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lestratjuggler · 5 days ago

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Career 104: Advancing your career and getting promotions

Top 3 job hunting mistakes college students make

Career 102: Getting a job you have no experience in

Career 103: Tackling analytical thinking in job interviews

Covid-19 Career Resources

Check the “career” tag

I’ve recently received a ton of questions on career growth, promotions, and “unblocking” your career when you feel stuck so I’ve put together a general framework for how I’ve moved up in my career and into leadership positions so quickly and at such a young age. This is applicable to all industries from art to science to business to academia. In no particular order:

1. Identify the decision maker(s)

Who’s calling the shots in this place? This is a simple analysis of power dynamics in your organization. Some questions to consider:

Who assigns the quantity and type of work you receive?

Who evaluates the quality of your work?

Who’s in charge of writing your performance review?

How often are you evaluated?

Who makes the final decision on whether or not you get promoted?

In most organizations, this person is your direct manager and indirectly your skip level (your manager’s manager) which is why it’s imperative you have a strong relationship with them. The decision maker(s) are the stakeholders you need to manage the closest.

To get the most out of your relationship with decision makers:

Schedule regular 1:1 meetings with your direct manager and skip level. Make sure you understand their needs, respond accordingly to their requests, and prioritize your work based on their guidance.

Ask for feedback regularly. Focus on the areas you can improve and less on the things you’re doing well. Human beings naturally gravitate towards praise and away from criticism because praise feels good and criticism feels icky but you need to fight this tendency with all your might because it’s your flaws that will hold back your career– not your strengths. You don’t want to be blindsided come performance review time when you could’ve caught the problem early, fixed it, and succeeded. You don’t want to lose time.

Perform at the next level while in your current level. Many people refuse to take on more work from the next level unless they get a promotion, but I’ve done the exact opposite– I take on more work from the next level before a promotion because it demonstrates that I can do it. If you’re a graphic designer who creates graphics, then ask what a senior graphic designer does and request those responsibilities. You can make a better case for promotion if you’re currently operating at the next level because it removes any doubts that you can do the job and it minimizes risks to the organization that you may fail. If your manager somehow doesn’t see your value despite taking on more work, then you can leave the company with next level experience under your belt and negotiate a promotion and hefty raise in your next role.

Note: If you have an awful relationship with your direct manager, then your options are to: 1) talk to your direct manager and mend the relationship 2) transfer to another team with a manager you actually get along with and who likes you or 3) leave the company. If your direct manager dislikes you, then there’s a high chance your career in that role is dead in the water. Trying to fight your direct manager is like trying to fight your teacher or professor– they’ll just slap you with a bad grade, screw up your academic transcript, and go along their merry way with no negative consequences to themselves. Only you’ll get screwed.

2. Understand performance metrics

What’s important to the organization? This to understand what the organization defines as success. Some questions to consider:

What are the expectations of your role AKA what are you supposed to be doing?

What are you being evaluated on AKA what are they looking at?

What is their definition of “good performance” and what is their definition of “bad performance?”

In most organizations, these are called OKRs (objective key results) and KPIs (key performance indicators) that you 100% need to be aware of. An OKR is the goal, while a KPI is the metric that measures how well we’re moving towards the goal. For example, if an OKR is “lose 10 pounds in 2 months,” then a KPI is “I am losing 2 pounds per week, I am on track to lose 10 pounds in 2 months.” It could be anything from “sell from cars” for a car dealership to “build more products” for a tech company to “make fewer medical errors” for a hospital to “design more homes” for an architecture firm.

To understand performance metrics:

Know your organizational OKRs and KPIs. If you don’t have a clue– get one. Ask someone, usually your direct manager. “What are our goals for this quarter and for the year? Where do we want to be by the end of the year? What can I work on that will help us get there?”

Ensure the work you’re doing feeds directly into those metrics and goals. Why? Because your leaders’ performance are being evaluated based on achieving those OKRs and KPIs which makes them very important to the people who have a direct influence on your career trajectory. If it’s important to your leaders, it’s important to you. If you can help your leaders become successful, then they’ll see your value and they’ll fight to keep you around. If they’re willing to fight to keep you around, there’s a strong case for you to be promoted and compensated well. Align yourself to those goals.

Note: If your personal interests (what you want to do) don’t align to the organization’s goals (what the organization wants to do), then your options are to 1) be high and powerful enough to change those goals 2) compromise your interests to move up in your career or 3) leave and find another job. If you want to bake cupcakes but the organization wants to make sushi, then you need to either convince the organization to bake cupcakes or you need to suck it up and make sushi or you need to leave and find another organization that wants to bake cupcakes.

3. Develop and market your personal brand

This is the one most people screw up. This is a critical step to build your reputation and market your skills to colleagues and leaders. Some questions to consider:

What skills are you good at and known for in your organization?

Who knows that you’re good at those skills?

Who knows what you’ve achieved with those skills?

What can you do to make more people know about your skills and achievements?

Most people miss this step because they mistakenly think that “a job well done speaks for itself.” No, it doesn’t– you need to speak for it. This is a mistake I commonly see made by introverts, women, minorities, and people from more collectivist cultures (East Asia, parts of Europe, etc.) where self-promotion is awkward, uncomfortable, and/or can be frowned upon. In America, you need to market yourself and you need to do it often. Speak up. You must advocate for yourself at all times.

To market yourself and develop your personal brand:

Develop a pocket skill. Meaning, be very good at something, anything, and be better at it than other people. For me, that was leadership, strategy, and client management. I’m very good at leading projects, bringing order to chaos, managing difficult personalities, and achieving excellent outcomes in catastrophic/disaster scenarios. I’ve developed a sterling reputation in my industry for this and I’ve pulled off ballsy projects across Asia, North America, and Europe to prove it. For my colleague, he’s a data analysis wizard: SQL, Python, Excel, Tableau– you name it and he can do it. For my other colleague, he’s a product expert who can design, launch, and manage a product with his eyes closed. What’s your pocket skill? Remember that you don’t need to be the best, you just need to be better than the average person.

Aim for projects that have a senior audience (senior leaders, C-suite executives, large accounts) because they’ll have huge impact on your career. Remember: if it’s important to your leaders, it’s beneficial to your career. Ask to contribute to highly visibly and highly impactful projects even if you’re not leading them. If you can help with an analysis here or there, write an update from time to time, and talk to a few people a few hours per week, then you’re a contributor and your name will be attached to the final product.

Send updates on your work to important stakeholders (clients, bosses, colleagues) to give them visibility into what you’re doing. I never go a single week without someone important knowing what I’m working on whether that’s an email update, a weekly meeting, or a casual conversation. Talk about what you’re doing: talk about it in meetings, talk about it at lunch, talk about it on a train, talk about it on a plane, talk about it over green eggs and ham, Sam I Am. At no point should anyone ever look at you and think to themselves: “What are they working on and what the hell do we pay them for?”

Mentor junior staff and colleagues on a specific topic, skill, or area. This establishes yourself as an “expert” to colleagues and helps expand your network. At Google, I teach internal classes on business psychology, project management, and management consulting (strategic thinking). I’ve met tons of senior leaders in other organizations like engineering and marketing who’ve become part of my network and regularly seek my advice on these topics. They learn from me and I learn from them.

Get involved with internal activities and groups. Join employee resource/affinity groups (LGBTQ employee groups, Women in Tech, etc.) and get involved in recruiting and onboarding. These will expand your network, increase visibility, and give you insight into how hiring and recruiting work which is important for when you’re job hunting.

4. Get professional mentor(s)

At this point, it’s like beating a dead horse but I’ll say it again and again until Tumblr shuts down its servers: get quality mentors. This is not optional, it’s mandatory. To find a mentor, consider the following questions:

Who is currently in a role senior to you that you want to have in the future?

Who has a background/career journey similar to yours?

Who is advancing quickly in their career?

Note: People are more likely to agree to mentor those they share a lot of similarities with. This includes similar career goals (ex: you both want to become neurosurgeons), similar academic backgrounds (ex: you both attended the same university or had the same major), similar ethnic backgrounds (ex: you’re both from the same country or area of the world, you both speak the same languages), etc. This is why networking is critical to success. You’re more likely to get a “yes” from someone you know than a random stranger so the more people you know the more potential mentors you have.

Mentoring has been extensively covered in my blog: Search “mentors” for more posts.

5. Leave if there’s no path forward

Self-explanatory, but regularly evaluate your career trajectory to make sure you’re not going down the wrong path or that you’re stuck in a bad situation. Staying in a job that goes nowhere is like patching holes on a sinking ship– you’re only delaying the inevitable and you’re wasting precious time and energy while doing it.

To evaluate if there’s no path forward, some questions to consider:

What growth opportunities exist for you? Are there any positions that exist above where you’re currently at? For example, if you’re currently a banana peeler, is there a senior banana peeler role available? Do you even want to be a senior banana peeler? Always keep your eye on the next level and if that next level doesn’t exist then it’s time to leave.

Is your direct manager on your side? This is related to #1. If they aren’t, you need to change managers or leave the organization. If your manager has no power or has fallen out of favor with senior leaders, this is another red flag to leave because they won’t be able to fight for you to get great projects and to get promoted.

Is the company doing well? Self-explanatory. If the company isn’t doing well, there’s a high chance you’ll get laid off and you never want to go down with a sinking ship. It’s not your company, it’s not your family’s company, so move on if you notice that things are getting bad very quickly. Signs of a sinking company include: poor financial performance, cancelled projects, senior leaders quitting, negative media coverage, reduced employee benefits/perks, etc.

To avoid becoming “stuck”:

Keep your resume and skills updated. Keep your finger on the pulse of your industry. What’s hot right now? What companies are doing well? What skills are in high demand? Right now during the pandemic, gaming and media companies like Netflix, Hulu, Unity, Nintendo, and Sony are hot because people are at home and they’re consuming tons of entertainment. What are these companies hiring for? What are their needs? Do you have the skills they want? If not, how can you get them? Revisit these questions every 6 months.

Interview with different companies even if you’re not looking to leave your current job. You don’t need to change jobs or commit to anything, but you do need to keep your interviewing skills fresh. One of the biggest mistakes people make is they only look for jobs when they’re miserable in their current one. This makes them desperate to accept anything they’re offered and causes them to make errors in judgment. It’s important to keep looking even if you’re happy in your current role. Consider this: What if your perfect job is looking for someone during a time when you’re not looking for a new job? You’d miss your chance. Interview even if you’re happy at your current job, see what else is out there, know your market value (check your salary), and keep your interview skills sharp.

On job hunting: check the “career” tag on my blog.

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lestratjuggler · 5 days ago

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How do you manage with people who are incompetent with decision making abilities?

I find myself difficult to remain within a civil discussion to make a plan of action when arguments start to brew after one stops listening to the other.

Any tips to negate arguments and know when to compromise with colleagues or rivals alike?

Thank you for you time, I'm enjoying throughly reading your blog.

Off the top of my head:

Identify the decision maker. Who's making the final call? Hint: It should be one person. Consensus driven decision making doesn't work for group projects. If everyone is a decision maker, then no one is a decision maker because nothing will get done in the likely event of a disagreement or gridlock. Note that you can (and should) listen to everyone's input, but there needs to be a single person who breaks the tie and makes the decision- identify that person.

Align on the north star. What's the goal of your project or work? What does success look like and how will you know when you've achieved it? If you're building a home, is success having the foundation, walls, and roof installed? Or is success also having the furniture, paint, and decorations put into the house? Align on the same definition so your group can use it as a guiding principle when making decisions.

Document expectations. Put everything in writing and make sure everyone is in agreement with the goals, timelines, and performance expectations. Everyone should know, at any given time, what they signed up to do, by when, and how it should be done. When in doubt, refer back to this charter. People have short memories so get it in writing.

Drive execution and accountability. Hold people to the commitments they made in the above bullet points. Compromise if it still achieves the north star and don't compromise if it doesn't achieve the north star. Remove people from the group and replace them if they continue to sabotage progress or, if you personally no longer feel attached to the north star, change the north star or remove yourself from the group and find a better one.

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lestratjuggler · 5 days ago

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Hi, younger ENTJ here, what's your advice to develop patience? (Eg= having to work a job you don't like/overqualified in to build rapport to get better opportunities). I understand that its a necessary process that I have to go through but sometimes it feels gruelling.

As an older ENTJ, I'll let you in on a little secret ...

You will never truly develop patience, but you will learn to better manage your impatience.

Your plans, your goals, your career, and the world around you will never move at the ideal speed that you want. The hoops you need to jump through and the credibility you need to earn will always feel like they’re taking too much time. With that said, you can't will a cake to bake faster without burning it, but you can optimize your time while waiting for it to finish baking.

Do other things while excelling in your current role, such as:

Learn how to market yourself. It's one thing to achieve great things, it's another thing to cultivate a reputation for it. Don’t just execute, learn how to package your work, measure its impact, and present it to the right audience. Don’t just be effective-- be visible. Perception is reality.

Build relationships everywhere. Help people across the organization with their projects, schedule meetings to meet people in other functions, get involved in groups outside of work (DEI, campus recruiting, etc.), mentor junior team members or college kids, and participate in offsites and team-building events. It’ll seem annoying at first, but it pays off in dividends later when opportunities come up and you’re the first person they consider.

Keep your eye on the prize (the end goal). Find mentors that are where you want to be, inside and outside your current company, because they’re a concrete and tangible representation of your future. Know where you’re trending in your career, what’s coming up next, and prepare for it as best as you can so you’re ready when the time comes.

Practice new skills. Don’t just learn them, use them. What’s your end goal? If you want to become a leader, and it’s highly likely that you do, how much leadership experience do you have? Do you know how to effectively communicate? Build strategy? Roadmap? Manage resistance? Manage performance? If not, learn and apply. Read books, volunteer in organizations to practice these skills, take on side projects where you can lead other people, and practice these skills in real situations.

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lestratjuggler · 5 days ago

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Do you have any suggestions on how to become better at negotiation as a soft skill in tech? I’d love to solve problems across departments but I feel like I don’t have enough experience in each department or know how to navigate it.

Off the top of my head:

1. Build relationships with key decision makers. Most things in life, not just business, are relationship dependent. The success of your ideas will largely live and die on two things: the effectiveness of your execution and the strength of your relationships. The fastest way to build strong relationships is to deliver positive impact. Ask: "What can I take off your plate that’ll help you achieve your goals?" This establishes you as a reliable party and a friendly face. It’s a quick way to build social capital and become allies with the people who make the final call when you’re stuck and need to be unstucked.

2. Understand their goals. Ask: What are their OKRs (objective and key results) and KPIs (key performance indicators)? How do they measure excellence? How close (or far) are they to them? What are their leaders prioritizing on their roadmap? To find these, look for metrics dashboards, newsletters, quarterly reports, and attend meetings that share out performance. This will give you instant insight into their current state, their pain points, and their destination. This equips you to go into negotiations with eyes wide open.

For example, if you know the Finance department was over budget last quarter and they got in trouble for it, then proposing an expensive project probably isn’t going to fly. However, now that you know this, you can anticipate and manage resistance: "Project A is going to cost $$$ which I know may be a concern but we expect an ROI of $$$$$ by [date] that will more than compensate for the cost." Information is power.

3. Present options, not just a single solution. If you’re tackling a tough problem, come with two or more options, not just one, even if you really favor a particular solution. This shows other people that you’ve done thorough research, explored alternatives, identified trade-offs (pros and cons), and calculated the impact of your actions outside of just your department’s needs. Above all, it signals that you’re open to input because you’re coming to them to begin a discussion instead of dictating an order.

A simple example would be something like this:

“I’ve ran the numbers and narrowed down our options to these 3:

If we hire 2 more engineers, it’ll cost $200k, but we can launch 10 products on our roadmap

If we hire 1 more engineer, it’ll cost $100k, but we can launch 5 more products on our roadmap

If we hire 0 engineers, it won’t cost us anything, but we’ll need to cut 5 products from our roadmap

Based on these options, I recommend hiring 1 more engineer. Even if this puts us over budget, we can launch our 5 top priority products by the end of year and still hit our metrics. I’d like to get your input and hear your thoughts on this.”

Iterate until you reach an agreement.

And sometimes there are no good options (ex: your solution requires working weekends to get things done), and if that’s the case, then suffer together. Don’t be a seagull-- seagulls shit on people and fly away-- be present and accountable. If you propose a tough solution that requires other people to suffer, then be there in the trenches with them. This earns respect and trust that’ll last beyond one project.

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lestratjuggler · 5 days ago

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#extreme ownership

I’m just curious, when people at your level mess up at work, what does it look like? I’m wondering what happens when people make mistakes at work, especially at a senior level, and how these mistakes are corrected/dealt with

It depends who gets screwed over when it happens. At my level, when I mess up, it generally looks like this:

We don't hit our goals (company KPIs and OKRs) because either I miscalculated factors when building my solution, the team didn't execute the solution properly, the situation/problem changed due to unforeseen circumstances (pandemic, world war, something bizarre), the executives changed their minds (reduced funding, moved resourcing, re-org, etc.) or all of the above.

My direct managers (my reporting line/the people senior to me) want an explanation of what happened and what we're doing about it. I run a retro (a lookback analysis), deliver findings, create a new strategic roadmap.

My direct reports (my team/the people I manage) are shielded from the impact because I'm the leader and the responsibility falls on my shoulders. Even if it wasn't me who screwed up (i.e. I made the right call, but someone on my team didn't execute correctly), I provide cover fire for my team while we fix things internally. Consequently, they trust me not to throw them under the bus when things aren't perfect, and they're willing to follow me into the mess until we make it right.

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lestratjuggler · 5 days ago

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Mr entj, i am an enfp 3w2 and have an entj boss. What do entjs look for in the people they lead and manage? How do entjs define capability and competency? I would like to maximize my chances of success. Ps: as a 3w2 i am more disciplined and organized than enfp stereotypes and am often mistaken for an enfj. Thanks in advance!!!!

Related to the following asks:

What do you think is required from a person to succeed ?

Do you have any experience with hiring or selecting people to be on your team?

ENTJ: Leadership

can you talk about managing people + dealing with politics, especially in the workplace?

I define capability as the menu of skills a person has to drive outcomes. I define competence as a person's ability to correctly, consistently, and reliably apply those menu of skills to actually deliver said outcomes. You can have one but not the other. There are people who are capable but incompetent (poor application of skills, unreliable as shit) and there are competent people who have poor capabilities (consistent, but with a limited ranged of skills). In your career, MBTI aside, try to maximize both.

For the people I hire, I evaluate them on 3 dimensions:

Cognitive ability - your ability to solve complex problems

Execution skills - your ability to deliver outcomes

Emotional intelligence - your ability to play nice with other people

Thoughts on how to work with an ENTJ leader (applicable to INTJs):

Always keep the end goal in mind. Understand the outcomes the ENTJ is trying to drive and use that as a north star, don't just 'do the thing and get it done quickly'. Forget the details for a second, instead ask: What is the end state we're trying to achieve? Where are we trying to go? What do we need to do to get there? All actions should drive towards those outcomes. ENTJs are less concerned about the small details which gives you flexibility in the process (the 'how') as long as the outcomes (the 'what') are achieved. This also makes it easy to ruthlessly prioritize if you're overwhelmed. If it doesn't contribute to the end goal, then cut it. If it contributes to the end goal, then do it and measure the impact.

Exercise radical ownership. If the outcomes aren't achieved, you need to understand and explain why. It's okay to screw up because we all screw up. It's not okay to screw up, try to hide the fact you've screwed up, try to make excuses for screwing up, and then learn nothing from your mistakes (basically, don't be an ENTP). The best way to show an ENTJ that you've learned from your mistakes is pretty simple: bring solutions with every problem surfaced. It shows the ENTJ you've 1) identified the problem 2) accepted accountability and 3) taken actions to fix it. No need for exaggerated apologies, dramatics, and theatrics. Learn, fix, keep calm and carry on.

Be proactive. Related to the above. If you're going to ask a question, make sure you've already attempted to research the answer. If you're going to surface a problem, make sure you've thought through some solutions. If you have a fresh new idea, make sure you've drafted a rough draft of a plan. ENTJ leaders dislike handholding or coddling people because it distracts them from the actual things they should be focused on. Time is valuable.

Communicate clearly and fearlessly. Too much work? Not enough work? Want to try something new? Need time off? Unsure if you're performing well or poorly? Want a raise? Want a promotion? Say something. TJs (ENTJ, ESTJ, ISTJ, INTJ) are vocal if they have something to say so they have the tendency to assume other MBTI types will do the same. If you don't say anything, they may assume everything is fine when it's in fact not fine (basically, don't be an FJ). Don't be scared: advocate for yourself, speak up, and work together to build a path forward.

Push your potential. In the spirit of the above bullet point, be ambitious with your personal and professional goals. Ambition is respected, not feared. Self-improvement is welcomed, not discouraged. Articulate the skills and experience you want to build, take risks, and grow outside your comfort zone.

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lestratjuggler · 5 days ago

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Hi Mr. ENTJ. As a guy who's always in meetings solving problems, how do you develop mental stamina to stay "on it" all day? Do you have advice on how to do it even without a passionate interest in the topic or problem you're trying to brainstorm with other people? Thank you for your time!

I do it through a few ways:

I'm extremely protective of my time both in and out of work: I actively cut and reduce as many meetings as possible. Meetings are stamina vampires and motivation killers, they're only used for discussions that require rapid back and forth exchanges of ideas or debates when teams can't agree on something and need to drive alignment. All other communications like status updates, one-off questions, newsletters, data readouts, etc. should be through Slack or e-mails.

I don't attend meetings where:

I have no perspective/opinion/expertise to share with the group to solve a problem.

The outcome of the decision has no impact on me, my team, my product.

I can find the same information somewhere else (an internal document, email, message, etc.).

The fewer meetings, the more mental stamina saved.

2. I write more than I talk. I'm big on clear documentation because it allows for organization of thoughts, the addition of visuals (graphs, charts, wireframes) for clarity of perspective, and the creation of a paper trail for future reference. In my role as a Product Manager, that's typically a 1-pager or PRD draft to summarize the problem statement, add supporting data, and outline risks and/or recommendations. I send this out before we meet so people can react to it and add their ideas/questions/concerns so that once we meet we already have 75% of the discussion done before the meeting.

If I don't have a 1-pager, then at the bare minimum, I always have a few bullet points outlining the questions to answer from the meeting. Never show up at a meeting or brainstorming session without anything prepared beforehand.

The shorter the meetings, the more mental stamina saved.

3. I leverage frameworks and solutions from comparable cases. Don't reinvent the wheel-- find solutions to similar problems, distill them into frameworks, and start from there. It'll cut down on the pre-discussions, discussions, re-discussions, and back and forth if we start 10 miles ahead of the starting line. A lot of time existing solutions aren't perfect fits, but they can be adapted to fix similar problems.

The less redundant work, the more mental stamina saved.

4. I lean on the expertise of the people around me. The one constant in my career is that I avoid working with stupid people. Period. Everywhere I've worked, I've optimized for being around very intelligent people and I've aimed for companies that have extremely high hiring bars. Break the problem into smaller pieces and distribute them to people whose skills are best matched. You shouldn't be in a room brainstorming the solution to all the problems-- only the ones you're best equipped to solve. There's that saying: "many hands make light work." Loop in other experts so it expedites the process.

The lower the intellectual burden, the more mental stamina saved.

5. I follow the impact. Don't just focus on the uninteresting topic/problem, trace its impact to the very end and see with your own eyes the fruits of your labor. I remember back when I was in global strategy being assigned to a process improvement project in Asia. I flew out to Singapore to optimize some processes which was a mind-numbingly boring exercise of designing process flows, launching internal tools, and training agents. However, the impact of the work was that people who were affected by dangerous situations during their international travels were able to be quickly rescued and made financially whole again. Reviewing charts and graphs isn't fun, but I would've lost sight of its importance if I didn't follow the impact.

The higher the personal fulfillment, the more mental stamina saved.

... And sometimes there is no meaningful impact to the work that you're doing, in which case, optimize for speed and efficiency to get it done as quickly and as painlessly as possible (see #1-4 above). If you find yourself repeatedly working on problems you have no interest in or flat out hate-- you need to find another place to work or an entirely different career.

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lestratjuggler · 11 days ago

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lestratjuggler · 11 days ago

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I've been following you for many years now and it genuinely is so amazing you've gotten everything you've wanted (or at least on track for it!)

I used to see myself as someone like you, but then I had some health issues that came up.... and some days I wonder if it's just an excuse I use to justify why I don't have the same discipline as before.

I was on track for it all. Good university. Great job out of college ... and then everything went dead for 4 years.

Do you have any advice for that one? Everyone around me is telling me it's so amazing that I even survived this ... but I can't help but think about the goals I once had all those years ago. What would you do if you had physical limitations?

I know it might seem like a ridiculous ask. There is an obvious answer. But it's a special kind of torture to have the mind and desires of an ambitious person - and still, be trapped in a body out of your control.

Thanks for coming along on my journey-- it's been a hell of a wild ride.

To your question, not a ridiculous ask, but too vague. What physical limitations? I've also had physical issues in the past in the form of major bone surgeries and then cancer twice. My general advice: give it hell. If your condition is standing between you and your goals, then fight little by little, every single day, and make that fucker work hard to beat you.

When I was 16, I had major bone surgery but still had to prep for the SATs to get into college. When fatigue got in the way of attending class, I watched lecture recordings at my own pace. When reading made me dizzy, I'd sit in my wheelchair and listen to audiobooks (which is how I do most of my reading these days when on flights and traveling for work). When my legs and hips were healing and I couldn't sit for long periods of time, I bought a wedge pillow and studied laying on my stomach. When my hands were too tired to write, I used a digital voice recorder (for Gen Z, an ancient device before iPhones were invented). When I couldn't do something on my own, I leaned on people around me to help. I worked around my physical limitations because even if my body was screwed up-- my mind was still sharp and sound. Now with AI and other technology, there's even more help out there.

There's never a guarantee that you'll win these kinds of battles, but you should never make it easy for your body -- or anything else -- to beat you in life. Always give it hell.

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lestratjuggler · 2 months ago

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When things get tough and/or I start catastrophizing and I feel like giving up (mostly related to career/studies/future studies because that's my biggest monster to slay rn 🐲⚔️):

Remember how younger you passionately worked her ass off to get you to where you are now. How would she feel if you didn't make the most of her effort?

Remember how hard your family — your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, etc. —worked so that you could even think of your dreams as real possibilities to aspire to. They had a dream, and it was difficult for them to achieve it too, but they didn't give up.

Remember how past generations of women and their allies fought to give women a place in public life if they so chose it. You might not always believe in yourself, but people who didn't even know you believed in you enough to fight the inequality. Despite the setbacks you may face, they believed you belong and that you have potential. You should believe the same of yourself too.

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lestratjuggler · 2 months ago

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i think a big part of expanding your intellectual curiosity and trying to learn new things about the world is to abandon the shame of not knowing things. don't blame "the US school system" (which US school system????), don't blame your teachers, don't blame society, but embrace the fact that you are going to be learning new things constantly, throughout your life. practice saying "i really need to read about that" or "does anyone know of any good sources to learn about xyz?" or "hold on i gotta go check wikipedia/a world map/the dictionary/the news." every single day, there will be something you don't know already. that something doesn't have to be embarrassing. instead it can be an opportunity to learn something new

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lestratjuggler · 2 months ago

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agree! we are responsible for our perceptions… though admittedly, it's often difficult to place things in perspective when we are in the midst of a situation

"an infant born in a burning house thinks the whole world is on fire"

its alllll about perspective

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lestratjuggler · 2 months ago

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I can’t believe that I am starting my last year at university. Wasn’t I a fresher just a minute ago?

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lestratjuggler · 2 months ago

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Looks at your ask box: “ ask me the meaning of life. ”

So, *proceeds to ask you the meaning of life* what is the meaning of life?

in a single word: procreation

and if expanded i couldn't write all about it even if i started now and didnt stop until i died

but in brief, humans are .... like any other animal, just evolution doing its thing given all the years on earth, all that we have different to them is that we lucked out (kinda) on the evolution bingo game with our brains ending up getting evolved past a certain point, enough so that we can now think about everything better than other animals, but by no means perfectly. So the first lesson is humility and that time reigns supreme , to understand that we are nothing against the passage of time, as proven by the deaths of every living creature that has ever come to exist on this planet atleast until we all learn to band together stronger and face genuine problems by first educating ourselves and then utilising our greatest strength, the strength in numbers. (take that nihilism)

everything from our emotions to our perception to our strengths to our problems (like the issues faced in the working of society) is a result of us evolving a brain which is capable of thinking understanding and resolving ideas way faster than natural evolution.(I could expand upon this fact itself endlessly but I don't know if a Tumblr post is supposed to be tens of thousands of words long so we keeping that idea for later,hopefully i publish a book on this before i die with all my thoughts but tangent aside)

So the second lesson is to think.

Thinking things thoroughly and making sure to not accept an outlandish idea until you actually get to a simple conclusion.

from these two we can derive another which is to always cross reference and to never take ideas for granted and infact another endless such lessons which hopefully i write about someday.

with these two lessons we approach the timeless question of what the meaning of life is. Applying the first rule we learn to disregard believes that we mean something extraordinarily high, no, no single person is more special than another and after further thinking as per the second lesson i reached multiple conclusion of my own which after cross referencing and applying pseudointellectualism a thought process of remembering what humans are at a base level and why society works as it does now, the simple conclusion was reached that at the end of the day we live to survive and ensure that there come after as more humans who can survive as a way to prove that our genetic lottery win was really as big as it seems.

p.s

thanks for the ask, and sorry that i cant expand on all these topics at this time, i wish every reader inner peace from all the complicated thoughts in our head and i invite you to learn to understand our inner demons and infact understand why those demons exist in the first place, now that the meaning of life is out of the way i can try to answer more human questions like the role emotions play in our life, how not thinking for oneself allows people to (for their own benefit) use you more than you think and infact questions like why people step on other people in the first place? (spoilers: the answer lies on evolutions biggest feature in all of us which is ofcourse how we wish to survive above all else and now that as a society primal survival is not like it was for cavemen, our brains adapted weirdly) or why we feel happy with simple things like getting a like on your elaborate Tumblr post (wink wink) (please do that) and how that is also a problem caused by our brains evolving faster than evolution could catch up

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