The year I let go of toxic career pressure: 5 lessons from 2023
2023 was my best year yet. This year forced me to expand my perspectives, strengthen my resilience, and gain a deeper understanding of myself. I leave 2023 feeling empowered and grateful. Here’s 5 career lessons I learned that are yielding positive outcomes:
Silicon Valley is a giant favour bank
I’ve learned firsthand the valley has a deep culture of reciprocity that compounds. So I became useful & selfless - and it paid dividends. Help without expecting anything in return. I offered technical knowledge, introductions, and time to a friend who is bootstrapping. I went above and beyond to make colleagues’ lives easier. I contributed to open source projects and technical discussions online. I was generous with my time and shined a spotlight on others when I could. I helped acquaintances get their dream job by sharing my network, reviewing case studies and offering warm introductions.
Some will think “why the heck would I put so much effort in and not ask for something in return?” To which I say 👉 Your reputation is your most valuable asset. It is the ultimate currency, and investing in it pays dividends.
2. Letting go of self-imposed, toxic career pressure
This is one I struggled with for years. Getting hung up on job titles as an outsized validation metric. It was fully correlated with my feelings of whether I deemed myself successful or not, worthy or not, valued or not.
I now see that career is not a ladder but more a multi-phased survivor challenge. Instead of optimizing for moving up the ranks and title, I now optimize for holistic happiness & fulfillment. Review your 30,000 foot life goals annually - are you working towards them, or are you on someone else’s hedonic treadmill?
In 2023, I started using something called “energy diaries” which really helped me tap into which tasks drained me and which ones energized me. This helped identify patterns and make smarter go-forward choices on what roles are actually bringing the best out of me. It's a simple tool, but it's made my work life a lot happier.
Remember that your true friends and family members do not (or should not) care about your professional accomplishments and titles. Often, career pressure is self-inflicted and irrational.
3. If it's not actionable, it's not a problem
This lesson protected my sanity in times of turbulence, uncertainty and lack of clarity. A problem is something you have the power to change. Everything else is a situation or circumstance - something beyond your control.
I focused on controllables. This includes my attitude, my actions, my choices. When you focus on things you can control, you take back some power and reduce stress. Rather than sitting back and waiting for things to happen, proactively do things to change your future.
I learned to develop strategies for coping with situations and circumstances. This involved acceptance, reframing situations to a new perspective or tapping into gratitude to remind myself of all my blessings.
4. When in doubt, bend positive
This comes with maturity. I’m still learning, but it’s clear to me now that there is no such thing as a perfect job - just as there are no perfect families, relationships or friends. Thus it’s really important to genuinely cheer for everyone on the team so that your work culture is as good as it can be. So you influence the culture towards one you want to be apart of vs. a toxic place you have to leave. Assume good intention, even when it’s taking all the patience in your body - for the sake of team dynamics.
Sabotaging, commiserating, silently rooting against, wanting to prove someone wrong publicly... That's not the best of you, and it's the worst for you.
Another motivation - no one, absolutely no one - wants to follow the kind of person I described above. The miserable inspire 0% of people. We all do it, I still catch myself. Raise self awareness on this and when in doubt, bend positively.
5. Good money skills & gratitude is the oxygen of independence
Anyone reading this is blessed. We have a roof over our heads, heat in our homes, healthy food on the table and all the freedoms and opportunities of the Western world. Yet we struggle with feeling like we have enough, disguised under statements that start with “but we have to, we need it, it’s so expensive here but we can’t move, we needed a car so we bought a TESLA…” We’ve lost the true meaning of the word “need”.
I get met with a lot of defensiveness on this one, and my point isn’t to reduce your life to less than it needs to be. But a powerful tool in the search for freedom is having more cash on hand than you think you need. Whatever you think you need, up that number by 20% and watch what happens to your mindset. It empowers you to do things like turn down undesirable job offers, leave a toxic work environment, take a risk on the startup you believe in, invest in that dream side hustle, take a career break, help out family members or prevent panicking in market downturns.
These days, we are overly obsessed with “optimizing every dollar for returns” and underestimate the value of cash. Cash is under-appreciated until you desperately need it. Then, it becomes evident that cash is the oxygen of independence, enabling you to breathe when life takes an unexpected turn.
I invested in my financial literacy early. It's my number one career advice to anyone - know your numbers, get your money right so financial stress does not over index your career decisions for your whole career. There is a season for everything, but don’t let one season take over the entire ride. I tackle the trope of “never enough” through tapping into gratitude. Read the first paragraph again (or tune into the world news for 10 mins) for that reminder.
If you got this far in the blog… thank you! I’ve enjoyed having this space as a creative outlet for my product marketing musings, career reflections and being able to “build in public” so to speak. As we go into 2024, I wish for our hearts to be filled with gratitude as we reflect upon our blessings and look forward to working with you all in the new year!
