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Welcome to episode 19 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two VMware Solution Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode, we have a discussion about Process-oriented thinking over Outcomes-oriented thinking and dreaming in bands of possibilities instead of being hyper-specific.

Original recording date: 2018-11-25

Topics

2:00 Process over outcomes

• Cultivate an attitude that rewards or chastises yourself for your process rather than your outcomes.
  • You control your process, while your outcomes have influences you can’t control.
• Alan Schoonmaker
  • The Psychology of Poker
  • https://www.twoplustwo.com/books/poker/psychology-of-poker/
• Annie Duke
  • Thinking in Bets
  • https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/552885/thinking-in-bets-by-annie-duke/9780735216358/
  • Why Uncertainty Isn’t a Barrier to Success
  • https://www.signature-reads.com/2018/02/why-uncertainty-isnt-a-barrier-to-success/
• Background: Poker boom of the 2000s
• Preface on the morality of gambling
• Important parable about odds
• Annie Duke – “Resulting”
  • Best decision you made last year
  • Worst decision you made last year
  • Probably the first was a good outcome and the second was a bad outcome
• Tom Vanderbilt
  • Traffic
  • http://tomvanderbilt.com/books/traffic/
  • At-fault accidents usually sit at the tip of a pyramid of bad behaviors which we don’t remember
• Applying this to career management
  • Reward yourself for good process
  • Re-enforce your good processes
  • Correct your faulty processes
    • Be brutally honest in your self-assessment
      • Alan Schoonmaker  – Principle No 1: Your greatest enemy is denial
    • Examples
      • Tardiness
      • Calendar mis-management
      • Chronic procrastination
      • Disorganization
  • Correct, don’t engage in negative self-talk
  • Seek outside opinions
  • Reward your good processes even when there are bad outcomes
    •  Scenario: Didn’t get the job
      • Asked for coaching during the process
      • Did a great edit on your resume
      • Great prep for screening and early hiring-manager interviews
      • Great mid- and late-process interviews
      • Reward yourself for great process
      • The outcome was ultimately outside of your control
        • It was always about probability, not certainty
        • Did you do everything your reasonable, ethical power to tip the odds in your favor?
  • Practice, take notes along the way, self-assess

22:05 Dreaming in Bands

• “Bands of possibility”
• “Working at Company X is my dream job.”
• There’s no single dream position and no singularly wonderful company to work for.
  • There are lots of great companies out there who share similar ethics, culture, and goals
  • There are lots of positions rolling out from each of these companies, as they tend to be growing
  • How should we define a dream job?
    • Individually, but in characteristics, not specifics
    • John
      • Smart people, who think differently than me
      • Mentorship
      • Menteeship
      • Opportunity to advance
      • Centering around virtualization
    • Nerd Journey 016: Reasons Not to Pursue a Career Opportunity Part 1/2 Before Applying
    • Nerd Journey 017
• SE @ VMware was John’s dream job
  • But he became one three years ago. What now?!
  • Get a new dream? Or should the dream have been more expansive to include a band of possibilities and a path
  • Was it good process for John to fix singularly on a single position in a single region at a single company?
    • NO!
    • AWS? GCP? Cisco? Resellers?
    • SE? Solution Architect? Pure sales? Post-sales consultant?
    • California, Arizona, Colorado, PNW, Nevada?
• What’s John’s dream now?
  • The bands of possibilities
  • Role, location, even company
• Why have a dream?
  • Too out of reach?
  • Too much fantasy while the reality of our jobs passes us by?
  • People might dream too far in the future without thinking about the intermediate steps
  • It’s fine to use the word “goal” as a less lowered word
  • Have both short, intermediate, and long term goals
  • The further away the time frame, the more we should think about a band if possibilities
  • Maybe a dreamer is an expert goal-setter?
  • Having progression as a goal
  • Be open to possibilities