In your career — a day will come — your inspiration will dry out
– You will struggle to learn more
– You will fail to grow
– You will lose productivity
– You will be lost to find purpose
In many cases, you will stagnate, burn out, or even worse, just give up
That is why one of the greatest life lessons for me has been what I call ‘Horizontal Integration’
This being on LinkedIn and my MicroBlog, and you reading this — we all try our best to follow the thought leaders in our career domain, to learn from them, and find inspiration from them
What happens over time though is that you see the same BS posted in different flavors, no other way to put it
The same content you couldn’t go out with just does not attract you anymore, you feel like you have read everything, seen everything, heard everything
So what is the best advice I give to people at this junction?
Expand beyond your domain
Find a passion that overlaps just enough with your career, draw inspiration from other sources, and quickly you will realize you don’t need to be stuck in a loop
When coming up as a PM, I religiously followed the Aakash Guptas and the Aatirs of the PM world, they are still excellent sources to learn from — but I just got tired of living, breathing, and working on PM domain.
My friend in this crisis? Was my passion for Tech. Consumer Tech to be more specific.
I proudly tell my friends, I listen to 10 hours of tech and creator podcasts every week, nothing to do with PM, all consumer tech, gaming, fun, and memes — they keep my mind off of my day-to-day work — they keep me thinking of what can be more — they keep inspiring me.
Example:
I just added the Colin Cooper and Samir Chaudry podcast to my utility belt — after they mentioned the term ‘Content Market Fit’ — you see that?
We PMs throw the word Product Market Fit around on a daily basis
But it’s not just us!
There are other domains, other people, who throw that very concept out as well
But how it translates is completely different — and to a point, it transforms my mindset every day seeing different applications of the same theory
Consuming knowledge is just as important as consuming a good diet, though I am working on the latter, active effort in curating good sources will result in you being — well, more inspired
Keep Exploring!
At the heart of it – I love solving problems for people using tech, it doesn’t get simpler than that.
Some know me as a Product Manager who relentlessly executes, some know me as a mentor who hand holds them to success, some know me as a techhead who won’t stop complaining about ‘that one thing’, and lastly; some know me as that guy who is always experimenting with something new.
As long as its in the realm of tech, I am interested – because my love for tech fuels my passion – sknexus.com – and my profession – saqibtahir.com
