As professionals, we are often unwary of how time passes. In the midst of projects, client communications, meeting goals and KPIs, and chasing our zenith, we somewhere grow old. Years later, when we reflect back on those years passed, we often wish there were things we could tell our younger selves, which could have made the journey a whole lot better and maybe a bit saner.
But we can always learn from other people’s experiences. Maybe my learnings can help you craft your journey better. Without any further ado, presenting my list of things I wish I’d tell my younger self when I started out with my career.
15 Things I would recommend to my younger self
- Focus on other things apart from projects.
- Don’t compare yourself with others.
- Work smartly and think of ways by which you can reduce your hard work. It pays off.
- Speak up more in team meetings.
- Take initiatives. Don’t wait for opportunities to come to you. Don’t be afraid of new things coming your way. Take it up with courage.
- Trust your mentor.
- Do not repeat the same mistakes.
- Take out time to learn new things.
- Share/discuss problems more openly
- Don’t overthink on mistakes that have been made and rather think on what we can learn from it.
- Learn from others. You won’t have a long life where you can make all mistakes by yourself and learn from them.
- Work on skills in which I am interested.
- Read books
- Don’t only plan, start acting. You can keep thinking and planning for days but it won’t give you any output until you act.
- Networking – Connect with people (be it lunch break, virtual meets like coffee breaks, dance performances, over LinkedIn). You can have knowledge but you will have opportunities and ideas to put that knowledge to use when you will connect with different people. Also, wisdom can come to you from different people in different fields. You don’t need to stick to yours.
That’s my list. I hope it can serve as an humble reminder to you, as it’s quite easy to get distracted and lose sanity in the chaos of rat race.
To growing old, wiser!
Authored by: Gaurav Dhiman.
