I don’t know if this thread will see a lot of activity, or a little, but here goes:
As the title asks, what is the best advice you’ve ever received? Personal, professional, whatever. I’ve recently done a lot of reflecting on some that I received a long time ago, and figured it could be an interesting discussion if a few of us shared.
For me (both professional):
-“Perfect is the enemy of good enough”. I happened to hear this in a training on my second day of work, fresh out of grad school. It helped me to focus my thinking around what was truly necessary to achieve a given objective, and to begin with that end in mind (essentially, having a good strategy). I don’t know that I could have articulated it this way at the time, but it brought down a major aspect of strategic thinking to seven words. And keeping this principle in mind is responsible for a substantial portion of my career success, I’ve been surprised how any people do not get this, or how many see it as a revelation when I say it. For me, it has been a keep to effectiveness (and more importantly, avoiding unneeded work!).
-“Work pays you three ways: the money you take home, in experience/learning, and in the network you build”. It’s about playing the long game. I know that I’ve consistently been a bit underpaid in my job since I’ve started it (13 years now, across four different roles), but I know that the experience I’m building, at the rate I’m building it, can catapult me into a higher bracket in the near future. I wouldn’t trade the growth I’ve had at my job for any (plausible) amount of money at a different one where my situation would have been more rigid, or where I couldn't have built incredible cross-functional relationships. This philosophy got me to director and a clear part of leadership succession planning by 40, and will hopefully get me my own shop by about 47. Certainly worth a few thousand here and there.