A Career Hacker’s Classic, read the full post here.
A 10x career is one where you reach escape velocity and become truly high flying — with compounding opportunities for personal growth, societal contributions, and strong financial outcomes.
The entire essay contains powerful lessons for acceleration in one’s career.
It is part first principles thinking and part a reverse-engineered rendering not just of Peter’s success, but of what he has observed while managing thousands of people.
Here are some key takeaways from his blog article “10X Your Career: First Principles For Outsized Success by Peter Flint”:
- Where you work will determine how you work. You will pick up skills, styles, and mindsets from the people around you. In this way, your first jobs really form your career DNA.
- When in doubt, here is a mantra for deciding where to go for your first job (and beyond): Follow people and follow momentum. [These are the two key forces for creating 10x careers]
- Chose the right people to work with, they will help you maximize your learning and your access to networks.
- Find the right momentum — in the form of a rapidly-growing sector — you will maximize your opportunities for growth and leadership.
- If you have to make a tradeoff, optimize for people over company. Working for an amazing person is always better than working for a company.
- Get under a great manager/mentor. You can maximize your learning and also help build your network.
- Don’t pick a company, pick a sector
- It’s not easy to find out what you like to do, until you’d have some experience and some insight about yourself. So treat your career like a product and do its Alpha and Beta tests before the big launch! Experiment a lot!
- Internships and other shorter-term projects are great for this alpha testing mentality. Project-based jobs allow you to gain experience about what it is you want to do, at very low risk.
- Make yourself indispensable. Be a proactive learner as early as possible. Fast learners are more likely to develop a unique skill set that is rare and irreplaceable.
- Strengthen your network. Learn to be amazing at internal (and external) communication. Next, figure out who the “great” people are around you. Talk, interact, and spend time with as many of them as you can and figure out a way to be useful to them while you’re learning from them.
- Take lead. Don’t wait for someone to put you in charge of something. Spend time as a captain of a sports team. or as an editor at a local paper, or lead a political campaign, start a non-profit, produce an event, or launch a podcast. Do what suits you, but make sure to be in a leading position!
A powerful excerpt from the blog:
Starting A Chain Reaction
A chain reaction is a sequence of reactions, triggered by a core product, that causes still more reactions. This is the same physics that happens in 10x careers. When you combine a great network of people with a high-growth sector and mix in your learning and leadership mindset, you will spark a chain reaction that will eventually lead you to 10x success.
Read the full post here
About:
Pete Flint is a 2-time unicorn founder/operator. Co-founder & former CEO of Trulia, the founding team at lastminute.com
