Happy New Year 2024
Bill Watterson is one of the greatest cartoonists ever and easily my favourite one. He created Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip about the adventures of a 6-year-old American boy called Calvin and his best friend, a tiger named Hobbes.
I’m sure everyone reading this post must have read Calvin and Hobbes at least a few times. If you haven’t and want some wisdom in 2024, make sure you read them.
Make it your new year resolution if you believe in making resolutions.
“I will read all Calvin and Hobbes stories in 2024”.
Bill Watterson, wrote his last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip on this day (31st December) in 1995. He was at the top of his game. He could have continued forever. He’s making a lot of money.
Why did he stop?
IIRC, he said in an interview that he wanted to explore different things. He had written Calvin and Hobbes for a few years and wanted newer challenges in life. He left at the top.
When you read Calvin and Hobbes, you see this passion. All stories are excellent. This is a sign of the creator having fun. He wasn’t writing for the money. Money was just a byproduct. He was writing because he’s having fun. He loved the 6-year-old kid and his tiger. I love them too.
I guess he stopped writing it when it became a bit less funny. He left millions of dollars on the table for exciting things. I can’t imagine a better way to live life.
So, whatever you’re doing in your life, remember to have fun. It’s more important than everything else. And whenever it ceases to be fun, move on.
Finally, here’s the last Calvin and Hobbes story that Watterson wrote in 1995. It’s a fitting finale ;)
Those among you who spend time on Twitter may have come across accounts with the term ‘e/acc’ appended to them.
e/acc is short for ‘effective accelerationism’ and forms the core of an obscure pro-technology philosophical stance that emerged in the late 1900s.
Whether or not this fledgling internet movement may interest you, its implications certainly will. The past couple of decades have been nothing short of prolific when it came to technological breakthroughs. Some of the major innovations in the latter half of the past century have now been democratized to the point where they have become a part of our daily lives (internet, portable computing, etc.)
This pace only seems to be increasing and concurrently leads to the creation and destruction of new companies and industries almost overnight i.e. it’s becoming increasingly difficult for anyone to pick a role with a certain firm, and be able to stick with it for a long enough period for them to grow into it.
The career, as we know it, is more or less gone and the period with which careers are compressed is only going down. This isn’t a bad thing. Careers, unlike professions, hinge on many intangibles that are secondary to what matters most: skill.
As careers become increasingly untenable and cold, hard skill triumphs over all else, and people who’ve had to bear the brunt of not having credentials, networks et al. will be able to operate on equal footing with those who do.
Technology will lead to the steady disintegration of artificial barriers to progress and strip professionals down to their bare essentials. There’s never been a better time to ignore all the fluff and focus on the core of what makes one a great professional, i.e. skills.
Skill is the last thing that technology will be able to erode, and the earlier you invest in strengthening it, the longer it shall elude the disruptive forces that are looming around the corner.
They call this the reverse spiderman rule, and it’s one of the most straightforward career ‘hacks’ that I can think of. This post is a plea, especially for the younger folks out there to not shun responsibility, but to embrace it.
I’m well aware of instances where junior/entry-level folks end up shouldering an unholy amount of the work burden without any recompense. I’m also aware of how tempting it must be to take it easy for a few years after college.
That being said, those who do step up, especially in growth-stage startups will find themselves being given a level of influence that will match the kinds of responsibilities they take. It’s not uncommon for people, especially those entrenched in corporate environments, to play the attribution game to advance their causes.
Taking credit for successes and deflecting blame for failures is an age-old phenomenon that will continue to rear its head in any team effort.Startups, especially the good kind, are set up to avoid this. The mechanism through which this works is by keeping tabs on folks who take responsibility for the outcomes, whether they succeed or not.
Step up. If you find that you’re not being given the kind of power you need to get things done, you can always describe the bottlenecks clearly and ask for influence.
If it still doesn’t come your way, you can take that as a cue that you’ve outgrown your role/employer and leverage your experiences to move on to something that can accommodate your ambition.
Contrary to popular belief, power, and authority only go to those who have exhibited a bias for action. No better way to do that than to shoulder responsibilities, even if it’s ‘not in your JD’.