Download Episode Here – right click link and select “Save Link As…”
In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk with Nii Codjoe (COO at Personality Hacker) about how to figure out what to do with your life and his experience in navigating his own career as a millennial.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Nii Codjoe – ENTJ
- Adaptability is one of the essential skills needed in the world today.
- People who are graduating from school today struggle with adapting to the changes in the world.
- Emotional & psychological adaptability.
- Create an educational program to survive in the world today.
- Invite successful people to coffee and ask them questions about how they became successful.
- At the end of the “coffee chat”, Nii would ask, “Is there anyone else you would recommend I talk to?”
- This is how he built a tribe of people who were more successful than him.
- Learn how to learn.
- There is a process to learning things and turning knowledge into wisdom.
- Understanding persuasion, sales and marketing, and communication are potent tools to have.
- These people aren’t larger than life. They are human.
- What is the formula for turning knowledge into wisdom?
- The first level is awareness and exposure – there are things out there you aren’t aware of. Keep seeking.
- Accelerate learning by getting into action and implementing new ideas immediately.
- Get your hands dirty.
- Gain data from multiple mistakes.
- Fail as much as you can to learn the fastest.
- Books can’t teach you everything.
- Read a book then take the knowledge and immediately test it in the outer world.
- Refine the knowledge.
- Go back and reread the book and see how your understanding has changed.
- Passion project = 1-3 month projects
- Approach someone who has some knowledge you can use to improve your data.
- Patterns start to emerge.
- Begin to see the same principles emerge over a wide array of concepts.
- Career paths are often an emergent we discover over time.
- Adaptability is important.
- The wrong question: “What should I do with my life?”
- Some jobs we may excel at don’t even exist yet.
- Instead of focusing on passion focus on developing skills.
- “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” Cal Newport?
- Focus on developing rare and valuable skills.
- Career capital.
- We tend to be passionate about the things we are good at.
- The most effective way of landing a job is through these coffee chats.
- Write down a list of people you know who are in a situation about which you are curious.
- Start with your parents or family friends, former professors, classmates who are in the field you are interested in.
- “I’m just exploring my options…”
- “I’ve noticed you have a really successful career in…. I would love to buy you a quick cup of coffee to pick your brain and find out how you got into your career.”
- Create an email template and mail it to a few people on your list.
- Write down questions you would like to know:
- How did you figure out what you wanted to do with your life?
- How much education did you get?
- Always buy them coffee at a location convenient to them.
- Build a relationship.
- Ask them how they got where they are.
- Take notes.
- Review.
- “Who are two other people you would recommend I talk to learn more about this subject?”
- People are more open to passing on a legacy than you think.
- Don’t underestimate the power of relationships.
- You are the average of the five people you hang around.
- Write down the five people closest to you.
- You are the average of those five people.
To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:
Subscribe with iTunes
Non-iTunes Link
Download The Android App
Subscribe on Soundcloud
Subscribe with Stitcher
Subscribe on Google Play
Subscribe with Facebook Messenger
If you like the podcast and want to help us out in return, please leave an honest rating and review on iTunes by clicking here. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes immensely! We would be eternally grateful!
Want to learn more?
Discover Your Personal Genius
We want to hear from you. Leave your comments below…
Share:
Podcast - Episode 0223 - Why Culture Resists Personal Development
Podcast - Episode 0225 - The Car Model (Your Personality Cognitive Function Stack)
18 comments
I know the advice given in this episode is wise and will work wonders for anyone who follows it. Without really paying much attention, I have done similar things in my own life on a much smaller scale that has accounted for almost every job I’ve had as an adult. But nothing like the numbers he is suggesting. As an INFP, even thinking about it makes me exhausted. Networking has been essential in obtaining information that is pertinent to me and my situation.
Like a couple of people in the comments have already stated, still trying to find your right path as someone who is already into their 40s is disheartening and discouraging. In my 20s I just jumped around from job to job trying to figure out what I like. I couldn’t decide so I went to grad school in my late 20s studying media research. The semester before I graduated, the economy tanked and media research as a profession disappeared. So I had a worthless degree, no job, and was getting married. I managed to get a position in medical research at a university that has paid the bills (barely) and enabled me have two kids. Face to face interactions with subjects is rewarding, but that only makes up a small portion of my job. I want a new direction in my career but am petrified of not being able to provide for my family. When your older the stakes are much larger. I have no idea what I even want to do as a career.
Coffee chat with you two!!!
I’ve recently been told that my PhD research is no longer getting funded and to basically take a hike. Before then, I had really started getting into personality development (thank goodness or I would have probably had a mental breakdown), and it has really become a passion for me, so much so that I would be interested in trying to make a career out of it.
I’ve picked up from snippets here and there that you guys both took circuitous routes to get here and I’d really like to pick your brain about what you learned in previous (mis?)adventures.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be interested in this, so a podcast version would be great, but, of course, I would be willing to send you a gift card for coffee and skype with you guys ;)
Thanks for the excellent podcast, keep ‘em comin’!
A lot of the info here is about young people, out of college, trying to find their path. I’m old. I’m a young 49, of course, but still old. I have several careers behind me, and a current one, writing, that I am still capable of doing and enjoy. Being an impulsive youth, I have no material gains to show for my hard labours. But I do have a life rich with experience, and the knowledge that comes with such a life. So, I love writing. It’s a passion. But writing is often difficult to rely on as a money earner, and my motivation is frequently hamstrung by my worries about earning a living. Vicious circle, catch-22, blah, blah, blah. I feel like I have found my path, what I want to do with my life. I want to continue writing. But obviously I have to either make my writing pay its own way, or find another side path, an alleyway, where I can earn money to fund my passion. But it’s late in the day for me. Did I mention I’m old, and don’t have a lot of room for further mistakes? That kind of pressure really messes with your mind. And your motivation. It’s a passion killer. Currently I’m sitting on a tree stump along the side of my chosen path, wondering what the hell to do. What I should do. What should I do?
Fellow INFP here – I sympathize (strongly) with your sentiment about focusing on passion rather than skills strongly. It’s quite difficult to summon the motivation to work on a skill that doesn’t feel like it matters. Personally, I’ve taken the approach of putting aside more “practical” skills and moving towards whatever I’m passionate about and developing skills there. The way I see it… if you aren’t following your bliss, what’s the point in continuing down that path?
Anyhow, just wanted to drop in and say you’re not alone! :)
As an INFP, I feel the practical nature of this podcast is probably more appealing to NT and SJ types. Perhaps I am just too idealistic and expect a single, correct answer (i.e. googling ‘what should I do with my life’, which I’ve probably done multiple times before) to fall out of the sky and into my lap. I know finding a career that clicks with me will take using and developing my Ne, but I never thought about this in terms of networking (probably because that word conjures up a mental image of a stuffy old business person). I’ve only thought about using my Ne in terms of taking on different jobs, volunteer opportunities, etc because it’s hard to gauge how much I will like a certain kind of work without actually doing it.
I think part of my disconnect is that I put a greater weight on passion than skills, or passion in conjunction with skills. It’s hard for me to concentrate solely on skills (if it wasn’t, I’d probably work as a programmer now, as I majored in computer science in school). Nevertheless, I will give So Good They Can’t Ignore You a shot. I have read some more practical career books which have disappointed me on one level or another (perhaps because they actually describe the world as it is, haha), but I usually find one or two key points that I can take away and utilize.