Privacy careers Part II: Habits & Systems for Success
Welcome back to part II of my series on privacy careers.
Today we will discuss personal development, productivity and the importance of systems and goals. I ran a poll on LinkedIn to see what topics would be of interest and the results were split evenly between today’s topic and tips of those who are in mid-level privacy roles. Naturally, I will cover the latter in part III of this series. As always, in this post I will cover what works for me, my personal goals and beliefs. There is not one way of staying organised and not everyone wants the same things. I’ve always been an incredibly ambitious person and I’m part of the “What’s next?” crew, more about that later. Lastly, we are all in different stages of life and your priorities change over time. These are all things to keep in mind as you read this.
What do you want ?
This may seem to be a topic that is too basic to cover, but you’d be surprised how many people do not know what they want. Every year I pick three focus areas for the year. I choose these from topics such as: fitness, social life, career, education, travel etc. That is not to say I won’t focus on each of them, but I pick three that I want to emphasise that year. Once I know this, I will be able to map more granular goals to those topics and develop the key steps I need to take to get there. Also, your year starts when you say it does. You do not have to wait until January or September to do this. Today is always the best day to start! Key questions to ask yourself are:
Emerald speaks about the funding gap for female entrepreneurs at the European Parliament
What will it take for me to be proud of what I have done as I reflect on this next year?
What makes for a year well lived?
What do I need to feel fulfilled?
What is my one big thing this year?
What job titles do people I admire have and how did they get there?
Who can help me achieve these goals?
What resources do I need to get there?
What are my non-negotiables?
When it comes to careers, you need to know what role you want and figure out what competencies you need to land such a role. You can consider looking at job descriptions to see what companies are asking for, but there is also real value in looking at what other people have done who are in the jobs you’d like to have in a few years time. It is not a bad idea to put yourself out there and get to know some of those people. It may be that you need to go the formal education route, but it may also be that you need to develop skills. I will use my personal plan this year to give you an idea of how I go about planning and getting from A to B.
This year my goals are to finish up at Stanford, successfully organise my wedding and focus on my role at Logitech. Therefore the three focus areas are: education, family and career (in no particular order). This means how I organise my days, weeks and months need to reflect these goals. A typical week will have many work demands, lectures and deliverables for Stanford and time that needs to be spent on getting organised for the wedding. I know my weekdays are full of work, often until in the early evening. That is time I do not have available for the two other focus areas. This means my Stanford work will have to happen in the evenings and during the weekends. I know how much time I need on average so I spend half a day on Sunday on Stanford and one evening per week, sometimes two depending on the workload. Wedding planning happens through a weekly check in, usually on a Sunday evening or a weekday evening if it is urgent. The key here is to put it in your calendar! If it is not in the calendar, it will not happen. This way you don’t think you have more time than you actually have and you are more likely to honour your meetings. You show up at your work meetings, your meetings with yourself are also important. You have to value your own time too.
Now onto the non-negotiables. There are certain things everyone needs to feel good. For me those are exercise, adequate sleep and one day that is my own every week ( I do not always manage this, but I strive for it). If you want to perform at a high level, your body and mind need to be looked after. Personally, I enjoy using my lunch break for exercise or, in the summer when it is not dark at 4PM, I can get myself to the gym after work. I like to get to sleep for 10 and I am up super early as this works for me. You need to figure out what works for you.
The One BIG Thing
On the “One Big Thing”. I am a big believer in having one priority. At the end of the year, I always want to have one thing that if I achieve it, I will consider my year a success. One year this was being promoted, another year I gave a TEDx talk and this year I intend to graduate from the Stanford programme I am enrolled in. We have become far too accustomed to having “priorities”. A fun exercise is to actually look at the etymology of the word “priority”. It was a word that was singular until about one hundred years ago. Yet, we know this word has been used since the 14th century. It meant the very first thing, and it is still a word that means the thing of most importance. It helps to keep this in mind when your mind is telling you that you must achieve everything this year or everything at the same time. This is not how things work. While I am all for being ambitious, you also have to protect your mind from the unrealistic expectations of today. This is especially true if you spend time on social media. Aim high, but make it achievable.
systems protect you from your lesser self
If you’re reading this, chances are you are an ambitious person on a mission to success. However, we all have a lesser self who “doesn’t feel like it” on a given day. I first heard about this concept on Tim Ferriss’ podcast where he interviewed Neil Strauss. I thought it was a great way to articulate the importance of rigging the game so you can win. This means understanding your own weaknesses. These days everyone’s weakness is the mobile phone, put it in another room if you can. If you’re doing deep work, also disable your email notifications on your computer. In this section I will talk through a few systems and mental models I find helpful. There are so many out there, there are are ones that stuck with me.
“Winning is about how you perform on your worst days, not just your best days.”
On eating frogs
I like the “Eat That Frog” 🐸 system by Brian Tracy, it basically means getting the thing you are dreading the most done first. Often it takes way less time than you think and things you put off have a habit of expanding and/or escalating. In any case, these tasks are taking up space in your brain so just get them done and move on.
Theming your days
We all know that task switching kills your productivity. If in any way possible try to theme your days. This idea comes from Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter. For me, I take my external meetings on a Friday and I usually do my course work on Wednesdays and Sundays. Some people have some more flexibility and are able to have one day for policy work, one day for meeting stakeholders, one day for learning and development etc. If this is not possible, you can break your day up into smaller pieces, say you cannot have a deep work day, you may be able to block off your morning for focus time.
Type 1 and Type 2 decisions
Type 1 and type 2 decision making has really helped me, especially as I progressed in my career and had to make more decisions and often more high-stakes decisions. I believe these decision types were coined by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. Analysis paralysis is real thing and will sap your energy and productivity. Type 1 decisions are what Bezos calls “a one day door”, they are irreversible decisions that cannot be changed once you execute them. This means you should make these decisions slowly and spend time thinking them through carefully. The consequences of type 1 decision are often transformative and game changing if you make the right call, so it is worth the time spent. Type 2 decisions, on the other hand, are “two way doors”; once you start executing you can reverse the decision if it was a terrible idea. These decision can be made more quickly and it is good to be decisive and move on. Often people treat type 2 decisions as type 1 decisions, which creates missed opportunities and a loss of time and productivity.
Micro-goals
On days where you “REEEEALLLLYY don’t feel like it”, it often helps to set ridiculously small goals. Not only does it help you feel better to know that you’re moving forward, even if it is just a little, you’ll find that once you get started it is not so bad after all and you get way more done than expected. It can be as simple as saying, today I will only have to work out for 10 minutes. Or, I only have to write one hundred words of my article, or create 1 slide for my 10 slide presentation etc.
Hell-Yes decision making
I like to overextend myself, if you are type-A you will understand. For years I used to say yes to too many things, not realising that by agreeing to someone else’s priority, I was no to my own. As your career gains some steam, more opportunities will like come your way. It is important not to lose sight of your annual focus areas and goals. Now if it is not a “hell-yes”, it is a “no”. This is hard, as often things seem like fun or may be of value to you but there is a level of uncertainty around how valuable it will actually be. Most of them will not be a “hell-no” or “hell-yes”, this means they should probably be a “no” and so when the “hell-yes” decision does come across your desk, you have the energy and bandwidth to give it socks.
On Mental Models, Anxiety and my favourite razors
We live in times where it is easy to become anxious and overwhelmed. We went through a pandemic together and the world definitely feels a bit dark at the moment. You definitely do not need you workload and other everyday issues to add to that. Occam’s razor can be helpful here. When you are trying to determine an explanation for something, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. In other words, the explanation with the fewest assumptions is usually the best choice. Hanlon’s razor is another one I enjoy, you may know this one as:
"never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance."
“Ignorance” is a little narrow here. It may very well be down to different beliefs or poor communication. Sometimes messages come across differently than the sender may have wanted. It is always best to assume there was no malicious intent and put it down to an alternative explanation.
Wrapping it up
This is a very new type of post for me and I have no idea how it will be received. You might let me know in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter. I have a lot more to say on this topic and can write another article on it if I know there is an interest.