#203 - Why Blisters Beat Bliss Weeks before graduating from university, I remember feeling a mix of excited, nervous -- and drop-dead tired. I was excited to be heading out into the "real world", nervous because I didn't know what it'd be like, and tired from the last four years of studying, and an...aggressively managed social calendar. 🙃 But the fatigue was also from the job search I'd just been through. In between studying, classes, intramural sports, and student government, I spent most...
about 1 month ago • 8 min read
#202 - Greenland, Not London How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. — Annie Dillard A few weeks ago, after a panel I joined, someone beelined for the stage. Emboldened, I think, by the wine the venue was serving, this guy had something to share, and wanted my take. He laid it all out: He was eight years into his career, in a good, stable job. The job paid him well. And, he reminded me, Singapore was not a cheap place to live. The guy was nervous, but genuine and...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
#201 - Some Rooms Make The Math Unfair The opposite of loneliness...it's not quite love and it's not quite community; it's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. — Marina Keegan A few weeks ago, on a Thursday night, I sat in front of a crowd in Singapore, sweating bullets. In front of me were 40 chairs in tidy rows, all facing the front of the room. In those chairs sat 40 people, most of them tired after a long day, and week. I'd just...
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
#200 - You Don't Need To Be Loud. You Need To Be Resonant. It’s always the same five words.I've been replying with them for years. Somebody writes in to say they dug an issue, or to talk about something they've been working on and saw reflected in these pages. When I sit down to reply, I always type the same response: I'm so glad it resonated. Sometimes I pause and scroll back to see if I've used the phrase before. But even if I have, I sit, and stare -- and hit send. Because nothing else...
2 months ago • 9 min read
#199 - Your Career Has No Comms Team I joined Uber in February, 2013, just before we launched in Singapore. One day during my first month, I parked myself at a cafe and pitched Uber back-to-back, for hours. I wasn't interviewing, I was just getting in front of people we knew were talented, to spread the word: "We're here, we're hiring." The problem was, no one knew what the heck Uber was. None of them had ever taken a ride with an app before. By mid-afternoon, I was four coffees deep. It had...
2 months ago • 10 min read
#198 - Being Good Isn't Good Enough Anymore You've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?! — Clint Eastwood, as Dirty Harry By the time I got to him, Clint Eastwood was in the mature, reflective stage of his career. He'd grown soulful. Perfect World. In the Line of Fire. Million Dollar Baby. Great movies, all of them. But my dad, after moving to the US, fell in love with Clint Eastwood 1.0. That Clint did many things. Ruminate was not one of them. No, dad's Clint...
3 months ago • 7 min read
#197 - Shaq. Not Madonna. Strategy in the 21st century is not about protecting competitive advantages -- it's about continuous reinvention. — Tendayi Viki When I was a kid, maybe 9 or 10, I was the organizer. I'd come home from school, or wake up on a Saturday, and -- this being the 1980s -- I'd work the phone. I had it down to a script: Hi, Mrs. Goodman?[Yes.] This is Aki, how's it going?[I'm well. How are you, Aki?]Good. Can I speak to Mike, please? I learned the script the hard way. When...
3 months ago • 7 min read
#196 - What's your remix? To originate is to carefully, patiently, and understandingly combine. — Edgar Allan Poe When my kids were much younger, I saw these t-shirts online: Instant buy. Take my money. The shirts -- one for me, one for each kid -- came just in time for Christmas, and for the next year, I made the kiddos rock them around Singapore with me. I know, I know, cringe. But we'd wear them on the subway, and get curious looks from strangers; some smiles and laughs; some sly iykyk...
3 months ago • 6 min read
#195 - The Unexamined Career The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates Recently, someone who knows I help people navigate their career put me in touch with a long-time friend of his. It was a well-meaning but brief intro: "Jim, talk to Aki, he's good at this stuff! Aki, Jim needs to talk to you!". But that was all we had to go on. I didn't know why I was meant to connect with Jim, and neither did he. So Jim and I dial into a hastily-arranged Zoom, and it is awkward, folks: we spend...
3 months ago • 6 min read