This is great! Here are a few more (though some of these overlap a lot with the ones you’ve listed):
Explore—Do something that allows you to get exposed to different kinds of tasks, skills, and people. (Seems especially useful early on when thinking about fit. Also lets people find things that they might not have been able to brainstorm or might have prematurely ruled out). Exploring in sprints may be better than exploring 3-5 things at once (consistent with “optimize one thing at a time”).
Leaveability—Do something that allows you to leave if you find something better.
Anticipate the bottlenecks of the future—Think about which skills will be the bottleneck in 3-5 years. Learn those. (This is a theme explored in High Output Management).
The average of five—Consider the heuristic “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Who are the people you would be spending the most time with, and how would you feel about becoming more like them? (Shoutout to Jake McKinnon for discussing this with me recently).
Location—Do something that allows you to work in a location that satisfies you professionally and emotionally. I think it’s easy to underestimate how much location can affect people (especially when location is tied so strongly to community/mentorship—e.g., EA hubs).
Regarding bottleneck skills of the future—I think one skill here is understanding network science. (In progress notes here :D)
A lot of people are decentralising _________ these days :D But network scientists have clear ways to measure the ‘degree’ of decentralisation and the pros/cons of that degree. Ex: Resiliency to shocks, speed of decision-making, stability of connections.
I think that’ll be more useful in scaling/maintaining decentralised _______ instead of starting decentralised _______.
This is great! Here are a few more (though some of these overlap a lot with the ones you’ve listed):
Explore—Do something that allows you to get exposed to different kinds of tasks, skills, and people. (Seems especially useful early on when thinking about fit. Also lets people find things that they might not have been able to brainstorm or might have prematurely ruled out). Exploring in sprints may be better than exploring 3-5 things at once (consistent with “optimize one thing at a time”).
Leaveability—Do something that allows you to leave if you find something better.
Anticipate the bottlenecks of the future—Think about which skills will be the bottleneck in 3-5 years. Learn those. (This is a theme explored in High Output Management).
The average of five—Consider the heuristic “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Who are the people you would be spending the most time with, and how would you feel about becoming more like them? (Shoutout to Jake McKinnon for discussing this with me recently).
Location—Do something that allows you to work in a location that satisfies you professionally and emotionally. I think it’s easy to underestimate how much location can affect people (especially when location is tied so strongly to community/mentorship—e.g., EA hubs).
Regarding bottleneck skills of the future—I think one skill here is understanding network science. (In progress notes here :D)
A lot of people are decentralising _________ these days :D But network scientists have clear ways to measure the ‘degree’ of decentralisation and the pros/cons of that degree. Ex: Resiliency to shocks, speed of decision-making, stability of connections.
I think that’ll be more useful in scaling/maintaining decentralised _______ instead of starting decentralised _______.