1% better - three things I wish I'd known as a grad

Summary

This week’s post is a departure from my usual articles. I delivered a keynote to the latest cohort of Thoughtworks University. It’s a group of 70 graduates and career changers. I spoke to them about systems and goals, identity and the notion of intellectual and career capital. Most importantly, I encouraged them to revel in their insignificance. This post has the audio recording of the talk and a clean transcript.

I still vividly remember the day I first walked into Thoughtworks’ old Pune office, just across the road, about 19 years back. It was for a day of interviews. I had a chance to work in the company of one of my intellectual heroes of the time, Martin Fowler. I got that job! A few months later, I started my job in the Bangalore office, and within hours, my excitement turned into dread. Every single person I met on that first day was sharp as nails. 10x smarter than me. I can’t tell you how scared I was of being found out – an impostor amongst all these real geniuses. 

News flash. I survived. And I’ve had a tiny bit of success and achievement on the way here. You know, I started my career right here, at Thoughtworks University. My first job was leading our first-year programs – TWU and Immersion. Being here today completes almost a full circle in my Thoughtworks career. So, I’ve been thinking about three ideas that I’ve synthesised, looking back on my career at the company. No big deal. Just three simple ideas. I have three props to bring those ideas alive for you, and I’ll show them to you as I tell my story.

My first idea is about systems and goals.

Soon after I settled into Thoughtworks, I found my groove here. Thoughtworks has a rich history of authoring books. That was my goal too – be an author someday. I could argue that I was at the peak of my powers in 2009 – I was speaking at conferences regularly, had industry recognition, and was being solicited by other companies to work for them. But writing a book was still a “someday maybe” goal. 

You know the truth about peaks? 

• It’s all downhill from there.

For many years after that, I dabbled in various skills. I had at least one book in me, but that book never came out until something changed in early 2021. 

It was a simple reflection exercise. I asked myself about the identity I wanted to cultivate. Well, I wanted to be an author/ writer. So then I asked myself what a writer does. 

Take a wild guess. What does an author do?

• They write. They. Write.

Was I writing regularly? Nope. I was only thinking of writing. That had to change. 

I decided to flip the switch. 

• If writers write, then I’d write every day. 

• Even if it were 100 words, I’d write. 

• Even if it were just the act of opening a word processor, I’d turn up to write.

So, every day, I woke up at 5 am and wrote. I built up that writing muscle by writing for myself, writing for work and writing for my website. By the time I had contacted publishers for a book idea, I had a decent portfolio of writing to show them, so they knew I could deliver on my idea. 

And deliver, I did. Many authors will tell you they procrastinated to no end, then finally took a sabbatical from work to write their book. I did none of that. I just followed my writing routine and delivered all my chapters in under a year of signing the book contract. Soon after, I became a published author.

Here’s the book I wrote.

Writing is now part of me. I don’t do it for the world. I do it for myself. 

• I write because I am a writer. 

• I still write every day, even though I’m not writing a book right now. 

• If I’m not on vacation, you’ll find a weekly blog post on my website every Friday.

What I want you to take away from my story is that goals are both inspirational and problematic. They’re often too far away, and they don’t usually speak to the person you want to be. Turn the question around – ask yourself who you want to be and then cultivate the habits that cast votes for that identity. And you know the crazy thing? If you make the 1% changes every day of the year, by the end of the year, you’ll be 37 times better than when you started. How magical is that?

My second idea is to cultivate resilience.

I live in a family of atheists. That said, many years back, people congregated at places of worship. Some people would do social work through the church. Others would meet community members at a mosque. Some would find meaning and solace through praying at a temple. Religion was often the centrepiece of people’s lives, even if they weren’t overtly religious. 

But over the past century, something shifted. We got the industrial revolution and the knowledge revolution. Soon, it wasn’t the church, mosque, temple or synagogue that was the centrepiece of life, but work. Today, we live in the cult of workism. For many of us, our work defines us. It’s our very identity! 

Around that 2021 time frame, when I was reflecting on my identity, I realised that I’m more than just my profession. I’m:

• a dad, 

• a husband, 

• and a photographer. 

That last bit, photography is the other side of my persona. I often introduce myself as a photographer who earns his living from IT. I travel for photography almost every day of my paid time off, and then some. Tigers, lions, cheetahs, snow leopards, meerkats, snakes, wolves… I’ll photograph them all. Some day I hope to visit Antarctica as well. You can find my photography work at www.sumeetmoghe.com. 

Most of you will have long careers. It’s quite likely that in those long careers, you’ll have several low points. If work is the only thing that defines you, you’ll have little else to hang on to. 

• I’m married to the most beautiful woman I know. 

• I have two children I love to bits. 

• I have some of the best friends.

• And, I have photography. 

I encourage you to think of life as a portfolio, of which work is only one part. It’s an important part, because you’ll spend a third of your time at work. But don’t forget to enrich the other parts of your portfolio. That way, when things go wrong at work, you’ll have a counterbalance working for you.

My last idea is about building capital.

But it’s not the kind of capital you might think of. Remember, I told you that I write all the time? Writing allows me to structure and shape my thoughts. Once I’ve written my ideas up as coherent concepts or arguments, I can always refer to them later. I can reuse them or build on them. They serve as intellectual capital for my work.

In fact, I got my current role because of my intellectual capital. When I was crafting my application for this job, I drew on the intellectual capital I’ve built over several years to assemble a portfolio of work. That portfolio proved I could do the job I was applying for. The lesson, I guess, is to never lose sight of the creator’s mindset. 

• Keep tinkering

• Keep creating

You may not see where these investments are leading you, but when you look back, you’ll often see the dividends. 

The other capital we often ignore is career capital. Look, if you do well at Thoughtworks, and Thoughtworks lives up to its promises, you’ll be three times the professional you are today in three years. You’ll always have many options to leave and join another firm.

Each time you consider a new job option, consider the career capital you’ve accumulated with your current employers – the relationships you have, the people you know, the fact that you understand the company’s political dynamics. Remember, building such career capital in a new place takes time. These things don’t have a monetary value associated with them, but they give you leverage. For one, you gain autonomy in the way you work. But second, you can use this career capital to make your efforts more impactful. How much is more autonomy and higher impact worth to you? 

I’ll leave you to answer that question in a few years. 

By the way, as a TWU cohort, you are each other’s career capital. Don’t forget that. And that’s why you are my third prop!

Whatever you do, though, don’t take yourselves too seriously.

In 1990, the Voyager spacecraft took an iconic photograph from about 4 billion miles away. It was a grainy photo, with scattered light rays, and the earth seemed like a small, almost indiscernible dot within them. Carl Sagan wrote a beautiful passage about that photograph, which described our planet as “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”. If the earth is a mote of dust in the larger scheme of things, then how insignificant are we, and how significant can anything we ever do, ever be?

But here’s the hidden message I take away. Because we're so small, we have permission to take risks, to fail, to define some of our success on our own terms.

So, don’t worry about what other people think, or obsess endlessly over your station in life. Even when they feel all-consuming in the moment, they matter very little to the big picture. Instead, think about the things that truly matter to you. 

• What makes you happy?

• Which people do you care about?

• Who are you?

As you begin your careers at Thoughtworks, I hope you reflect on those questions and cultivate your identities. Most of all, be the best version of yourself. As they say, everyone else, is already taken.