Fishing for career advice 🎣
Welcome back!
It was brought to my attention that some links didn't work in my last email. I sincerely apologize for that, and it won't happen again. Here are the pictures of my fat cat, and here is my essay about the rising class of Internet Craftsmen.
Fishing for Career Advice
I spent a week in Alaska fishing for salmon with my family, and discovered some interesting parallels between fishing and how we should go about our work. I wrote an essay titled Fishing for Career Advice, the basic points of which I'll go over here:
1. You can't reel fast all the time 💨
On the boat, I was told that you can't reel fast and hard as soon as you feel the bite– you'd lose the fish and get tired really quickly. Similarly, you can't expect to sustain an intense work lifestyle all the time. Be intentional about choosing the right time to up the intensity.
2. You either caught the fish, or you didn't ⛔
Fishing is very self-evident. You either catch the fish or you didn't. It's easy to complicate your explanations and status updates with jargon to make excuses on your lack of progress in the world of work, so keep an honest record of work and ask yourself, what did you get done today?
3. You can't do it alone 🫂
Our family had a great captain and deckhand to support our experience on the boat, but ultimately my family caught all of the fish. Similarly, while you need good mentors and managers to find a career you enjoy, you're the only one who will put in the work towards advancing your career.
Media I consumed this week
Deep Questions, Episode 209 (link)
In this episode, Georgetown computer science and NY Times bestselling author Cal Newport talks about the importance of working away from home and lifestyle centric career planning.
Nostalgia, Graveyards & an NYC Apartment (link)
An incredibly well-shot and insightful perspective on the purpose of nostalgia.
Final thoughts
I added a landing page to my website, and made it accessible from the URL jonah.is– you'll see why. Thanks for reading! I'll see you next week, when we'll talk about optimizing our purchases for happiness vs price.