Category: From work

This discussion came up toward the end of a 6 hour dinner with my friend.

Everyone’s skillset broadens with AI, how do I position myself in the market?

Then I heard T shape analysis on Diary of A CEO, episode with Kevin Hart.

Broad understanding of knowledge and a deep expertise

So I did an exercise by asking Claude.

Act as a professional career consultant and run a deep T shape analysis on me. Show me the range of knowledge I possess and the deep expertise I have, rank each skill category on a scale of 1 to 5. 5 being the most competent.

If I press the button, it will be heroic. The world will not celebrate me, but I will celebrate myself mentally. I’ll give myself an hustle badge and it will greatly boost my ego.

I will tank earlier too, not likely to have enough for the afternoon in this new schedule (URL).

So rest is necessary to manage consistent energy throughout the day. 5 Minute book read, 15 minute break, lunch naps; reset and recharge.

• Year 2022: promoted as the team lead for product marketing when 3 of 5 members left.
• Year 2025: got a new job as team lead for product marketing unit employee no.1.

Both jobs shared one thing similar: a direction to head to, but lack of clear milestones. At least not given to me.

What I learned is to make call on my own KPI, on what I think the organization needs and how I will implement this. If no one tells me to stop, then I continue to work on my roadmap. Remember frequent status update is a must.

The lessons I learned:

1. Have a plan to work on and being less panic. Doing nothing or passively doing little gets you killed.
2. Autonomy and freedom to make a plan and execute the plan.
3. Do it differently. Instead of learning to use Indesign to create multi-lingual datasheets, which underperforms even with someone dedicated, try to automate with script and template. Try 10x to result, not 1.2x.

I discovered this from Tiago Forte’s YouTube video. The benefits are immediate.

1. Speak to LLM is easier.
2. It’s faster to speak than to type.
3. Less friction to start compared to typing 500 characters.
4. It turns a thought into a structured context.

The opposite takes a few weeks to realize.

1. So easy that I persuade myself to hold on to doing it, procrastination.
2. Mentally resisting to type the keyboard.

Starting work at 5 am is not the hardest, sleeping at 10 pm is. Because lures are everywhere.

• Phone and tablet
• Wrapping the day at 8:30
• Stop reading
• Occational Friday movie night
• Holding on to sex (sometimes)

Working at 5 is not the hardest.

This new job requires to work closely with US and Canada, so it allowed me to work at 5 am. I’ve found some benefits:

1). Productivity: each session are more equally divided.

• 5 am to 7 am: 2 hours
• 9 am to 12 pm: 3 hours
• 1 pm to 4 pm: 3 hours

2). Confidence: knowing that this is a difficult discipline.

3). Forced lifestyle: start on time and take breaks on time to manage the energy.

I am guilty for narcissistically attaching the work I do with who I am. When things go well, my ego drives the motivation. When things doesn’t, I procrastinate and tries to hide it. I am not consistent.

The War of Art redefined being professional and Resistance became the proxy.

• It’s not a rejection. It’s Resistance reminding me to save face.
• It’s not rejecting the person or idea. It’s Resistance saying my time is not valuable.
• It’s not above my responsibility. It’s Resistance saying asking help is showing weakness.
• It’s not a difficult project. It’s Resistance saying I am too smart to ask for help.
• It’s not that there’s too much work to do so I need to sacrifice the time to write. It’s Resistance saying work is who I am, it’s my identity.

Resistance is always in the middle between the person or task and my work. It always twist the message to stop me getting things done.

Less impressed, more involved. – Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey, location 1,446

Here’s a mistake I made 2 weeks into my new job: too eager to apply previous skills and experiences. I wanted to impress, to replicate my turf on this new land.

It didn’t work. This is selling solution without understanding the customer pain point.

Slow down, get involved. Know the workflow and the bottleneck, start to help even with the small things.

If the skill is valuable, then it will show. The effort will compound.

This is my second time in a NBD, new business development unit. Both struggled. They’re different companies, but some patterns remain.

• NBD of billion dollar corporation.
• Highly anticipated by the corp office.
• Heavy expansion on engineer headcount.
• Product oriented, usually to satisfy a couple of potential key accounts.
• Relies on existing channels of the corporation, ranging from ODM to distribution model.

The dilemma is about face. The face between corporate expectation and doing the dirty job of knocking door-to-door. From my two experiences, the fragmented and laborious works don’t look well compared to the logos and TAM of key accounts. How could it? It must rise just as the sibling business units.

Meanwhile, engineer recruitment and corp investment continuous to snowball. Sunk cost fallacy kicks in. I have yet to see it’s final destiny, but it will not die nor will it prosper in 3 to 5 years.

Yellow highlight from page 219, Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins.

• You will be made fun of.
• You will feel insecure.
• You may not be the best all the time.
• You may be the only black, white, Asian, Latino, female, male, gay, lesbian or [fill in your identity here] in a given situation.
• There will be times when you feel alone.

Filling in my identity after rejections on documentation management system implementation. Product Marketing: this would disrupt the workflow; IT: Sharepoint is USD$ 2,000 per terabyte, no budget.

• [only PMM with the least resource but 2 business units to serve]
• [only one person but doing the work that even four couldn’t done well]
• [only one person but needs to test product, shootout, position product, building value proposition; a job of 3 teams]
• [doing DMS that my colleagues doesn’t give a shit and maybe even tries to stop it]
• [a product marketer who needs to be responsible for DMS design]

Okay. Time to get back to work.