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4/1/1: 4 Random Thoughts from me, 1 tools to help Sales Engineers, 1 quote for motivation
4/1/1 Career Conversations are Hard and Stressful. Do It Anyways.
4/1/1 Weekly
4 Random Thoughts, 1 Tool, and 1 Quote
Happy New Year!
January is when everybody is working on their New Year’s Resolution or sets their goals for the year. Often it’s about health and sometimes wealth.
When we’re talking about wealth, aka your salary, this is controlled by someone else. That person is either your manager, or your manager’s manager, or your manager’s manager’s manager, etc.
If you are looking for a raise, or you want to advance your career, or you want to discuss your future with that company, then you need to start having discussions with your manager.
This is a topic that Damian Hanna, our guest from this week’s episode, and I discuss. We discuss how to go about it, and how not to go about and what we should expect.
Now, here are my 4 thoughts on this topic.
4 Random Thoughts From Me:
1- Career conversations can be tough. Some organizations encourage it, but many organizations believe it’s the individual’s responsibility to start it up. If this is not something you’ve done with your leaders, then you should start. If you don’t think your leaders want to have this conversation, then you should start talking to others on the team.
2- Fear stops us. Early on in my career, it stopped me from talking to my manager about my career, stopped me from applying for roles that I may not be fully qualified for. That’s why I said in the first point that you should start talking to your teammates. Hopefully someone senior that you’ve built a relationship with. It’s not to complain about how you’ve not had that discussion with the manager yet but talk to them so they can guide you.
3- When was the last time you sat down and thought about what you want? I heard this analogy the other day that most people are sitting in the back of a car while it’s driving itself. We’re letting life happen to us and we’re not intentional about it.
4- It’s hard to sit back and think these days. There’s always a source of distraction, usually our phone. So here’s a question I have for you, and I’ve been asking it on the podcast recently:
What habit are you working on today to improve in your personal or professional life?
Here’s my answer. The habit I am working on is getting to bed early. Doing that seems to set up my next day for the better. The way I’m getting to bed earlier is I have an alarm set on my phone. When it rings, I have to turn off WIFI and data. If I don’t, I go to bed early, watch YouTube for a while, then fall asleep late.
1 Tool:
Here’s an RFA (Request for App)
Are you familiar with an app that would turn off WIFI and data at a certain time and won’t let me turn it on? This will help me automate this process.
If you know anything, please reply to this email with that app. I use android, but if you share an app specifically for Apple, I will share it in a future email.
1 Quote:
“The longer you put off the hard conversations, the harder the conversations get…” – Jocko Willink
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