Career Advice … Wait, from who ?
The Dilbert Blog: Career Advice
Wait, I know what you are thinking. Career advice from man who draws badly for a living , right.
He does actually make sense and it is an interesting read. I especially like to following from the blog:
If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:
1. Become the best at one specific thing.
2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try.
Its the second strategy that he says is more obtainable and I tend to agree.
What is the best career advice you ever got ?
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:12 pm
This is probably not really generic career advice, but the best career specific advice that made a lot of difference in my life was by my university head of department (a decade ago) when he said ‘Learn to properly and accurately touch type… If you’ve chosen computer science as a career, most of your life is going to be spent in front of the keyboard, so twice as much speed means you spend 5 years instead of 10 typing.’
I already knew how to touch type, but 10 years later, whenever I see experienced IT pros hunt-and-peck’ing, I can see how many years of life I’ve already saved.
I think becoming good at a lot of small things (your point 2) really adds up.