Episode 184: The Long Game

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“Playing the long game at a really core level is about...how can we take action today that will make tomorrow better or easier? I think about it as doing a favor for your future self.”
— Dorie Clark

Dorie Clark

“I saw a window maybe of four or five years where I felt I needed to maximize the chances that I was going to meet someone and...that having a family would be back on the cards.”
— Tom Waterhouse

A lot of people are quitting their jobs at the moment. In the US, more than 12 million people left jobs voluntarily between July and September. They are fed up, burned out after months and months of pandemic working, and some are wondering, what am I doing this for anyway? Is this what I really want to do with my life? If not, what do I want to do instead?

In this show Dorie Clark helps us answer some of those questions, which all involve the need for long-term thinking. She talks about the ideas in her new book, The Long Game: how to be a long-term thinker in a short-term world. We discuss how to carve out time to think about the future, identifying what’s most meaningful to you, and casting off the expectation that you ‘find your passion’ (too much pressure!)

tom waterhouse

We also meet consultant Tom Waterhouse, who had a long-term plan to have a family before it was too late. But realizing his dream meant infuriating his bosses.

Tom is the host of the podcast If I Had Been Born a Girl.

You can also read a transcript of the show.

Further reading: Women and the Liberating Power of No by Anna Holmes in The Atlantic. I mention this in the episode - a great, nuanced piece.

Dorie is offering a free strategic thinking self-assessment that you can download here to find out how much of a long-term thinker you are.

Episode 40: The hell of networking

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May 20, 2014

All the career manuals say it: to get ahead on the work front, you have to keep expanding your network. But for a lot of women, there's something about networking that doesn't appeal. Actually there are a lot of things that don't appeal, from the difficulty of walking up to total strangers and introducing yourself to the feeling of fakeness networking can sometimes induce - not to mention that many networking opportunities are focused around male interests. That said, there are probably men who also dread networking. But women aren't doing it to the same degree men are, and when they try, they hit barriers. Women's careers are suffering as a result.

Photo by Hans Poldoja, used with Creative Commons License (http://bit.ly/1hZSrzN)In this show, I talk to three guests about how to get over the horror of networking, why it's important, and how a huge network - and a dash of daring - have helped one woman's career.

20 minutes.

Show notes:

Kimberly Weisul is the co-founder of the site One Thing New.

Dorie Clark is the author of Reinventing You.

Mary Kopczynski is CEO of 8 of 9 Consulting.

This is a blog post I wrote about Mary's networking advice after I heard her speak on an 85 Broads call - it's one of the most re-tweeted things I've put on social media.

Dorie Clark wrote a piece on the Harvard Business Review blog called Three Mistakes to Avoid When Networking.

Here's the piece Kimberly wrote on how to work a room that made me want to track her down for the podcast.

Harvard Business Review blog: Two Ways Women Can Network More Effectively, Based on Research.

McKinsey's research on women and the workplace also talks about networking and women's exclusion from informal networks.