8 Rare Gems from Heidi Roizen on Building a Fulfilling Life and Career
Stephen Williams stashed this in Startups
http://firstround.com/review/8-Rare-Gems-from-Heidi-Roizen-on-Building-a-Fulfilling-Life-and-Career/
1. If you’re not doing something hard, you’re wasting your time.
2. Your ethics set the tone for your life.
3. Your gut has more information than you do.
4. Picking your team is the most important thing you will ever do.
5. The art of negotiation is finding the optimal intersection of mutual need.
6. Life is actually really, really random.“I assume everything that can go wrong will go wrong so when it actually happens, I’m not stressed,” she says. “I have a change of clothes in my carry-on; I schedule no meetings within two hours of landing; I expect the mess, and if it doesn’t happen, I’m pleasantly surprised. 95% of stress is self-inflicted.”
7. Get good at using your time.
8. The 20-40-60 Rule.“At 20, you are constantly worrying about what other people think of you. At 40 you wake up and say, 'I’m not going to give a damn what other people think anymore.' And at 60 you realize no one is thinking about you at all.” The most important piece of information there, Roizen says: “Nobody is thinking about you from the very beginning.”
“You need to be your own advocate,” Roizen says. “If you’re in a job you don’t like, you need to be the one to change it. You can’t sit in your office and wait for someone to bring you the answer.”
But then it occurred to me, I have never once been in a meeting where halfway through I thought, ‘Even though this person is smart, they have a wrinkle in their jacket, so they must not be very good.’ No one ever thinks that way.”
Stashed in: Networking, Awesome, Meaning of Life, Favors!, Give and Take, success, @firstround
Good points about work and life choices.
Another good set of suggestions.
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/heidi-roizen-today-everything-relationship-driven
Heidi Roizen: “Today Everything Is Relationship-Driven”
Master networker Heidi Roizen on what has changed — and what hasn’t — about professional networking in the era of social media.
1. Use social media to help speed connections …
2. … but don't confuse social media connections with actual intimacy.
3. Build relationships based on giving.
4. For broad exposure, serve your industry.
5. Embrace the power of weak ties.
6. If you can't find the win-win, maybe you shouldn't ask the favor.
7. People can only drink so much coffee.
8. If you want people to think of you for opportunities, help them connect the dots about you.
Always ask yourself what's in it for the other person.
95% of stress is self inflicted. So true!
6. Life is actually really, really random.“I assume everything that can go wrong will go wrong so when it actually happens, I’m not stressed,” she says. “I have a change of clothes in my carry-on; I schedule no meetings within two hours of landing; I expect the mess, and if it doesn’t happen, I’m pleasantly surprised. 95% of stress is self-inflicted.”
nobody is thinking about you! haha! so good...
She's like an anti-narcissist.
3. Build relationships based on giving.
There's a great book called Give and Take, and it talks about the givers — people who will do a favor with no expectation in return. At the end of the day, being a giver is a good thing, not just personally, but there's research that shows that the most successful networkers and the most successful people are givers. In essence, you're building up human capital in the capital bank, not necessarily knowing how you're going to spend it.
7. People can only drink so much coffee.
I get asked for favors by people I don't know all day long. Most often, it's "I heard you speak, I'm at a juncture in my career, I'd really like to buy you a coffee and sit down with you." Well, I get probably 10 of these a day, which makes it impossible for me to do.
If that person were to think about my day instead, maybe what they'd say is: "I'd like five minutes of your time. Here's my resume, and I have two questions to ask you — here are my questions." I'm more likely to say yes to that, even for someone I don't know, just because they've packaged it in a way that allows me to be efficiently helpful. When I ask a favor, I think, "How can I make this so easy that they won't mind doing it?"
Hahaha, no one needs this advice more than you, Panda! You need to PUSH people to ask for favors in the way that takes the least of your time. I can't believe how many people expect to just spend HOURS snuggling up to you and basking in the glow of your pandic visage. Or there's the other kind, who will ask for introductions to like 25 VCs!!! I think you should have an autoresponder that just says, "Please reframe your request in a form that will take me 5 minutes or less, including emailing you the result."
That's a good idea. :)
6:25 PM Mar 10 2015