15 | Sunday Sift ⏳

Happy Sunday! Welcome to our first Sunday Sift newsletter together. This would have been our fifteenth Sunday Brunch newsletter. For consistency, I've decided to carry the numbering forward.

Why Sift? (1) Alliteration. (2) Sift (noun) = an act of examining (something) thoroughly so as to isolate that which is most important or useful. (3) Tertiary reasons like SEO rank, logo design possibilities, etc. played a part as well.

Hopefully, you approve.

Without further delay, please enjoy this week's curation.

Useful Roadmap to "Test" New Career Paths - from Grant Sabatier, author of Financial Freedom.

No matter what you want to learn, find someone who needs that skill, sell it to them, and keep filling in your own knowledge gaps. This is an awesome way to build up skills and experience and test out a new career track without having to go back to school or dive into a full-time job.

The Magic of High-Speed Career Sampling ↗️ - author, Nat Eliason has become one of my favorite writers on the internet. The reason? His blog constantly evolves in step with his life. He writes about his interests and pursuits in real time, no matter how different they may be from previous topics.

In a world obsessed with "niching down," Nat's approach is honest and refreshing.

Recently, Nat pivoted his career once again to be a "crypto developer." Previous areas of focus include writer, SEO expert, YouTuber, coffee shop owner, creative agency entrepreneur, and commercial real estate developer.

Nat's approach to his career is simple, yet unorthodox.

The Goal (in Nat's words)

I think the goal of any career search is to find a sufficiently lucrative infinite game you could keep playing indefinitely.

Every job is a game. Some of the games suck. Some are fun. Some are lucrative. Some aren’t. And it’s all individual. There are things you love that others hate. Things you hate others love.

The goal of high-speed career sampling is not to get a bunch of jobs. It’s to do a bunch of different forms of work. You can do types of work without permission or anyone giving you a job. And you should probably try the type of work before you take on a 2-4 year job.

Basically you want to find a type of work that you enjoy doing, that pulls you in deeper, and that you’d keep doing for minimal compensation. If it happens to also pay a lot, great, but you should enjoy it even if it doesn’t.

This doesn’t mean “find your passion” or that brand of nonsense as much as it means what kind of crap you’re willing to put up with. For example I’m very okay with sharing my random thoughts about things to tens of thousands of people with minimal editing. Many people are terrified by that idea. So that’s one kind of crap I’m willing to put up with.

I’m not willing to put up with, say, meetings. I have almost zero meetings in my life and it’s incredible. I’m also not willing to put up with a salary. That’s a different one: most people prefer a reliable salary. But I see a salary as a cap on upside and I’d rather have the ownership. Anyway.

So you want to try on a bunch of different kinds of work till you find one that keeps pulling you along. Where do you start? Wherever you want.

40-Year Career ↗️ - thinking long-term is one of those sexy but not sexy adult phrases you hear with increased frequency after formal schooling is finished. Most people (myself included) wouldn't mind winning the lotto and reassessing things at year 5, but let's assume neither of us will ever win the lotto.

Will Larson ↗️ wrote a thoughtful piece about his long-term career approach.  

Pace

Energy management is essential for your mental health. And, let’s be real, the quality of your overall work is going to mirror your mental health, so getting this right matters for your overall performance.

People

Positive relationships enable serendipity, and that serendipity is the source of the most interesting opportunities.

Prestige

It's hard, but it's possible. In retrospect, many folks' prestige seems inevitable but is the result of deliberate, intentional action over an extended period. With each bit of prestige you accumulate, gathering the next bit gets easier.

Profit

The key here isn't 'getting rich,' but creating the flexibility for yourself and the folks who depend on you, because that flexibility allows you to be deliberate about creating opportunities to invest into yourself and your career.

Learning

Learning doesn't come just from doing new things. It also requires time carved out to reflect on how you did those new things and how you might adjust your future approach. Space to reflect is a precursor to improvement, which once again brings us back to the most important aspect of career management... managing your pace.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing with a friend, colleague, or the next person you see when you lift your head from your screen.

if you hated it...  maybe consider sharing with your mortal enemy.

That's it for this week, everyone.

Thank you, as always, for your time. If you made it this far in the article, I appreciate you tremendously and am thrilled to have you in our community.

My inbox is always open - I'd love to hear from you 📩hey@whit.blog

Enjoy your Sunday & have a week!