Take your chances, make your dances

#82 - it's nice to see you again

Hi there,

Let’s cut to the chase: when it comes to missing 2 weeks of writing my blog posts, I’ve thought about consistency versus priorities.

I believe I am a committed person: whatever I do, I dig in and complete it fully. No half measures. That’s my attitude towards the blog as well: being consistent with a weekly post, and writing on a Sunday night. Sometimes, this form of perfectionism is to my detriment.

Then comes prioritising. 2 Sundays ago, I got home at 8:30 after a cricket match; last week, a 20-year anniversary dinner for Mum and Dad meant I was home late. Could I have found an hour in the 14 days to spend writing my blog? Yes, maybe, if it mattered to me so much, if I found a way. But I didn’t, so how much do I care about this? Is it a must-do or a nice-to-do?

That’s the overall picture of my mixture of frustration, disappointment and confusion at not writing to you, for you, for 21 days. Regardless, as long as I pick myself up and get back on the train, we can all continue moving towards our destination. Any thoughts are welcome 🙏

I want to get to the fun stuff quickly, let’s begin.

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I’ve been on work experience this week, at a large professional services firm in Birmingham. It was a great excuse to chat with many interesting people, learn more about the commercial world and discover that 9-to-5 is actually pretty tiring.

Now that it’s done, I reflect upon what I could have done to make the week even better, asking the question “Did I make the most of my time there?” There are reasons for and against but it is a good point to talk about opportunity and maximising those that you do get.

The main obstacle to social mobility and individuals ‘in the lower rungs of society’ moving up is a lack of access to opportunity. Being unable to get their foot in the metaphorical door.

Why does that matter? Because I’ve found that opportunities are compounding and sequential - one thing leads to another. You say ‘yes’ to help out at an event, you meet someone new there, you chat with them and find you get along. Then they invite you to another meeting and find even more people to talk to, connect with and benefit from having a relationship with.

Bringing it back to the firm I was with this week, they stood proud of their “multidisciplinary approach” and try to rope their clients in one area into the many other services they provide, both to help their business and also to generate more revenue for the firm. This is another example of this snowball effect: a client asks you for help with one aspect of their business, and you look for how more you could serve them and profit from that.

To provide another example: for those who weren’t on work experience this week, school held an ‘Enrichment Week’ with cooking, careers sessions, and time to improve their academic knowledge among a few others. To a friend who felt like he was having to go through this pretty dull week, I said “This is very much a make the most of it kind of chance. You get out what you put in”. Squeeze as much as you can out of an opportunity, when it comes along. If not, you aren’t getting your money’s worth. And if you aren’t paying, you’re still giving away an even more precious currency - your time.

So, we’ve concluded that you need to grab opportunities as they come along (be ‘receptive’ to them) and ‘milk’ them to the max. But there’s 1 more idea I’ve been thinking about: making your own opportunities (sometimes out of obstacles). Being proactive to invent your own path and create a chance that didn’t previously exist can give you a serious advantage over others (by nature).

I wanted to build my university personal statement by leading a Year 7 maths club, but the time the existing one was at didn’t suit me. What did I do? Make my own one (which I really enjoy, showing cool maths to innocent 12yos who are utterly fascinated, thanks for asking 😄)

In the week gone by, I thought to myself - what can I set up that would be beneficial to me? This led to finding and messaging a couple dozen people on LinkedIn who worked in the office I was in; only 3 ended up chatting with me, but they were still 3 great conversations.

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” Milton Berle (source)

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Winston Churchill

Along with intentionally inventing situations for yourself that can turn into and lead to opportunities, small things like choosing to take a new route somewhere in order to allow for the potential of meeting someone new are things to consider.

Take your opportunities, make your opportunities - both from nothing and something i.e. reframing them. This is where the ideas of growth mindsets and turning obstacles into opportunity (the theme of The Obstacle Is The Way, the book I was reading). I had a busy start to the week a fortnight ago; I saw it as a chance to learn how to delegate (important in my new job as School Captain) by passing the leadership of a project onto a friend - and we ended up being the best team on show!

That’s not to say I don’t miss opportunities either: you can be too close-up to miss the opportunity car moving past you. That’s why it might be useful to look up from time to time to ask if you’re making the most of the opportunities you’re currently involved in and whether you need to let go of some to make room for others…

Which leaves me at a very good point to pause for today. Next time, we’ll chat about why saying no to opportunities may actually be better for you. You can’t call me biased 😉

“Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.” Ann Landers

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Ah, that was nice. Getting back to the joys of writing.

Podcast of the week🎙️

Money Talks: Averting the city death spiral

This was an interesting topic, one we don’t really consider - how cities are changing as a result of WFH. Some of the facts are surprising.

Article of the week📰

Divergence and Convergence: The Two Fundamental Stages of the Creative Process

I found this perspective of splitting projects into 2 parts a nice way to look at projects.

Quote of the week💬

“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” - John Wooden

Thanks for getting to the end of a post. I value your time, always.

Adi