What do kids, sticks, and a playful mind have anything to do with your career?
Everything!
When I was a kid, I used to play outside with other children, and we used to sword fight with sticks. My parents would run out of the house, yelling, "You're going to poke each other's eye out!"
I'm happy to have proved them both wrong as I still have both eyes. But I am even more pleased to reflect on that experience as I think about careers.
As children, we do not have lethal steel swords to battle with; we have harmless wooden sticks. We leveraged the constraint of lacking a deadly weapon and utilized the resources we did have - dead limbs from trees - sticks. Our childlike minds enabled us to see this opportunity in the environment and leverage it to engage in play.
As adults, do we practice the silly, the absurd, the illogical often enough? We embrace constraints by looking at our abilities, lack of slack, bandwidth, time, spreadsheets, projects, models... ugh, the list goes on!
Let's go back to basics. Let's try to tap into the magic of being a child and see our career limitations as lands to be explored, opportunities for adventure, and with only the sky as our limit.
Hit a brick wall climbing the ladder? Start your own business.
Not getting responses from employers? Try connecting on email and offering a proposal to a problem.
Not getting the salary you want? Think about other ways to feel fulfilled outside of work.
People not lining up to go to your website? Consider giving them less to focus on.
Consider the absurd, the illogical, the thing that no one else does. They might not work, but you’ll never know unless you try. The worst thing to happen to you is that you fail and learn.
As I write, it's -6C/21F, sunny, and 8:30 in the morning. We've elected to avoid socialization with others for the public health. And as I look outside, I see nothing but a world of opportunity - even if that world is just me, a stick, my nephew, and a beautiful park.
