Letters to 22-year old self - Part XIX - "Connecting work with Purpose"
Shawn Rosemarin
Vice-President R&D- Customer Engineering @ Pure Storage | Customer Engineering | High Performance Leadership
“It’s easy to make good decisions when there are no bad options” - Robert Half
Dear Shawn -?
As you entered the working world back in 1998, even though you didn’t appreciate it, you had options. With limited responsibility, the vitality of youth, ambition and a business education you had choices of where to invest your energy and time to prepare for your future. Ironically, the challenge?back then was defining that future.?Specifically; what was of critical importance to you, where did you want to end up and how would your work and your career bring you closer to it.?
The good news is that age and experience brought with it clarity of purpose, clarity of direction and a real connection between work and the future. Let me share some of what I have learned.?
For you, purpose boils down to developing relationships, acquiring new experience and acquiring the financial means to enable maximum optionality. Said another way your end goal is not a traditional retirement or the acquisition of any hard assets but rather to achieve flexibility in choice allowing to follow your passions and spend your time doing the things that you most enjoy with the people you enjoy doing it with.?
If you look at your professional life through this lens it will change the way you view work (and many life experiences).?
Let me try to explain this with a simple analogy. To excel as a chess player you need to gain the knowledge and experience to understand the independent super powers of each piece but also be able to combine their collective power to overcome your opponent. Chess is all about leveraging your pieces to gain maximum optionality allowing you the best opportunity to attack or defend your position effectively.?
In your professional life acquiring meaningful relationships, skills and experience provide you with options. They also provide you perspective and new avenues of interest to explore. Exploring these new avenues provides access to more relationships, skills and experiences igniting more options.?
The key in all of this is to embrace the opportunities that come your way and look for ways to connect these new relationships, skills and experiences together broadening your perspective and widening your options for the future.?
A person entering the workforce today will likely work at 5+ different companies over the course of their professional career. Make the best of the opportunities that come before you and remember that “maximizing optionality” is your guiding light.?
领英推荐
If you enjoyed this write-up here are direct links to the rest of the series.