• I had one computer programmer who had gone to Columbia Law School and had come to work with me after deciding that he did not want to practice law.
• I had a girl who had graduated at the top of her class at Boston University Law School and decided that she did not want to practice law.
• I had another guy who had gotten a perfect score on his LSATs and a perfect grade point average. He was working for me a few years before deciding which law school to attend. They all ended up offering him scholarships.
• I had a guy who was extremely intelligent and hardworking, who had gone to law school with his wife, and ultimately decided against working in a law firm. He had followed his wife out to Los Angeles while she took a job practicing law.

One guy might come in at 5:00 am and work until 4:00 pm and then work from home later in the evening. Another guy might come in at 11:00 am and then work until 1:00 am. People often worked on weekends because they liked being together. Everyone seemed to keep unusual hours, working very hard. They were always applying themselves fully and I never needed to worry about them. We offered vacation time but people hardly ever took the time off. If someone wanted to go away for a week or so they would just announce they were going on their vacation and no one was too concerned. I knew the sort of people I was working with would never abuse any privileges. What I remember most about this group of people was that everyone had done extraordinarily well in college, getting almost all A’s. I have noticed throughout the years that the very best employees are often those who did incredibly well in college. The reason for this, I think, is that the best college students are always self-motivated, disciplined individuals who enjoy their work. You have to find a way to enjoy what you are doing in order to do well at it. To get good grades in college you generally need to work hard and set up routines, rituals, and so forth to make sure you study at the right times. In examining the hundreds of employees I have worked with throughout the years, with very few exceptions, the longest lasting and best performing people were always those who had performed very well in college. In contrast, I have known numerous people who, when they grew up, were forced to follow massive amounts of procedures and rules by their parents. They were told when to study, when to go to sleep, and more. Many of these kids ended up getting into great colleges because of their grades, but when they got there and did not have the structure, they fell on their ass. I saw this happen countless times. It is important that our rituals and sense of responsibility is internal, and something we learn to do naturally–not something we only do when it is imposed on us by people on the outside. This “core group” of four people performed incredibly well for my company and our revenues very quickly grew. Within less than a year of hiring this group, we had moved locations together. After hiring numerous new employees, we took over the largest office in our building at the time. Then the company underwent a huge hiring spree; every single day of the week I found myself interviewing various people for one job or another. The process of massive and rapid hiring occurred constantly for the next several years. What was so remarkable about this group of people was that they were entirely self-motivated and self-managing. They instinctively knew what needed to be done and they made it all happen. They were excited about and enjoyed their work, which was more akin to play for them. Their efforts helped build our companies to what they are today.  Indeed knowing these people gave me a tremendous amount of respect for the self-managing person, who knows what needs to be done and how to do it. This type of person is rare–and is the sort of person you need to be. The more self-managing you are, the better you will ultimately do at everything you undertake, the more employers will want to hold on to you, and the better future you will create for yourself. I met with a man yesterday who has been partaking in transcendental meditation every day for the past 30 years. He told me that for him it is just like getting up and brushing his teeth or taking a shower. He simply would not be able to get up in the morning without having his daily meditation. Many people have their special routines, which they follow each day. They eat lunch at a certain time, get up at a certain time, go to sleep at a certain time, walk the dog at a certain time, etc. We integrate all sorts of rituals and responsibilities into our daily lives. We need to do the same with our job and work life. We need more responsibilities and rituals. We should not have to rely on others telling us what to do. A grown up does not need to be told when to eat, when to take a shower, and so forth. So it should be at the workplace. There is nothing more important than being self-managing. Within a few years, our company had bought its own building and then another, and then another. The growth just kept continuing. Revenues increased and things seemed to be going very well. However, I remember just before we moved to the first building we had purchased, that many of our key employees began quitting. Very smart people started dropping off, people who had been core employees, who had greatly assisted in growing many of our businesses. As the company grew, I began noticing that certain new people were not as self-motivated as the ones we had hired previously. My hiring standards had dropped somewhat, and many new people I brought in were just not of the same caliber to which I had become accustomed. I was not the only one in charge of hiring anymore, either. In some cases people were apparently hired more based on looks than skills. Others were hired because they knew someone working in the company. The atmosphere of the company began to change rapidly. I became increasingly frustrated because as the company was branching out, it became necessary for me to create all sorts of new procedures, handbooks, and so forth to control many of the new people. I absolutely hated this. I am somewhat of a “creative type” and cannot imagine spending my time trying to control people through various procedures and protocols. Here are some of the employee issues I faced while the company expanded:

• People would begin disappearing for long periods of time during the day.
• Some employees would call in sick every few days.
• Other people would do slipshod work and have to be reprimanded.
• Various employees would circulate memos claiming that labor laws were being violated because certain employees were working too hard.
• People began requesting “reasonable accommodations” for various psychological ailments with which they had somehow been diagnosed.
• People started stealing from the company and getting caught red handed.

A whole host of other problems developed, far too numerous to delineate here. In response to all these problems the company started cracking down, establishing new bureaucracy and rules.

• I began hiring anal retentive people to be human resources administrators, and to create various rules that people would need to follow.
• We came up with employee manuals.
• We began circulating memos with rules.
• We began having various meetings to discuss employee procedures.

The self-motivated employees hated all of these rules because they were working hard to begin with. For example, if a self-motivated employee got “written up” for getting into work at 12:00 noon when they had worked until 3:00am, they were pissed. I hired an in-house lawyer to draft contracts for the new employees to sign, which demanded arbitration instead of allowing them to sue us if they believed something had gone wrong. The in-house lawyer stayed busy fielding calls and having meetings with people who were aggrieved in one way or another with all these rules and procedures. The lawyer also became responsible for firing people who were not following the rules, and spoke with the human resources manager on a daily basis about problem employees, having closed door meetings, and more. All of the rules and bureaucratic procedures the company had created were made specifically to compensate for the inadequacies of the weak hires–people the company would not have even hired at all in the past. I noticed that while the star performers could tolerate working with weaker performers (after all, they had probably been doing this their entire lives), they absolutely could not tolerate being governed by all sorts of rules and bureaucratic procedures. For example, we passed one rule that said people could not go barefoot in the office. This made a brilliant guy from Stanford who did great work for us almost quit on the spot. We passed another rule about dress codes (shirt and pants required in the office–no shorts allowed) that made another few people quit. As the best people left and more and more people were hired to replace them, the need for more and more bureaucracy kept developing, and I found myself passing more and more rules in order to insure that the new people were actually working. What ended up happening, of course, was that the company changed over time. While the culture of the workplace was still entrepreneurial, rules and regulations began to dominate. One time we had an incident where one of our offices tried to unionize. An increasing amount of managerial effort went into babysitting and keeping files and reports on the staff, as opposed to starting new projects and getting work done. Much of my experience running the company turned into a watchdog position, wherein I constantly had to insure that people actually did their jobs. I also started to notice another alarming trend with numerous employees:

• People would come into work and clock in and then disappear. They would do this for days at a time and do no work whatsoever.
• Others would manufacture fake on-the-job injuries and sue the company for damages.
• Still other people would come in late repeatedly and after a series of 10 or 12 warnings in the space of few months they would be fired. Then they would then bring lawsuits against the company claiming they were fired because they were old, young, whatever.

It was always the people who needed to be managed who caused the most problems. You would not believe how many people out there make a game out of creating fictitious problems. The best people in every job I have ever had and in every company I have ever supervised are self- managing and responsible individuals. Also, the more self-managing people are there working for an organization, the stronger the organization generally is. I cannot overstate the importance of being able to self-manage; this is an absolutely essential quality to possess if you wish to achieve success in whatever you do. Instead of creating problems in the workplace, you should seek out responsibilities, and ritualize your work routine. These responsibilities will drive you forward in your daily work, in your career, and in your life.

No related posts.

In all this Cuban business, there is one man who stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba- no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly. What to do! Someone said to the President, “There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can.” Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How “the fellow by the name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?” By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing — “Carry a message to Garcia!” General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man — the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slip-shod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office — six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: “Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio”. Will the clerk quietly say, “Yes, sir,” and go do the task? On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions: Who was he? Which encyclopedia? Where is the encyclopedia? Was I hired for that? Don’t you mean Bismarck? What’s the matter with Charlie doing it? Is he dead? Is there any hurry? Shan’t I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself? What do you want to know for? And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia — and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not. Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Correggio is indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile sweetly and say, “Never mind,” and go look it up yourself. And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first-mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting “the bounce” Saturday night, holds many a worker to his place. Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply, can neither spell nor punctuate — and do not think it necessary to. Can such a one write a letter to Garcia? “You see that bookkeeper,” said the foreman to me in a large factory. “Yes, what about him?” “Well he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him up town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street, would forget what he had been sent for.” Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia? We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “downtrodden denizen of the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power. Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer — but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best — those who can carry a message to Garcia. I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. He cannot give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, “Take it yourself.” Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular fire-brand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled No. 9 boot. Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slip-shod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude, which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless. Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds — the man who, against great odds has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there’s nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner pail and worked for day’s wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly take the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village — in every office, shop, store, and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed, and needed badly — the man who can carry a message to Garcia.

In all my studies of success, I do not think I have ever encountered a better message in terms of what it takes to be successful than A Message to Garcia. The reason that this is such a strong message is because it really delves into the essence of what it takes to be successful in any undertaking and in life itself. The essay has been translated into 37 languages and at the time it was first written, it sold over 40,000,000 copies.

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?” By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing — “Carry a message to Garcia!”

I have been studying successful people most of my life. I read biographies and I seek out successful people and speak to them. When I was in college I used to write long papers about people who were very successful. I would use money I saved up and fly around the country interviewing these people, and then I would write a paper about them and give talks to other college students about all my findings. I think my professors found it interesting, so they would invite me to lecture classes I was not even taking, to share all that I had learned. When I was in law school I did the same thing with certain lawyers. I wrote a 400-page paper/unpublished book about successful attorneys and what made them successful. I spent months traveling the United States interviewing famous attorneys for that book. I then was invited to lecture other law students about what made these certain attorneys successful, just like when I was in college. Then I became a legal recruiter and started combing through thousands of resumes a week to find attorneys likely to be successful in law firms. I loved doing this. I wanted to be successful and felt that in order to succeed I needed to understand how others had become successful. I have met many of the most educated people with the most prestigious jobs. I have met also people with no formal education who have very prestigious jobs. I have oft traveled to seminars around the world several times in a year, just to learn from successful people what has made them good and bad at whatever it is that they do. Each day for this past year I have written daily about the traits that make people successful, and I also read and study this subject each day. As a student of success, I love learning about what makes one person more successful than another and then communicating my findings to others. I am not sure why I have had such a passion about studying success. Maybe it is because success always seemed to elude my parents, which made them very unhappy. Our family always had financial problems growing up, for example, there was always a ton of talk about how there was not enough money for this and for that. It was a daily sort of thing. There was also a feeling of isolation, I think, that my parents had, because they were not as successful as a lot of people around them. I picked this up as well. The environments I grew up in always emphasized success, and yet it was something that eluded my family. For whatever reason, I picked up a message that success was incredibly important and at an early age I began working on figuring out the rules. From the time I was 10 years old or so, I decided that I needed to be successful because I certainly could not change my family. I started getting paper routes and doing everything within my power to be successful. I was reading self improvement books by the age of 14 or so, and doing everything I could to become whatever success seemed to represent. That said, I feel that I have a lot to teach. For 25+ years now, I have been studying success in one form or another, and today it occurred to me that I understand the most important thing that can make anyone successful. It can be you, someone you know, your child,… literally anyone. Being successful is not something that needs to elude you and the components of success are available to you right now; just keep the following in mind:

• It does not matter what titles you have had.
• It does not matter what other people say about you.
• It does not matter if you do a job that is respected by society or not.
• It does not matter if you went to college.
• It does not matter if you work for a prestigious employer or not.
• It does not matter if you received a bonus.
• It does not matter if the economy is good or bad.

None of this matters at all. When it comes right down to it, there are many things you cannot change about yourself. You can try as you might, but there are a ton of things about yourself that may seem to matter, which in the long run are not going to be important. If you define success by any of these factors you are never going to be successful. The people who have inspired me the most on the road to success are those who became successful despite not having all the advantages. When you read biographies of successful people, you will often find that they have overcome incredible obstacles. They have overcome dyslexia, illness, various handicaps, abuse, and more. They have gone through hell and come through the other side and have often achieved everything without the benefit of formal education, or even the support of family and friends. This is a large part of what makes their success so admirable. The greatest thing that makes people successful, in my opinion, is their ability to act promptly, concentrate their energies, and get something done. It is all about attitude. A good attitude and taking pride in what one does is the most important attribute anyone can possess.

No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man — the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slip-shod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant.

Yesterday I was in New York. I went up to a street vendor and he made me a piece of chicken. He was incredibly happy about the work he was doing, making the piece of chicken with enthusiasm. He smiled as he created my lunch, and asked me five or six different questions about how I liked my chicken. He seemed genuinely happy and engrossed in the simple act of creating a chicken kabob. I realized that this man liked his work so much that there was no doubt that he went home enthusiastic at the end of each evening. I can assume he probably has very good relationships and he is “integrated” because of his enthusiasm for what he does, and due to the pride he takes in his work. The chicken was delicious; needless to say the next time I am in New York I will seek him out. It is great being around people who like their job and who take pride in doing great work. A street vendor in New York may seem an odd person to name as the pinnacle of success; however, in reality, I find this example to be incredibly powerful. Virtually everyone I know, if they were forced to be working over a little coal stove across from Central Park making chicken kabobs all day, would be pissed off and frustrated. They would not put their heart and soul into the work and therefore they would not try their hardest. They would not be beaming with enthusiasm, and when they would go home at night, they would be angry about their work, which they would probably even take it out on their families. Life for them would be one complaint after another about this and about that. While this perception may sound extreme, this is how most people are with their jobs regardless of what they are doing. They may not be completely upset, yet they always have a certain amount of resentment, which carries over into everything they do. They do not put themselves behind their work, nor do they have a lot of pride in what they do, or the people they are working with and for. They are mostly indifferent. They misdiagnose and never complete a task with any passion. They are simply not present. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to hook up a couple of additional monitors to my computer. I had a computer person help me with the task and they were able to connect two monitors but not three. “You need a new computer if you are going to run three monitors…” they told me. They did not want to sell me a new computer, they just told me I basically needed to throw away my computer and spend $1,000 on a new one. I started shopping for a computer. I had someone else look at my computer and within 30 seconds they got all three monitors working just by opening a program in the computer which was already pre-installed on the machine. This sort of thing is typical because most people simply do not think through problems as much as they should. They do not care. What is the harm in this? The harm is huge. I will not work with the person who did a half-hearted job on my computer again. Why would I hire him? Next time I will simply choose to hire the other man. Every day many of us are losing or gaining the next job, whether we are working or not. Our reputation for doing quality work or not is something that very quickly gets around. When I was working in a law firm, I remember that the best thing that could happen to you was to get repeat assignments from the partners you were working for. If people gave you work a second time that meant they liked your work. You needed to do your work well and with passion to get more work. If they did not like your work, they did not give you repeat assignments. Attorneys who did not get repeat assignments eventually had no work, and without work they very quickly would find themselves with nothing to do and then soon after that–no jobs. This process repeated itself in law firms all the time and all over. Last week I had a piece of exercise equipment in my house that was broken. I summoned a repairman to come out to the house. “You need a new display,” he told me while presenting me with a bill of $140 for a diagnosis of what was wrong with the exercise equipment. “The display will probably cost $1,000 or so and I will order it and install it for you when it comes in.” “A new display, that’s impossible!” I told him. “The display works fine.” “Oh, then it must be the capacitor. I’ll order one of those. Those are around $1,200, I think. Now the bill for today is $140 and I will come back when I get the part.” The man did not know what he was doing and he did not appear to care one way or another. What was so upsetting to me about the experience was the complete apathy and lack of concern. I called the manufacturer of the exercise equipment and explained the situation. They were very helpful and apologetic. They came through and fixed it for me for free. People do not respect those who do half-hearted work and who are indifferent. We want to work with people who care about their jobs and put their heart and soul into it. Who knows what happened to that repairman. You need to give it your all.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer — but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best — those who can carry a message to Garcia. I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. He cannot give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, “Take it yourself.”

What most people do not understand is that there is a constant sorting out going on with all companies and organizations. Employers know who is working hard and putting their soul into the job and who is not. When people lose jobs it is often because they are the ones who are seen as not able to further the interests of the employer. Those who gossip about their employer at work, harbor a suspicion of their employer about this or that, watch the clock, do half-hearted work, and do not put in their all are always the first to be let go. Regardless of the economy, employers want to keep around those who are furthering their interests, and to get rid of those who are not. Again, it is really about your attitude. Your attitude is what carries the day.

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly take the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village — in every office, shop, store, and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed, and needed badly — the man who can carry a message to Garcia.

I do not care if you are a doorman in a building, a street vendor, the Chief Executive of a major corporation, an important attorney–or whatever. You need to be the person who can carry a message to Garcia. This person is the person who gains the respect of people, who never loses a job and who is, paradoxically, often the happiest in everything he does. Carry that message to Garcia and be the person who is strong, well respected, and who can complete a mission of importance in the world. Apply yourself and have the attitude of the man who carried the message to Garcia.

Related posts:

1. Immanuel Kant and What Good Hiring Managers Should Look For
2. Moses, Great Religious Figures, the Wilderness, and Your Career
3. Induction, Deduction, and Your Career

• Coca-Cola makes coke. It does not make automobiles or computers.
• Intel makes microchips. It does not make computers or refrigerators.
• McDonald’s makes hamburgers and fast food. It does not make airplanes.

The most successful companies stand for something. They not only stand for something, but they are completely consistent with their core principles. I am willing to believe that companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s are presented with opportunities to do different things all the time. Instead of doing something different, they remain consistent with what they do. They stand for something. This is what keeps them going and this is what makes them successful. One of the most interesting things about reviewing resumes is that very few of them ever stick out. Instead of trying to distinguish themselves, most people put together resumes that are bland and similar to other resumes out there. This sort of homogenization of resumes has gotten out of control.

• Most resumes contain tons of bullet points about this or that.
• The resumes contain ”canned” sorts of descriptions about a person’s skills and so forth.

The people try and look like everyone else so they can ”fit the mold” of being a certain type of person. The problem is that looking like everyone else is not going to help them be remembered, or get a job. A couple of years ago, I was looking for a computer firm to help our company do some work. I will never forget the day I spoke with the owner of the company in Louisiana. Despite having an impressive computer science background from Berkeley, the guy was chewing tobacco and spitting while I was talking to him. ”Are you chewing tobacco?” I asked him. I was interviewing him to do some very important work for our company. ”Yes Sir, I am,” he responded without an ounce of hesitation. Then as I was speaking, I started to hear a bunch of motor cross motorcycles in the background. These motorcycles were loud and they were whining up a storm. The man started screaming into the phone: ”I am sorry!! I am at a motor cross race right now. Let me go into the trailer where I keep my motorcycles. It is quieter.” I realize that this may not seem like the best way to behave in an interview, but immediately I was able to connect with him and know exactly what sort of guy he was. I used to chew tobacco in my younger years and grew up with guys like him who did motor cross. Prior to speaking with him, he was just an average ”nerd,” good at computer science, and so forth. After speaking with him, he was the sort of person I was excited to go into a professional relationship with. Why? Because I knew the sort of person he was likely to be.

• I knew that if he was bullshitting me, I would be able to pick up on it.
• I knew that he was not overly concerned with how he looked to me if he was chewing tobacco and racing motorcycles during the day.
• I knew that the guy with a Ph.D. in computer science from Berkeley, was brilliant as all hell, and if he was also interested in motor cross and chewing tobacco too, he probably was an incredibly interesting person.
• I knew that if he raced motor cross, he was probably out of a blue collar background and thought that office politics and so forth were bullshit.
• I knew that if he was towing a trailer full of motorcycles around, then he probably lived in a rural area where he could also keep his trailer (it is pretty rare to keep motor cross trailers in big cities and nice suburbs.
• I knew that If he lived in a rural area, he probably had certain values as well (I have a lot of family friends who live on farms and small towns).
• I knew that if he chewed tobacco, he probably was not too concerned with what others thought of him and tended to associate with a certain sort of person.

You can tell a lot about a person based on them standing for something. When someone does not stand for anything you cannot tell a lot about them. After talking with the motor cross computer programmer, I hired him. He has done a great job and made a good deal of money working for us. You can tell a lot about the girl who resigned from West Point because she was gay as well. I can almost 100% guarantee you that any discussion about her by Yale admissions officers did not revolve around her grades or extracurricular activities: It revolved around what she stood for. I am in Washington, DC, interviewing people for a position this week. I have reviewed a ton of resumes for this position. While some of these resumes stick out, for the most part I cannot remember most of them. One of the biggest problems that I am having is that everyone looks pretty much the same. Most people have similar experience and fairly similar backgrounds. No one I am interviewing seems to stand for anything. They may have had good jobs in the past, or good experience — but they do not really stand for anything in particular. If you do not stand for something, you typically do not get remembered. I have decided in light of the resumes I have reviewed that one of the most important things on a resume is to stand for something. It does not matter in particular what you stand for (unless it is incredibly offensive). Just standing for something

• Makes you more interesting.
• Makes you stand out.
• Makes people interested in hearing about your interest(s).

This morning I interviewed someone I found quite interesting (although he was not a good fit for our company). This man had a commitment to something called ”diversity recruiting,” which is filling positions in law firms that lack diversity. I found this quite interesting and had never seen a resume like this. He wanted to do nothing but diversity recruiting. The gist of our conversation was that he would be interested in speaking with me further, provided I had a job for him doing diversity recruiting for our company; however, if I did not have a diversity recruiting job, he would look elsewhere for a job. There are, of course, not a lot of positions out there I can imagine for someone to do nothing but diversity recruiting, compared to recruiting in general. By limiting his search to just ”diversity recruiting” it seemed to me that he was limiting himself; but in reality, I believe he was actually opening up a lot of doors. If someone needs a diversity recruiter, he will almost certainly get interviewed and called. He will stand out among other recruiters not committed to diversity. He will probably do very well. One of the biggest problems that people have is that they try and fit in and try to be all things to all people. To some extent, this is how we are programmed:

• Schools reward people who are good at math, science, languages, social sciences, and more. The ability to be good in all disciplines is rewarded.
• If someone is a good student in all disciplines and a good athlete, or good at an instrument, or theater as well—all the better. The more things people are good at the better!

Historically, the most positive feedback goes to people who are good at all things. However, in reality the best thing you can do is to be good at one thing and stand for one thing. One of the largest problems that people have in their career is when they diverge from what they are good at. Everyone is good at something, and diverging from your true strengths (and what you stand for) is something that almost always backfires. When you do not stand for something, you divert from your true strength and will not do well, not get as much recognition, and will not rise as fast as you are capable of. Everything begins to crumble and slowly fall apart when you are not doing something that you are really good at and do not stand for. The biggest success comes when you stand for something and are good at it.

Related posts:

1. A Message to Garcia and Your Career
2. The Graduate, Andrew Carnegie, and Finding Positive Economic Currents
3. Moses, Great Religious Figures, the Wilderness, and Your Career

Guests: We’re all so proud of you, proud, proud, proud, proud, proud, proud, proud. What are you going to do now? Ben: I was going to go upstairs for a minute. Guests: I meant with your future, your life. Ben: Well, that’s a little hard to say.

In one of the most memorable lines in movie history, Ben receives advice from Mr. McGuire (played by Walter Brooke), a family friend:

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you – just one word. Ben: Yes sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Ben: Yes I am. Mr. McGuire: ‘Plastics.’ Ben: Exactly how do you mean? Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it? Ben: Yes I will. Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That’s a deal.

In an interesting twist, in real life McGuire’s advice would prove to be very good. In fact, at all points in time there are industries and jobs which have a bright future in front of them like plastics. There are industries like this right now. Around a year ago, I received a telephone call from a contractor I know. He told me his 19-year old son wanted to speak with me about ”going into the Internet business.” While people frequently contact me to speak about finding jobs, work, and so forth, it is quite rare that a recent high school graduate contacts me for advice about starting an Internet business. I was excited to meet with the young man to see what had piqued his interest in this category. It turned into one of the most interesting meetings I had ever had. The boy brought his father, and when they arrived for the meeting, I could see they were visibly quite excited. The boy told me that a good friend of his and another kid from his high school had recently started an online business, selling cell phone chargers and other phone accessories online. The friend had started the online store because he kept changing cell phones a few times a year and was always having problems finding cases, car chargers, and other accessories. After some research, they discovered that most of the ”aftermarket” cell phone chargers and other stuff were made in China, and could be purchased very cheaply from distributors there. They found a distributor in China to sell them cell phone chargers and other cell phone accessories, and started purchasing them online. The mark ups they charged were incredible: They might purchase a cell phone charger for 60-cents and then turn around and sell it for $15.00. They were doing this with all sorts of accessories, and they now sold so much stuff online that they had a huge warehouse full of cell phone accessories. The kids were making an absolute fortune. In fact, despite the fact that the kids had no technical background, and no business experience whatsoever, they were earning over $500,000/month. The business was generating over $20,000,000 a year. ”Are you kidding?” I asked. Over the next day or so I would look into their business and based on what I saw, it looked to me like the kids were in all likelihood doing very well. The website they had built was primitive and not that exciting; nevertheless, it apparently was able to attract a lot of visitors and others looking for aftermarket cell phone accessories. The boy wanted my help building a similar website and learning how to import cell phone stuff. ”I know nothing about any of this,” I told him. ”I’d love to help you but I do not like to work on stuff I do not understand.” I hear stories about people who have become incredibly successful virtually overnight quite frequently. Usually, all the stories involve someone seeing something in the market that people want and then being there with the solution. It could be cell phone chargers, or it could be steel. The point is that the person sees a need in the market that is not being filled, and steps in with a solution to fill it. The most important decision you can make is deciding where you are going to put your effort. If you choose the right field for your efforts, you will frequently be richly rewarded (even if you do not have a lot of skill in the field). The kids who suddenly became incredibly wealthy with an online cell phone accessories business were successful mainly (I am guessing) because they chose to do something, and sell a certain type of product at the right place at the right time. When you identify something that the market wants, and provide it, then you can frequently do quite well—even if you are not particularly skilled. It is just a question of being at the right place at the right time and taking action. In your career, very little is more important than where you choose to focus your effort. The kids with the cell phone accessories business focused their effort on a booming business. At the time The Graduate was filmed in 1967, it was plastics. Soon new industries emerged like computers. There is always something that is booming and doing extremely well. All you need to do is find out what that is and act on it. Andrew Carnegie is remembered as someone who retired as the richest man in the world and amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the United States history. His life serves as an example of what is possible when people are able to see opportunity in front of them. Carnegie had donated over $350-million dollars to charity at the time of his death in 1919 (an incredible sum at the time). These donations funded the creation of over 1,600 libraries in the United States. Carnegie also sponsored numerous museums, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and various scientific expeditions. He has left a physical and inspirational legacy on the world. Carnegie sold his company at the age of 66 and retired. He wrote a book called The Gospel of Wealth where he argued that the rich should give away their money to less fortunate people. Carnegie came to the United States from Scotland when he was only thirteen years old. He soon went to work in a cotton mill but very quickly realized that steel presented an incredible opportunity. At the age of thirty, Carnegie started the Carnegie Steel Company in Pittsburgh. The company produced steel for the railroads and various bridges that were crossing the country at the time. Carnegie had the ability to keep costs low, and the huge profits he made eventually enabled him to acquire many of his competitors. What would have happened if Carnegie had stayed in the cotton business? My guess is that his life would not have changed all that much and someone else would have become rich in the steel business instead.

• Libraries would be named after someone else.
• Foundations would be called something different.
• One of the richest men in history would not be called Carnegie.
• Carnegie would not still be a name known to most Americans several generations after his death.

Carnegie succeeded because he was in the right place at the right time and took action in a career and business where there was true opportunity. This is something that very few people end up doing. Most people go to the first job they find that seems good, choose a job because it seems interesting, work someplace because they have a friend there … and so on. This is a mistake. You need to choose your employers, where you work, and what you do, based on where there is long-term opportunity. Nothing is more important than working somewhere with opportunity and where you are being carried away by the wind of a positive economic current.

Related posts:

1. A Message to Garcia and Your Career
2. Immanuel Kant and What Good Hiring Managers Should Look For
3. Induction, Deduction, and Your Career

• They put too much emphasis on skills and experience.
• They are overly impressed with interviewing skills.
• They think in terms of who is going to work the hardest.

Are these sorts of things important? Of course they are. But the single most important aspect of hiring is evaluating the person’s unique outlook on the world. If the person does not have a positive outlook on the world, the following are likely to happen:

• The person will bring down the morale of the people they work with.
• The person will harm the company through their negative outlook.
• The person will abandon the job for something that looks better.

When people go into interviews, they are trained to act like they have a good outlook. The best interviewers know how to say all the right things. But when it comes right down to it, it is generally very easy to see if the person is likely to do well in their next job: Do they have a habit of being optimistic, helping the company, and improving even when the grass may look better elsewhere? The reason this is so important is that eventually the grass will look greener elsewhere no matter what job we are in. One company may be able to pay a higher salary. Another company may be considered a ”hotter” place to work. Another company may be considered a place that is more fun to work. When you start evaluating everything around you and comparing apples to oranges, another job is always going to look like a better thing—eventually. It is for this reason that many people tend to move between jobs (and often relationships) with some frequency. In terms of how these people look at the world, they can never actually find happiness. Hiring people who do good work and are always able to find happiness should be the number one objective of hiring managers. Several years ago, I was on the freeway going to work when a man jumped to his death off a highway overpass around 20 cars in front of me. For around an hour I sat in the car in traffic while police and accident scene investigators cleared up the scene. It was not a pleasant scene in the least. While the accident happened far enough in front of me that I did not see the man’s face, the image of the man’s body coming off the bridge in his last few moments of life sticks in my mind to this day. There was simply nothing happy, or inspiring, about what I saw. It was a tragic end to someone’s life brought about by their inability to see the happiness in the world. Everyone looks at the world around them in different ways. Take two separate people and put them in an exactly same situation and they will have opposite impressions. Some will consider what they are seeing to be bad; others will consider what they are seeing to be quite good. It is like this with jobs as well. There are people who are able to see the good in jobs and there are those who never see the good in jobs. Metaphysics is the study of reality and asks questions about (1) what is there (2) what are the features and relations of things? One of the most famous studies of metaphysics was done by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. Here, Kant argued that metaphysics can only be scientific if it describes not the way the world is itself, but how we experience the world. Kant believed that one can never actually know how the world is in itself. For example, space and time are not objective aspects of the world as it is in itself, but are forms of our experience of the world. Under Kant’s interpretation, reality is simply our experience of the world. It follows from this that since two people will perceive the world in different ways, each person has a different reality. Some of our realities can be very positive and inspiring—other realities can be nightmares. The key to this is that we are all experiencing reality in a different way. Experience in structure by our minds and everyone’s mind is different. Kant describes this sort of ”experience knowledge” that is gained from experience as ”a posteriori” knowledge. The man who jumped off the bridge could have decided that he had many reasons to be happy. For example, he could have been excited about the good weather in Los Angeles, the relatively good economy at the time, the proximity to the beach, and the fact that if he decided to, he could certainly improve his life and standing in the world. Instead, the man had come to the conclusion that the world was not a happy place and that he no longer wanted any part of it. I have been a recruiter and in the career business most of my working life. I make my living when people are investigating finding new jobs. I have made a ton of hiring mistakes in my career; however, the thing I have seen time and time again is that it is very easy to tell if someone will be successful in their next job. Look at how long they were at their previous job. No job is fun all the time. The key to success, in my opinion, is if people have the power to stick it out in jobs and find happiness wherever they are. This is all about how you look at the world.

Related posts:

1. A Message to Garcia and Your Career
2. You Need to Stand for Something
3. The Graduate, Andrew Carnegie, and Finding Positive Economic Currents

• Moses makes a 40 year trip into the wilderness in the Bible.
• Jesus spends 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.
• Joseph Smith does this prior to writing the Book of Mormon and founding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
• Muhammad does this prior to founding Islam when he travels to the caves around Mecca to meditate.
• Buddha wanders the wilderness for six years seeking the meaning of life.

In each of these episodes, these men were upset about life and they sought seclusion in the wilderness to reach important conclusions about their future. These decisions were so important and fundamental that the men ultimately ended up changing the futures of others as well. What is it about making a trip into the wilderness that creates such powerful changes in these men? How can it be that the majority of the most significant religious figures in history experienced profound changes only after stepping outside of society and isolating themselves from the world? One of the most famous biblical stories is the story of Moses in the biblical book of Exodus. Moses was born to Jews in Egypt during the reign of a vicious monarch, Rameses II. The Jews had originally left Israel during a drought and settled in Egypt. While the Jews originally settled in Egypt as friends of the Egyptians, this friendship was soon forgotten and soon the Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians. At the time Moses was born, Rameses II had declared that all Hebrew children should be killed. Moses’ parents were able to hide him for some time; however, this eventually was no longer possible. When he was three months old, Moses’ mother put him in a basket and placed him in the Nile River hoping that someone would find him. Incredibly, Rameses II’s daughter found him and raised him as her son. When Moses had grown older, he learned that he was, in fact, a Jew, and not an Egyptian. Not too long later he saw an Egyptian beating a Jew. Moses was infuriated at the way the Jew was being treated and killed the Egyptian. In order to avoid being prosecuted for killing the Egyptian, Moses fled from Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula, where he lived for the next forty years. Moses eventually saw a sign (a bush that was on fire but not burning) and when he went to inspect it, he was commanded by God to lead the Jews out of Egypt. Since the Jews were slaves of the Egyptians, persuading the Pharaoh to let them go was not an easy task. However, God was allegedly very angry by this and sent ten plagues against the Egyptians. The final plague was the killing of the firstborn son of all the Egyptian families. After this, the Pharaoh relented and freed all of the Jews. Despite allowing the Jews to leave, the pharaoh still pursued them. The Jews were eventually trapped at the Red Sea. God wanted to save the Jews and parted the Red Sea so the Jews could escape. As they crossed, God closed up the sea and drowned the Egyptians. Moses then led the Jews through the desert to Mount Sinai. Here, he descended the mountain alone and received the Ten Commandments directly from God. The story of Moses share many commonalities with other stories of men who went into the wilderness. For example:

• Moses felt alone and isolated
• Moses felt the existing order was wrong
• Moses felt untouched by God
• Moses felt the need to take action
• Moses did not take action without separating himself from the existing order to think
• Moses took dramatic action
• Action was taken with God’s blessings and power, and it changed his life and everyone else’s

When I think about all of these men, I cannot but help also think about how much thought the average person puts into making a career change. In fact, when you are in a job you do not like, you are likely go through each of these steps: You Feel Alone and Isolated. When you are in work and a job that you do not like, the chances are good you will feel alone and isolated. You feel as if the people around you cannot identify with how you feel. Typically people who are unhappy in their jobs do not feel that others around them can understand what they are going through. It is hard to talk to coworkers when you do not enjoy what you are doing. You feel as if there is no one you can speak to or rely on. One of the worst jobs I ever had was as a garbage man. I was working with a group of men who were unionized and knew that I would likely quit very soon. I did not fit in and felt very alone in the job. Many of my lunches were eaten alone and I could not share in a lot of the conversations and so forth at work. The management where I was working knew that I was there for a ”short term” and typically gave me the worst jobs. I felt very alone and very isolated. I can still experience that feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think about it. You Feel the Existing Order is Wrong. Most people who are interested in looking for other jobs (or are doing so) feel that the management of the organization is not running everything correctly. They feel that the management should be doing something differently and believe that things would be different if management did something in a different way. They do not feel comfortable with the way the company is being operated and want things to change. It is very common for people who are angry at ”the system” or the way a company is being run to ”jump around” between jobs. Each new company they go to, impresses them as having something new wrong, or not being everything they expected it to be. Many people who are disenchanted with the way things are working start their own businesses. Many people quit their professions all together. You Feel Untouched by God. These are some powerful words and I do not mean them in a religious sense, however. What I do mean is that you may feel that you are working in a job where ”your heart” or ”your spirit” is not in what you are doing. This feeling of having your heart and soul in your work and what you are doing is very real and important. Nothing is more important than feeling energized by your job. When I am doing certain types of work, the thought of doing the work depresses me a great deal. When I am doing the work, I feel completely de-energized, and do not feel any sense of excitement or anticipation with the work. When I am doing other types of work I feel the opposite. I feel inspired and incredibly excited by the work that I am doing. I feel as if I am playing and not working. When you are doing this sort of work, your heart and spirit is in the work. This is the most important type of work you should be doing and you need to seek out this sort of work. I have yet to meet someone who does not become ”energized” and inspired by doing certain types of work. I have yet to meet someone who does not  feel drained, uninspired, and dulled by other types of work. You need to avoid the work that drains your energy and seek out the work that inspires you. You Feel the Need to Take Action. When someone does not like their job, they feel the need to take action and change what they are doing. You feel the need to do something completely different from what you are currently doing. When I was growing up, my mother worked for the State of Michigan in a job that was often quite boring and repetitive for her. She and her best friend used to sit around talking and planning about opening up a dude ranch in Wyoming (they were serious). Many of the people I know who are lawyers are always talking about quitting the practice of law, and starting a business doing something else. In fact, most people I know who are in unfulfilling jobs feel the need to take action. When I was practicing law, I felt the need to take action and do something different. I just did not know what. In fact, none of this even became clear to me until I had quit my job. I just knew that something needed to change. Since I have made the change away from being an attorney, I feel energized and never feel like things need to change. I feel like I am ”on” all of the time and I do not feel like I need another job. When you are in a crisis mode and do not enjoy what you are doing,  you feel the need to make a change. You Separate Yourself from the Existing Order to Think. It is ironic and yet very instructive that so many important decisions in religious texts came after people separated themselves from the existing order to think. Most religious figures actually physically separate themselves by going into caves, the forest, the desert, and so forth. In order to see things differently, they all needed to get away where they were not part of the existing social order—or a product of its influences. I believe that this particular part of the religious stories is among the most instructive and the most meaningful ones. I know so many attorneys who are incredibly unhappy in their jobs and do not enjoy what they are doing. They are surrounded by other attorneys, and however, cannot possibly see being in a life doing anything else that being an attorney. The attorneys I have known who have made major career changes typically (like me) only did it after extended vacations. Who knows what happens when we are away from the ”daily grind”. But you can never really think and see things the way they truly are unless you separate yourself from your life. You would be amazed at what this can do. The thoughts will come to you about what you should do, whether you want them to do, or not. You often need to be away for these thoughts to come. I cannot stress enough the importance of a long vacation and separation from your day-to-day life if you are seeking to make a profound change in your life. Getting away from what you are doing will give your mind time to process its next course of action. You will see clearly what you want to do next. You Take Dramatic Action. I have told this story in other articles of mine but it is so fascinating and ”on point” that I would like to share it again. Several years ago I was on an 8-day retreat for men and women. The theme of the retreat had something to do with learning ourselves based on how our parents raised us. It was a very good retreat and I enjoyed it immensely. The men and women were each segregated in individual cabins on a large property and prohibited from fraternizing with each other when class was not in session. In addition, there was a period of a few days when none of us were allowed to speak at all. We were not allowed to speak to anyone in the outside world during the retreat (no cell phones, laptops, and so forth were permitted) and there was also no television. At the end of the retreat the facilitators formed a circle and asked everyone to go around and share what they had gotten out of the retreat. To my astonishment, out of a group of perhaps 15 women in the retreat, 4 of them shared that they had gotten so much out of the retreat that they had decided to divorce their husbands! Each of these women was in her 40s and 50s, and I presumed that they had been married for some time. At least one person I recall stated that he was going to quit his job. It was the isolation that allowed them to reach these conclusions and think. A few weeks after the retreat, all the participants had a conference call to discuss the changes they had undergone. On the call, a few of the women who were divorcing their husbands chimed in about how much strength the course had given them, and so forth. While it may have been the retreat that gave them the course, my belief is that what really worked wonders on them was the time away from their husbands and daily lives. Action is Taken With God’s Power and Blessing. By ”God’s power” I mean with spirit. When you are in a profession that you love, you are doing something with ”spirit” and energy. When you are in a job you do not like, you are not doing it with any spirit at all. Instead, you are down and not excited. When I was practicing law, it was all I could do to get out of bed by 8:00 am each morning to get to work by 9:00 am. I could not stop myself from watching the clock on my computer monitor during the day (waiting for the day to end). I would sit there hoping for my boss to leave so I too could leave, and not be the first to leave each evening. I was completely dispirited by the work I was doing. I gained weight. I was cranky and not fun to be around. When I started in my current job over 10 years ago, I found myself popping out of bed at 4:30 am to start work—I was excited to get to work. I would be working even at 9:00 pm and not even realize that everyone else in the office had gone home. To be short and to the point: I was animated with ”spirit” for my work and I was not ”dispirited” like I had been in my previous job as an attorney. I loved what I did. The spirit I have for my work has enabled me to start companies which help people get jobs. It has enabled me to make a real difference in others’ lives and feel good about doing it. It has allowed me to feel like I have a purpose in the world. Conclusions If you are unhappy in your current job, then the odds are pretty good that you too need to take a trip ”into the wilderness” to find your true calling. You often need to separate yourself from the influences of the world to really make a difference in the lives of others and do something meaningful. You need to discover what energizes you and your spirits. You need to understand the best use of your natural gifts and powers on this earth. The lesson of great religious figures is important to learn from, irrespective of whether you believe in religion or not. They have experienced something that has changed their lives and the lives of millions as well. In fact, the world largely is governed by, united by, and divided by their teachings. All of the greatest religious figures went through the same changes you too may need to go through in your career as well.

Related posts:

1. A Message to Garcia and Your Career
2. Induction, Deduction, and Your Career
3. Stay on Track

• If we failed as something in the past, we will fail again.
• If we did not get a job in a certain industry in the past, we will fail again.
• If someone hurt us in the past, they will hurt us again.
• If we are hurt in the past when we tried something, we will be hurt when we try it again.
• If we made a mistake doing something in the past, we will make the same mistake again.
• If we continue doing something the same way we are doing it, we will continue to succeed.
• If we stop doing something the way we are doing it, we will fail.

The list of conclusions we draw about our surroundings and lives are generally based on inductive reasoning. Problems arise when we reach conclusions using inductive reasoning that are simply not true. For example, just because you failed at something in the past does not mean you will fail again. Similarly, if you were hurt when you tried something in the past, it does not mean you will be hurt if you try it again. The Scottish philosopher David Hume was the first person to raise the problem of induction. He conceived that there was no reason to believe that using inductive reasoning will lead us to the truth. In fact, inductive reasoning and the conclusions we reach about the world and our lives are a problem many people spend a lifetime either enslaved by or attempting to overcome.

• In every city in the United States there are office parks and buildings full of psychiatrists, psychologists, and others.
• There are also countless life coaches and other self-help people out there.
• There are religions which are based on ”self-help” and people correcting their beliefs about themselves.
• Bookstores are jam-packed with books to help people overcome their doubts and fears.

What the entire psychology and self-help industry is largely doing is helping people correct their mistakes in inductive reasoning. Most people are simply using faulty logic and ideas to evaluate their life. A couple of years ago I was working with a woman whom I had gotten a job at one of the top 2 or 3 law firms in Los Angeles. Most of the attorneys in the law firm (virtually all of them) went to the top 10 law schools. This woman had gone to a school that was probably ranked around 50 at the time (or thereabouts). When she got to the law firm she did not do well and did not fit in. She also did not keep up with the pace of work. She was intellectually capable of doing the work but just did not work hard enough. Within around 18 months or so the woman had lost her job. I spoke with the law firm about it at the time and they told me that she had lost her job because she was not working hard enough. Her hours were somewhat unpredictable and she was also not completing assignments in a timely manner. She could not be counted upon to get things done. She contacted our recruiting firm and started working with another recruiter in the firm to find a job. She did not contact me. When I saw her name in the system, I pulled up her resume to review it. To my astonishment, she had changed the law school she attended from the ”top 50” law school to one of the top 5 or 6 law schools in the United States. I immediately called her and confronted her with this fact. What she told me was amazing to me: She said that she felt she had lost her job because of the law school she had attended. She felt that unless she had another law school on her resume she would never find a good job again. She stated that she felt like a ”second class citizen” at the law firm due to her law school and was fired because of her law school. She had reached the following sort of conclusion: I lost my job because I did not go to a top law school. I will lose my next legal job unless I have a new law school on my resume. I am sure you realize that this logic is nonsensical. Nevertheless, the woman firmly believed this. We, of course, refused to work with her and notified all of the law firms we sent her to about what she had done with the law school on her resume. A few years later I looked her up and could not find her practicing law anywhere in the United States. I am sure a lot of this had to do with the conclusions she reached about her ”employability” due to the law school she attended. Most of us are using some sort of inductive reasoning in how we reach conclusions about our lives and careers. We reach conclusions based on past events that simply are not true. These conclusions are often absolutely crazy and make no sense. In fact, every single person out there is operating under a condition where they are seeing the past and not the present. Because we are seeing the past in most situations, most of us cannot even see what is in front of us in the present (which is the only time there). Because you are not seeing the present, you are, in fact, not really understanding much at all. If you are seeing just the past then you are seeing an illusion. You are actually blocking yourself from seeing the true nature of what is here and in front of you. You are actually seeing nothing as it really is. You are generally only seeing your past experiences in the things that are in front of you. Think about your beliefs, about your potential, and life, and how much they are based on just the past. How many conclusions have your reached about the way something is based on what happened previously? How many false conclusions have you reached about your own life and career due to this sort of information? You are, in fact, limited by faulty beliefs about your past and potential. When I was around 12 years old, I was climbing a temple in Mexico with my father and I had an experience I will never forget. We had gone to a recently discovered ”ruin” and were the only people hiking the temple. There was a chasm that was about 8 feet across that could be jumped to cross between two points of the temple. The only problem with this was that there was a fall of at least 100 feet down if I missed my jump. I would certainly die if I missed the jump. ”Go ahead and jump it if you want,” my father told me. I looked at this jump and was not completely sure I would make it. I was not willing to take that risk with my life. ”Why would you tell me to try that?” I asked my father. I was a little confused. ”Because you need to believe anything is possible,” he told me. ”I knew you would never jump but you should not be setting limits in your mind about what you can do.” Induction is not the same as deductive reasoning. In the classic example of deductive reasoning we would state: (1) Socrates is a man, (2) and all men are mortal, (3) therefore Socrates is mortal. Here, the facts make the conclusion accurate and true. However, when using induction, the facts about the past do not necessarily settle how the future is going to be. Just because we lost our job in the past due to something does not mean we will again. In inductive reasoning, we can argue that evidence might not completely support the conclusion but it makes it likely. However, we do not necessarily have any justification for assuming that the future will, more likely than not, be like the past. In your career and life, it is important that you realize that the past does not equal the future. Realizing when you are using induction incorrectly to reach conclusions about your potential and life can dramatically increase your success when you realize you are not limited about the past. The odds are that your negative conclusions about yourself are simply not true.

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• The salaries in public interest careers are typically much lower than in the private sector. In fact, the salaries may be ”shockingly low” and barely enough to live on. People who go into public interest work do not do so for the money. Instead, they do so because they have a passion for the cause and want to work around people who share their passion. If money is your object, you should not be going into public interest work and would be better serving in a private industry. For most people in the public interest, they are happy as long as they are making enough money to survive.
• When you work for a public interest organization, you need to share the beliefs of the people you are working for. For example, if you are not against pollution, then you would probably have a very hard time fitting in with an organization that was fighting to keep the environment clean. You do not want to simply apply to a public interest job because you are looking for a job. Virtually, regardless of the job you hold in the public interest organization, if you do not share the ”core beliefs” of the people you are working with, you will not fit in and, in all likelihood, will be ejected like a virus. You need to fit in with the people you are working with.
• The training, feedback, and work environment inside of public interest organizations tend to be extremely unstructured—and in many cases nonexistent. People are typically ”thrown in” and expected to do whatever it takes to get the job done. There may be no performance reviews and the work environment may be chaotic. For example, you may be expected to do a lot of multitasking. It is not uncommon for lawyers who might make $250,000 a year in the private sector, to be expected to clean the kitchen and answer phones in a public interest organization (while being paid $30,000 a year). Because of limited budgets—and just the overall work climate—public interest organizations expect a lot of multitasking from the people who work there. If you are the sort of person who takes structure, titles, and so forth seriously, you should not be working inside of most public interest organizations.

Public Interest Jobs are Difficult to Get One of the most interesting things about public interest work is just how competitive it is to get the jobs. Public interest organizations are generally populated by some of the smartest people around. It is not unusual to see a public interest organization almost exclusively made up of graduates of Ivy League schools. People who come from privileged backgrounds often feel the need to give something back and are not interested in traditional careers. People working in public interest organizations also tend to be quite passionate, which may be another reason for their historical high levels of achievement. Finding public interest jobs can be difficult.

• Many talented people are interested in public interest work. The people who go into public interest are typically not doing so for money. They are often people who come out of privileged backgrounds and have strong educations. The pool of people you are competing against for these jobs is in many cases more ”accomplished” than people who might be applying to companies paying several times more than the public interest organization for a similar job.
• People who are interested in public interest work typically are very passionate about the subject matter. When you are competing for public interest jobs, you are competing against others who typically have a similar level of passion. These people may have been volunteering and doing other work in a related field for years prior to applying to a public interest organization. In fact, many of these people are so committed that they would often do the work for free if they did not need money to live on.
• Public interest jobs are not typically promoted well. Public interest and nonprofit entities typically have no budget for promoting their jobs. Since public interest organizations are [typically] supported by donations, they try and keep their expenses as low as possible. Accordingly, they do not spend a lot of money advertising their open positions. This makes finding the public interest jobs very difficult.
• Public interest organizations tend to have few openings at the most, and most of the openings they have, are filled ”informally” and without advertising. Public interest organizations have a network of volunteers at most times and lots of these volunteers are consistently asking the management and others in the public interest organization for jobs. Accordingly, the public interest organization typically has groups of people who are trying out at all times for various jobs. They are showing their commitment by working for free even prior to the organization having an opening. I would estimate that most public interest jobs are filled this way.

How to Get a Public Interest Job If you are interested in working for a public interest organization, there are some things you need to do that are different from the way most people look for jobs.

• You should apply to the public interest organizations you are interested in even if they do not have openings. When you apply, it is generally a good idea to enclose a letter of a few pages explaining your enthusiasm for the cause the public interest organization supports. You should explain the reasons for your passion and any experience and volunteer work that you have that is relevant. The reason you need to apply to public interest organizations even if they do not have openings is because many times the organizations do not even advertise their openings and fill them with their own volunteers. One of the most important components of getting a public interest job is having passion for the subject matter and if you look like you have that passion, the organization may bring you in. Identify the public interest organizations you are interested in and then apply.
• You should apply regularly to the public interest organizations you are interested in. Continuing to apply shows your interest and passion for the organization. The people you are applying to typically share your passion and like seeing people apply often. Unlike other employers, I do not believe it is bad to appear ”aggressive” when applying to a public interest organization: Public interest organizations are themselves typically aggressive  in advancing their causes, and like people who share this passion. In addition, public interest organizations are often quite disorganized (they have so many people doing multitasking) and may even miss your application when it comes in. If you have a particular interest in working for a certain public interest organization, it might make sense to apply as often as every few months. Persistence pays off when searching for a job in a public interest organization. I recommend calling people who are receiving your application inside of a public interest organization, and sharing your interest in working there, and establishing a rapport with them. I know someone who had to do this for over 10 years before getting his dream job with a public interest organization. This is important. When you speak with the people inside of the public interest organization, you should also ask them if they have any volunteer opportunities. This shows your commitment as well and makes you stand out. People inside of public interest organizations are less likely to be annoyed by your calling and pestering than a private employer in my opinion. They want to see your commitment to what they do: Remember, you will be taking a very low salary in exchange for working on a matter that you consider very important. Commitment is what it is all about.
• If you are interested in working in the public interest you need to get involved in any organization that deals with your cause and network with people there. If you are interested in the environment, for example, you would want to get involved in environmental organizations as a volunteer and/or go to their environmental-related talks and events. You want to network and get to know people who are involved in the cause that you are interested in. Remember that most public interest jobs are filled informally. Most public interest causes are made up of ”informal groups” who share an interest in the cause. You want to get involved in the community and be seen as a contributor.

There are two methods that I recommend to find public interest employers and jobs. First, I recommend simply identifying the public interest employers you are interested in, and applying to them regardless of whether they have openings. Second, I recommend visiting various websites where you can locate these jobs. Lists of Public Interest Organizations You Can Apply To http://search.dmoz.org/cgibin/search?search=Public+Interest+or+Non+Profit+or+Charity+or+Philanthropy http://search.dmoz.org/cgibin/search?search=Public+Interest+or+Non+Profit+or+Charity+or+Philanthropy http://charity.lovetoknow.com/List_of_Nonprofit_Organizations http://www.hud.gov/offices/oir/oirpublicinterestgroups.cfm List of Public Interest Job Sites http://www.PublicInterestCrossing.com (aggregator of job sites and jobs) http://www.nonprofit-jobs.org/ http://www.nonprofitcareer.com/ http://www.Hound.com (aggregator of employers including public interest employers) http://www.idealist.org http://www.dotorgjobs.com/ http://www.hscareers.com/ http://www.hscareers.com/ http://www.jobsgopublic.com/ http://www.opportunityknocks.org/ http://www.ncpg.org/pals/?section=11s Conclusions Working in the public interest can be extremely rewarding. In fact, very few people who go into the public interest ever go back to working in the private sector. I hope the suggestions and links above are of assistance to you in your career.

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• Their phone rings constantly (and they answer it)
• They check their email every few minutes
• They get up, go and get coffee, and chat in the hall
• They surf the Internet while working
• They day dream about this or that

On Sundays (for the most part) the phone stops ringing, the ”urgent emails” stop coming and the people to chat with are not around. There is more reason to focus and there are fewer distractions. Sundays are when most people can get stuff done. Recently I was speaking with a very well-known executive running a good-sized company who had an accident and had injured his brain: ”I am the brains behind the business and a brain injury was not a good thing for the business,” he told me. When you look at the best executives (and the best people in any profession for that matter), their strength comes from their ability to think and make decisions. It is their ability to concentrate, draw upon their experience and get things done, where their true value comes from. In most cases, the best professionals are not paid to day dream, surf the Internet, or mindlessly check their email all day: Instead, they are paid for their powers of concentration and ability to formulate solutions and analyze, and communicate information in ways that others cannot. I love watching shows about doctors trying to decipher various illnesses people have. A doctor is someone who is paid to think, paid to concentrate, and paid for the ability that they can interpret information. It is the same thing with most lawyers. Anyone who is good at their job (and has reached a good level of professional standing based on their abilities) has the ability to concentrate on the task at hand. This is the case for a good car mechanic just as it is the case for a physicist. Our abilities and the assessment of our abilities are determined largely by our ability to concentrate. You do not need Sundays in order to concentrate. The most successful people should not need Sundays to concentrate. Instead, they should develop the habit and self-discipline to be able to concentrate every day, all of the time. There are different types of work you can do on your job. There are both qualitative and quantitative dimensions of your job:

• Quantitative aspects of your job involves such things as how many hours you are working, or how much of a product you produce. For example, you might say you wrote a 10 page memo, or worked for 12 hours straight.
• Qualitative aspects of your job involves such things as (1) the intensity of your work, (2) how efficient you are with your work, (3) how hard you concentrate on your work, (4) how organized you are while working in order to make the best use of your time. For example, working three hours with no interruptions, concentrating and thinking very hard is something that is far more difficult than working for five hours with no interruptions.

The professional world is generally set up to reward people who are able to do an exceptional job on the qualitative aspects of their work. The most intelligent people and the people who do the best in the world are also the people who are able to do the best in the qualitative aspects of the work they do. In college, for some strange reason, I placed into honors calculus. In order to do well in honors calculus you needed to be able to concentrate on very long drawn-out problems that were extremely sophisticated and had many, many twists and turns built into them. In contrast, regular calculus (which I transferred into later) was in the same class but just involved ”baby problems” that were far less sophisticated and much easier to do. Everyone I knew, who was able to complete honors calculus and did not ”chicken out” and transfer to another course, is doing exceptionally well professionally to this day. They are doctors, PhDs, and others. I have no doubt that the ability to think through and concentrate for long periods of time that the course inculcated in them made a difference to some extent in what happened to them. The course taught more than calculus: It taught the ability to concentrate on complex issues for a long period of time and see a depth to problems (and solutions) that other people did not. If you can concentrate for a long period of time on a single issue, you will improve the quality of the work that you do. Nothing is more important than the qualitative aspects of your work. The qualitative aspects of your work are incredibly important because they end up determining your outcome. Good companies and employers value efficiency. Good companies and employers value people who can get more done in less time. Good companies and employers value people who are organized and think through issues when they are working on something. Most employers can tell if you are ”full of it” and not concentrating during work. When an employer walks around the office and sees a bunch of people talking and messing around, taking long lunches, doing all sorts of personal calls, screwing around on the Internet, and more — they know who is being productive with their time and who it not. No employer is stupid. What would you think if you were an employer? When the time comes to make promotional decisions, the people who are promoted in companies are the people who have the ability to concentrate on the task at hand. Concentrating on the task at hand and not getting distracted is incredibly important. You need to work hard and be focused. The people who work so hard on Sundays (in my opinion) are doing so because they have a hard time concentrating during the week. However, if you can concentrate during the week and minimize distractions then you do not need a Sunday. 100% focus during the week is crucial and it could change your career and life. The qualitative and not the quantitative aspects of your work are the most important. At the end of each day you should be tired of having exercised  and concentrated your mind. If you take breaks from your work every 45 minutes or so, you should be tired of having concentrated on your work. You should put your full effort on whatever you do. You should also not try and do more than one thing at a time. Break up your day into the tasks you would like to accomplish and do them at specified times. Work on tasks in 30 minute increments (or whatever suits you). Never try and do more than one thing at a time. Few people realize how crucial managing their work, time and qualitative aspects of their work are. You need to concentrate. Your mind and your use of it is where all of the rewards are going to come from. You need to give everything you are doing your full attention.

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Do we know the poor in our own homes? Sometimes people can hunger for more than bread. It is possible that our children, our husband, our wife, do not hunger for bread, do not need clothes, do not lack a house. But are we equally sure that none of them feels alone, abandoned, neglected, needing some affection? That too is poverty. Mother Teresa: In My Own Words, p.27

To me this is a stunning insight into the nature of the human condition that Mother Teresa was able to develop out of her care and love for the poor. It all came out of one goal and concentrating on that goal. When I think of this passage I am reminded of all the people I know who may be well off but are unhappy inside. What can be done to help these people? How many people are suffering around us? How many people need a new job, a new career, or a new life and are allowed to suffer in silence. I personally find Mother Teresa’s words very inspiring to my own life goals. Mother Teresa spent a good deal of her time travelling around to the various shelters her missionaries were running.

She would go from one tiny baby to the next, and if she spotted one which was so frail or sick it seemed likely to die that day, she would wrap it in a blanket and give it to one of her helpers to hold, with the instruction simply to love the child until it died. What mattered to her was that no child in her care should die without having experienced love. One morning Mother Teresa placed one of these desperately sick babies in the arms of one of the lay helpers. The helper held it and loved it until finally it dies at 6 o’clock in the evening. She passed away the hours by humming Brahms’s lullaby. More than thirty years later she would still retain the memory of how that tiny baby, weak as it was, pressed itself against her. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography, Katherine Spink, Page 124.

The Missionaries of Charity was an organization that ran homes for people who needed help such as people suffering with incurable diseases, lepers, destitute widows and mothers without husbands and others who could not care for themselves. By the time Mother Teresa died in 1997, the religious order consisted of over 4,500 nuns who, like Mother Teresa, were all dedicated to serving the ”poorest of the poor”.

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