I thought it would be cool to review these books together. To me, they represent the Yin and Yang of work.
Scott Jeffrey Miller comes across as an incredibly clear-headed and ambitious go-getter in his “Career on Course”. He outlines ten steps to turbocharging your career, one of which is charting down a long-term plan, specifying job title, compensation and skills needed at each milestone. His story is that when he was 23, he was inspired one day to sketch out his 40-year career plan in a paper placemat at TGI Fridays. I don’t think I have come across such a strategy before. The thing is, I don’t even wanna plan what I will be doing 3-5 years down the road. The free spirit in me resents locking in on my desires and motivations. Surely, life is sweeter when something pops up along the way and you chase it single-mindedly, attributing it to serendipity or destiny.
While I don’t wanna apply his long-term career planning method, I found his suggestion to clarify both your personal and professional values to be enlightening. We often hear about aligning our values with the values of the organisation we are working with, but I haven’t read anyone who makes a distinction between his work self and personal self. What’s more, he suggests creating an acronym so that we can remember both sets of values easily. Sensei approves.
Anyway, since there are 10 chapters, I photocopied all 10 exercises to gain clarity on my brand identity.
Simone Stolzoff takes a drastically different approach in his “The Good Enough Job”. He explicitly states he won’t give readers a 10-step checklist to follow. Instead, he intersperses his anecdotes with stories from the people he has interviewed, debunking a commonly held myth about work in each chapter. I’m an incorrigible fan of human nature and devoured all the stories, feeling impressed at how his high-powered professionals made it to the top of their field, yet released the gas pedal off their career accelerator for various reasons. He advocates cultivating multiple sources of identity so that we don’t tie our self-worth entirely to our work. Heck, his title says it all. Not career, but job.
Time to reflect on my relationship towards work!