🙌🏽 Hello to all the new subscribers and welcome to another week in Monday Madness.
I’m writing this issue on an early Sunday morning whilst sipping away on my mushroom coffee.
If you’d like to subscribe to become an ongoing patron of this newsletter, you can do this before diving into this week’s issue:
Good morning guys,
The struggle in applying oneself - so to provide context, I shall refer to this individual as Mr Cal.
Mr Cal is recently out of University and has adopted the robotic notion of applying for jobs. Upon speaking with him, I started to reminiscence the challenges I faced when I was in a similar position.
He described his process to be:
Find a job
Apply for that job
Complete your competency testing
Preparation - for a telephone interview
If successful, a Video testing
If successful, more preparation: group interviews/technical interviews
And finally waiting to hear back for the final decision
There's soo much setup time utilised with a single checklist - you become emotionally, mentally and financially invested in an interview. Only to wait for a decision that could or could not be in your favour. And, if it's not in your favour the vagueness in the feedback provided in never helpful.
As I spoke with Mr Cal- he highlighted that applying for a job requires motivation within itself.
It wasn't surprising to hear that because the setup cost to invest the same amount of time after being rejected is demotivating. But, what I have learnt from such process every failure is a small incremental success. The incremental wins signify progress in the form of learning a new interview technique or being better prepared in my behavioural based question sets. In such failures, I structured my mindset to keep advancing on the opportunities at hand and not become emotionally invested with my rejection.
I produced the same advice to Mr Cal to which he agreed.
What Mr Cal and I experienced isn't new - a lot of aspiring graduates continue to go through such a process, the building pressures of the family, and the envious feeling when a close peer or friend rejoices in the opportunity of a Graduate programme. You sort of wonder when will my day I come.
I wanted to share this experience because those graduates who are looking for an opportunity. Don't lose hope; keep pursuing with dedication and rejoice in the rejection. With every failure, there's an incremental win.
Well, that's all for this week.
Abhishek
P.S: Visit my home on the internet: abhisheknair.org
Question to ponder on:
Do I feel a sense of mission in my life with what I'm currently doing?
Snippet of Value
Article - Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform, Second-order thinking is the basis of solving one problem, we end up creating another, which tends to be much worse. During which we examine our decision and its respective consequences are through second-order thinking. Second-order thinkers engender themselves with the idea of asking 'And then what?' for instance, consuming junk food because its easy and convenient to satisfy hunger. The drastic effects can vary over time - the impact on the overall health in 6 months or a year can be detrimental.
Podcast - the Unmistakable creative podcast with Greg McKeown, summary notes:
There's great relief in understanding that you don't need to accomplish everything, so take the yolk of the shoulder to lessen your burden. Prioritise one goal at a time.
To excel in what you truly want to do - research for a minute every day. Over time, build on this incremental approach to learn and grow.
Video I enjoyed watching - How Great leaders inspire Action by Simon Sinek
In this video, Sinek indulges into the concept of the Golden Circle, the means of understanding our belief system.
Let's break it down to provide some definitions:
Outer layer: the WHAT it's based on physical assets, if you're a company then it would be your products, if you're an aspiring bodybuilder it would your tools.
Middle layer: the HOW is the understanding, if you're a company then it's based what the company does, if you're an aspiring bodybuilder, then it would be the question of how you intend to achieve your goal.
Inner layer: the WHY is your belief, your purpose. If you're a company gaining profit can't be a WHY. That's considered as the byproduct. Your WHY is the reason consumer purchase products from your company.
Kindle Highlight of the week
Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.
Book: Writing down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg