Robbie MacKay

Follow up from Redesigning your career:

I mentioned getting things moving quickly and then tweaking.

The key here is not to worry if its not perfect – not the perfect job or the perfect business idea, etc.

Just start, get moving, and keep moving towards your vision of perfect.

I don’t mean just take any old thing, don’t compromise your values or your goals – but don’t put them off waiting for everything to line up.

Serendipity might not happen. But you make it happen.

I wrote this up quite some time ago but it seems most of it is just as relevant now.

Inspired by this lifehacker post – Tim Ferriss and Marci Alboher on Redesigning Your Career – featuring Tim Ferris and Marci Alboher talking at Google about of their books.

The main gem I took from listening to them talk is this:

You can pursue multiple careers but don’t try and pursue them all at once.

Drive and build one for a while then move onto the next one… while continuing the previous one. Keep adding incrementally.

In the past I’ve made a few attempts at to do everything at once.

It doesn’t usually work out for me.

Start with one thing – what’s most important or urgent right now

Get it moving quickly and then tweak it

(Hat tip: Ben Young (@bwagy) and Chris Guillebeau for various chats and comments about this)

I’ve heard and read a lot of tales of life changing events..

Someone loses their job and makes a massive change in their career and life.

A near death incident…

A trip to Africa that forever alters their perspective on the world and purpose in life…

While this is all very well – and these stories are often very inspirational – but they’re often not the full story (As seen in U Turn – though I never finished the book!). Really there was a slow build up of things that changed someones direction (or they always had a different direction to pursue but they’d strayed off track), the event was just an opportunity to make their life match.

But the perception that there was a ‘life changing event’ creates a false belief:
That we have to have that life changing event before we can make a major change to life.

We get stuck thinking:
If X happened to me then maybe I’d go do XYZ amazing thing.
But what if that never happens to you?
Your left with an amazing vision that you never fulfill.

Don’t wait for the crisis.

You have to live your own life, not someone elses.

That life changing experience someone had in Africa… what were they doing there in the first place? Probably chasing their dreams already.

Don’t wait… Go!

This is still a work in process for me, but I’m putting this out there anyway. That way even if I fail, someone else may succeed.