A Career Hackers Classic, this post originally appeared on RyanHoliday.net by author Ryan Holiday.
Key takeaways:
- Legendary football coach Bill Belichick started his career just doing the work nobody else cared to do. And he did it well.
- Forget credit, do the work. Or, find canvases for other people to paint on. Get excited about doing extra grunt work and making other people look good.
- Forget the idea that this is self-sacrificial. It’s subservient yes, but it’s in your self-interest, because over time you’ll build a powerful reputation.
“Imagine if for every person you met you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them, and you looked at it in a way that entirely benefitted them and not you. The cumulative effect this would have overtime would be profound.
You would learn a great deal by solving diverse problems.
You’d develop a reputation for being indispensable.
You’d have countless new relationships.
You’d have an enormous bank of favors to call upon down the road.
That’s what the canvas strategy is about—helping yourself by helping others, making a concerted effort to trade your short term gratification for a longer term payoff.”
