Articles on Success Mindsets

How to Create Time and Space for What You Want to Do

I laid on the couch. My body alternated uncomfortably through waves of heat and sweat. My lower back ached constantly. I swallowed my sixth Advil for the day, hoping that my pounding headache would stop. I had caught some bug that was going around. With little energy to do anything, I ended up watching the entire season of Westworld — all 10 hours of it — in a single day.... (more)

What Makes an Engineer Successful Here?

Whenever you’re starting a new role, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. You’re bombarded by an influx of new knowledge. You’re worried about ramping up as quickly as possible. You’re feeling anxious about proving yourself. It’s tempting to just put your head down and power through, believing that it’s the most direct path to success. Take a deep breath. One of the most valuable things you can do as you start... (more)

The 3 Keys to a Remarkable Career

For the past few years, I’ve been coaching an engineering leader at Google on how to think about growing her career. She had been with the company for many years and was ready to play a bigger role. She didn’t just want to be another engineer who could deliver quality code in a timely manner. Google already had an abundance of those. Instead, she longed to make her own unmistakable... (more)

What’s Possible Here?

This story captures for me what’s possible in 2017. A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region in Africa to explore opportunities for business expansion. One reports back, “Situation hopeless. No one wears shoes.” The other writes back enthusiastically, “Glorious business opportunity! They have no shoes.” The exact same observation. Two very different interpretations. This story, related by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander in The Art of Possibility, illustrates... (more)

The Trouble with Trying to Win at Everything

I like to argue. In fact, I liked it so much that during my high school and college days, I competed on the debate team for over five years. On weekends, we’d travel to tournaments at nearby school campuses and debate other students on important social issues. Is human genetic engineering morally justified? Is it moral for the United States to use economic sanctions to achieve foreign policy goals? Do... (more)

When Pride Gets in the Way of Your Best Work

Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s founder and CEO, wanted to bet on an idea called the “Bot Team” to solve one of the company’s most pressing product challenges. A year and a half after the company’s beta launch, over 500,000 people were using its team messaging product every day. But to maintain that rapid growth, Slack needed to expand to new audiences and reach beyond early adopters in the technology sector. But... (more)

“A comprehensive tour of our industry's collective wisdom written with clarity.”

— Jack Heart, Engineering Manager at Asana

“Edmond managed to distill his decade of engineering experience into crystal-clear best practices.”

— Daniel Peng, Senior Staff Engineer at Google

“I wish I had this manual to give my engineers when I was a VP of Engineering at Twitter. This summarizes and presents everything I used to tell my team.”

— Raffi Krikorian, Engineering Director at Uber

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“A comprehensive tour of our industry's collective wisdom written with clarity.”

— Jack Heart, Engineering Manager at Asana

“Edmond managed to distill his decade of engineering experience into crystal-clear best practices.”

— Daniel Peng, Senior Staff Engineer at Google

“I wish I had this manual to give my engineers when I was a VP of Engineering at Twitter. This summarizes and presents everything I used to tell my team.”

— Raffi Krikorian, Engineering Director at Uber

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