Speaker Notes - Becoming a Top Level Individual Contributor

Last updated Sep 4, 2022 Edit Source

• Speaker note

• Deep Work by Cal Newport

• Doing the best work requires that you have the ability to concentrate on hard problems without distraction. As the world becomes more distracting with social media and smart phones, the ability to concentrate will lead to premium positions and premium concentration.

• Episode 108 Original mention by Nick as a book goal for 2021 From a Deliberate Practice reading list by James Clear

• Episode 124 Josh Duffney mentioned the concept and the book and applying it to his output

• Episode 138 Don Jones mentions the ideas of quantifying time spent doing different things, stripping away the ones that aren’t providing value, and scheduling everything, very much Deep Work concepts.

• Episode 140 Eric Brooker mentioned focus. Mentioned successful people who only checked email once or twice a day. This reminded Nick of Deep Work.

• Episode 141 Episode 142 Episode 143 Episode 144 Episode 145 Episode 146 Episode 147 Our discussions of the book

• Episode 149 Chris Wahl ditched social media, focuses on solving cool problems, and removed distractions. We told him about the book and he wrote a blog post after he read it.

• Episode 153 Scott Lowe talked about paring down the things he focuses on and puts a premium on making the most of his time. Read another Cal Newport book and was planning on reading Deep Work.

• Episode 156 Episode 157 Josh Duffney returns, connecting Deep Work with Smart Notes. The book he was working on, Reclaim, incorporates Deep Work focus without needing to retreat into being a hermit to accomplish hard work.

• Episode 160 Andy Syrewicze mentions the skill required to do nothing, reminding us of Cal Newport’s charge to be OK with being bored. The dopamine hit of filling time with distraction leads to a dependence on distraction, the enemy of deep work.

• Episode 173 Evan Oldford mentioned his practice of working on a problem immediately before bed, then waking up with an epiphany, letting his subconsciousness work on making connections, similar to the Deep Work idea, “Downtime Aids Insights”.

• Episode 183 Episode 184 Michael Levan connected getting to Deep Work through a series of iterative changes, connecting Deep Work as a goal using Atomic Habits.

• How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens

• Doing your best knowledge work requires that as you ingest information, you record the information in your own words, and store it in a manner, that allows you to recall, connect, link, and publish. This concept is a stand in for the idea that real understanding of concepts comes not only from consuming them, but also recording them and teaching them. The first student is a future version of yourself who only dimly remembers the context of the information in question.

• Example of the Nerd Journey podcast and the show notes, restating the discussions.

• Highlighting the Show Notes and extracted concepts in Obsidian

• Announcing that we’ll publish the information and graph

• Episode 148 Chris Wahl mentioned a note-taking system incorporating labels and color-coding to remember and find things which reminded John of a Zettelkasten. Everything goes into his notes system because he won’t know what’s valuable until later. He also describes that writing out concepts forces you to think more deeply about the topic and perhap even improve your understanding of it, structurally and contextually.

• Episode 156 Episode 157 Josh Duffney links Zettelkasten with Deep Work. He was so inspired that he wrote a short book about implementing the system in Obsidian.

• Episode 172 Evan Oldford commented on the intensity of the notes that went into reading Deep Work. That was done using the Smart Notes methodology. We built the episodes by reacting to literature notes John wrote.

• Episode 178 Stephanie Wong discussed how real learning comes from not just reading something, but retrieving the information, processing it, and teaching it back to others. Smart Notes are exactly this process, where the first student is the future you.

• Episode 186 Phil Monk described the memory palace technique, which reminds John of the spacial or graph view of a Zettelkasten.

• Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
• Influence others by publishing. People want to follow the path of other beginners in a subject, not experts who can’t always relate to being a beginner. Curse of Knowledge

• Episode 1 Both hosts pointed to their community participation and blogging as proof of work and career accelerators.
• Episode 8 Raising your Impact Radius by investing in participation, blogging, and conference or community meetup speaking
• Episode 13 Tom Delicati’s sniper approach to job applications builds on proof of expertise via user community involvement - target companies you know use the product you’re an expert in.
• Episode 38 Jon Hildebrand mentioning how his manager saw his blogging as evidence of the potential to work on a bigger stage doing great things (our words, not his).
• Episode 119 David Klee discussed how his blogging and community involvement helped build a reputation
• Episode 131 Jonathan Frappier used blogging as a way to store knowledge and experience, then found that it brought some recognition and helped him make moves to bigger organizations.

• Episode 5 First mention of “You’ll be bad at first.”
• Episode 10 John’s Journeyman Mindset, “If I’m an expert at anything, it’s that I’m now comfortable not being an expert at a new thing.”
• Episode 18a Episode 18b Joseph Griffiths Discomfort is natural when engaging in professional development.
• Episode 80 Side mention of “Smart Kid Syndrome.” If you’ve been praised an have ego invested in appearing smart/good, you’ll avoid new things. Because you’ll probably be bad at first.
• Episode 106 Steven Murawski and the Beginner Mindset. Willingness to be a beginner and asking dumb questions as a career enabler. Beginner doesn’t mean inexperienced. Bringing the depth of your experience and related experiences. Episode 107 is all about Steven’s application of that mindset to major job transitions.
• Episode 117 Kate Emshoff mentiontions that the discomfort with not fitting in at an organization has a flip side: Standing out.
• Episode 136 Blake Johnson If I stayed comfortable, I would be who I was ten years ago.  And that's not acceptable.
• Episode 153 Scott Lowe discusses the balance between discomfort while you’re learning a new skill and the danger of waiting too long, when it’s become passe and not a differentiator in the marketplace.
• Episode 177 Stephanie Wong refers to the first pancake principle. It’s always ugly, but you have to do it to get better.
• Episode 182 Blake Johnson mentions that taking chances and discomfort is the way to get out of a rut (being in a place where you’re so comfortable that you’re bored).
• Episode 73 Episode 74 Al Rasheed’s fist-hand story of getting to come to VMworld 2017 for the first time via community interaction and his spreadsheet of people to meet. How VMUG involvement has led to multiple community advocacy program memberships. Leading to conference presentations. The opportunities to give and receive mentorship.
• Episode 80 Episode 81 Manny Sidhu mentioned how keeping involved in communities helps him find the right technology waves to invest in.
• Episode 86 Cody de Arkland mentions the parallel between projects at work and in the community as a portfolio of your work.
• Episode 88 Episode 89 Yadin Porter de Leon starts with the benefit of professional networking then discusses how blogging, podcasting, and other community involvement act as a scaled-up version of networking. Networking that can act passively while you sleep.

• Bonus Episode 5 Al Rasheed’s first VMworld came from community involvement.
• Bonus Episode 6 Observation that the people in the vCommunity and vBrownBag area were placing a much higher priority on professional networking, which is a career accelerator.
• Episode 32 Episode 33 Tony Reeves discussed community participation and conference attendance as a job accelerator. Getting picked for an Advocacy program helped especially.
• Episode 34 Episode 35 Jimmy Tassin’s involvement in the Minecraft community as a resume builder.
• Episode 39 Paul Woodward Jr. of the ExploreVM Podcast saw online community participation as a way to see more types of problems than the ones at your workplace.
• Episode 41 Presentations We discussed the career benefits in our episode on doing presentations.
• Episode 43 Ethan Banks discussed blogging as an accountability mechanism for his CCIE Certification Study. That led to podcasting, which led to a business.
• Episode 45 Side projects can help build skills for your career.
• Episode 46 Keiran Shelden’s blogging got him invited to Tech Field Day and Storage Field day. It’s a way of positioning yourself as a thought leader. That’s a phrase that people equate with expert, but maybe we should take it literally, someone who shows leadership in their thinking, not expertise.
• Episode 60 Episode 61 Amy Hervey’s discussion about Personal Brand and self-marketing. Showing your work is part of marketing yourself and your brand.
• Episode 106 Episode 107 Steven Murawski discussed how his advancement was intertwined with his involvement in tech communities.
• Episode 123 Episode 124 Josh Duffney talked about Community being the incubator for his career. to writing courses at pluralsight. eventually Microsoft.
• Episode 138 Don Jones talks about his method of helping people succeed is building a community.

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• Improvement comes from small, incremental steps. Improving 1% every day has a compounding effect. So making tiny, easy changes that last and build upon each other can have a profound effect. Math! This is a stand-in for incremental and iterative changes.

• Episode 18b Joseph Griffiths mentions that there aren’t short cuts to iterate on one’s career. Learning and getting better takes time, and is an iterative process.

• Episode 57 The idea of making changes in personal spending by removing small indulgences, one at a time. “The Latte Effect”

• Episode 106 Steven Murawski and incremental changes over time.
  It's not that I need to be perfect tomorrow.  I need to be a little bit better than I was today.

• Episode 135 - Blake Johnson discussed small, incremental change as the key to make lasting changes.

• Episode 143 Nick Korte while discussing Deep Work, noted that the only way to get to the profoundly different lifestyle that the author described was the get there incrementally.

• Episode 148 Chris Wahl states the the process of writing is also iterative. You start with something and never end with it. There’s always a process of incremental change and self-exploration.

• Episode 183 Michael Levan is a DevOps guy, who told us that he thinks the path to success is a series of iterative, modular changes that need to be examined individually to see if they result in an improvement. He was talking about fitness, so you can see that the small, incremental approach can cross knowledge domains.