Use Your Brain
Interesting ideas + fake stress
Your Brain Will Eat Itself If You Don’t Feed It
Your mind is anti-fragile. Which means it doesn’t just survive pressure, it requires it to evolve and grow.
When your brain doesn’t get what it needs, it literally atrophies and small unfulfilling tasks become pressure. If you withhold real pressure, it manufactures its own, typically out of things that are a lot less fulfilling.
This is why returning a UPS package becomes a whole thing. Why taking your car to the mechanic gets pushed back 3 weeks. Why online shopping turns into an open tab all day that you keep coming back too. Why all your small tasks feel like mountains, and how you can slowly become an indecisive person. Your brain is trying to make the mundane challenging because the rest of your life isn’t giving it enough real material to work with.
You’re probably not lazy, just in a mental challenge deficit.
Responsibility Is An Org Chart Word
There’s a specific region of the brain called the anterior midcingulate cortex, that literally grows or shrinks depending on whether you’re doing difficult things or not. Feed it or it atrophies. And an atrophying brain gets smaller and creates static everywhere else in your life.
In relation to getting hired or promoted, you shouldn’t be waiting for a safe opportunity to come fall in your lap. Those who tend to stand out in interviews are the people who don’t talk about what they were responsible for. They talk about what they figured out.
The safe resume that matches everyone else’s is a risk. It’s almost invisible. The pivot in your career actually isn’t a liability if you were off learning something new. The gap in jobs isn’t a red flag if you took a break to travel and get inspired again. The role that was too big for you is actually the most interesting thing on your resume - if you talk about it honestly.
Lead with what you figured out. Responsibility is an org chart word. Figuring things out is of higher value. Throwing yourself into situations often where you really need to think, makes dropping off that UPS package only a short pitstop on your way home.
Become A Busy Person
Feed your brain. Take the hard thing. This can be leveling up your current workflow, tackling that thing you’ve been putting off, going out of your lane and asking questions to the other teams you work with to better understand their job.
Learning new things and giving your brain some exercise will help level up your confidence and decisiveness and your ability to do more. Continuing to challenge yourself often and openly is the best way to get your next role or promotion.
In Practice
If your to-do list feels like a mountain, go outside and climb a real mountain.
Become a busy person and see how much easier life gets.
Your brain is like any other muscle, if you don’t use it - you lose it.