it was a day you went on vacation. Or the day you asked your partner to marry you. As you recall which day was ‘good’ for you, think about all of the things that happened that day. …

Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose have a regular, but non-periodic podcast episode called The Random Show. They are, I believe, good friends in real life, and so they get together to discuss a wide variety of interesting topics on each episode.

The most recent episode was released on Jan. 19th, and you can watch it on Youtube (link below). In the show, they discussed bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general, investing, what they learned from 2020 and how to think about 2021, great books, and lucid dreaming. …

Being unemployed, or should I say, ‘funemployed’, is not the best feeling in the world.

When I was laid off from my job in early 2020, I had doubts about my abilities. If I was so valuable to the company, why was I let go? Were my skills and experience irrelevant in this market? Had the market changed so much that I was being replaced by cheaper talent? Many of these thoughts ran through my head as I scrambled to update my resume and determine a plan for getting a new job. And although it took a while (more than half a year), I did find a job. …

Interested in advice and lessons for reviewing job applications, resumes, and cover letters? Check out part 1.

Hey, you followed my advice and got an interview? Good for you. Getting an interview is one of the hardest parts of applying, but you are not quite done yet. The next thing you have to do is wow your future company, and to do that when everybody (over-qualified, under-qualified) is looking for jobs in a COVID pandemic can be a challenge. I hope some of the following tips and lessons can help you find gainful employment:

The interview

Much of my advice and lessons apply to behavioural interviews because that’s what my field of work primarily tests (project management), however, I think the same advice and lessons could apply to specialty fields, such as programming or design. …

If anybody asked me what my superpower was, I would say it is digesting a lot of information and translating it into something digestible. It’s a skill that served me well in management consulting, where we often do a lot of analysis and research to cull together recommendations and strategies for clients. After management consulting, I applied the skill to the numerous books I read every month, providing insights and takeaways in a bi-weekly email newsletter.

The result of applying the skill to hundreds of books, podcasts, online courses, articles, and other resources? My book, Essential Habits.

Essential Habits is a book borne out of my interest in getting at specific takeaways from books. A few years ago, my very smart friend and I saw the release of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink at a bookstore. We both knew about the previous books he published and I was excited about Blink, his newest book. But my friend opened up the book, read a few pages, and then went to the middle of the book, read a few more pages, and then concluded the book was not worth his time or money. I asked him how he knew. He told me he read a few pages, got the specific takeaway, which was that we often make intuitive decisions based on a few seconds of understanding a situation and that intuitive decision is oftentimes better than taking the time to understand everything about the situation before coming to a decision, and then when he went to the middle of the book, it was Malcolm talking about the same thing, but with a different story or observation. I don’t mind reading books like this, but as a reader of many non-fiction books, I want to get the specific takeaway of a book without having to read a few hundred pages of stories, anecdotes, and graphs to conclude I should meditate every day. Or that regular exercise is healthy for me. …

Recently, I signed up for a Career Mastery Virtual Summit (it’s free! Sign up if you are interested) and received a supporting playbook that asked 25 world-class experts to share their top advice to be more successful in 2021. Although the whole playbook is worth reading, I found several quotes in particular to be impactful to my life and I wanted to share those quotes and the specific takeaways I will be using in 2021 to be more successful.

Find your community — David Burkus

David Burkus is a bestselling author and keynote speaker.

David talks about finding those individuals that are already where you want to be. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, join a mastermind of entrepreneurs. If you want to be a successful author, join a community of authors. You might not be able to participate or contribute, but for now, be a sponge. Absorb what they read. Find out what conferences they attend. …

I used to hate the idea of ‘stepping outside your comfort zone’. The first time I recall hearing the phrase was working at my university. At the all hands meetings, my boss’ boss would talk all the time about stepping outside of your comfort zone and it was like hearing nails scratching on a board. What does that even mean? Why would I want to step outside my comfort zone? Expose my vulnerabilities? Stick my neck out?

I’m perfectly fine inside my bubble, thank you.

But I later realized that stepping outside your comfort zone is key to learning about who you are and what you like and dislike. What I would like to share with you is my thoughts on why stepping outside of your comfort zone can bring you great success, and some five minute hacks I use to get myself out of my comfort zone that I have used. …

Ken Robinson has a talk (linked below) that has changed how I think about my career. In it, he talks about the idea of thinking about your career as a ‘quest’. But let’s first talk about what it means to think about your career as a trip.

Your career as a trip

When you think about your career as a trip, you know where you are and where you want to be. It’s like taking a vacation. You’re currently in Chicago, and you want to take a vacation in Florida. …