A lot of things are baby steps. Sometimes you think that you have to take a gigantic leap and it’s going to take everything you have. Life is a series of baby steps along the way and if you add up these tiny little steps you take toward your goal, whatever it is, whether it’s giving up something, a terrible addiction or trying to work your way through an illness. When you total up those baby steps you’d be amazed over the course of 10 years, the strides you’ve taken.
Sometimes we believe we have to do something that seems so monumental, like the giant leap when really little steps that come together will show your life’s trajectory. It will show how your life is improving gradually and sometimes you can’t see it when it’s small and then suddenly you look back 10 years later at the big picture and you’re like ‘oh my God, look what I’ve done’. The best way out is through. You can’t sidestep and walk around things, you have to force forward and you can do it in baby steps that add up.
Based on your own experiences, can you give your top three career advice tips?
1. Never giving up to me is a huge one because when I look around, I’m sitting in my office in 30 Rock and I’m looking around at other people’s offices who are near me and Roker’s office is next to me and Tom Brokaw’s is there and Lester’s and everybody. I think a lot of people who make it are the ones who don’t quit and it sounds trite and small but it’s not because it’s easy early in your career to say ‘you know what, that’s too hard’ or ‘I’m not going to do that’. A lot of people are the ones who never gave up and stamina is something. I mean I don’t know that everyone at 30 Rock is the most talented or the top tier of everybody but they certainly are the ones who when people told them ‘no’ they said ‘yes’. I know for myself I had 27 job rejections before I got my first job and look, a smarter person would have listened to 27 people who all had the same thing to say. I was stupid and hard headed and because of that, because I saw it as ‘I’m not giving up’ I think that that was the thing that worked for me. I know there many journalists who are infinitely more talented than me but I think sometimes the extra push that I know everybody here has helps.
2. You don’t have to step on someone to move up. You don’t have to do that and that is very, very apparent where I work. When I first came to NBC, I thought it was going to be swimming with the sharks, all men for themselves, be careful and all that. I have to tell you I learned that you can be kind and a hard worker and move up. You don’t have to play dirty or do things that you think happens at big corporations.
3. You can change habits. There’s a saying that says something like ‘the way you spend your days is the way you spend your life’. If you look at your life and what you did today, you woke up, you had breakfast, you wrote some articles, we have a phoner, you have lunch, you go on a date, I don’t know if you’re married. Anyway, that’s your life and you do it everyday. You do something similar and often we think that if we want to change it up a little bit we have to change a lot but if we just change something we do on Monday and then you change Tuesday and then you change Wednesday and pretty soon you’ve changed the way you’re doing something for a week. Then it’s a month and then it’s a year. You have to be bendable in a lot of these work environment situations and sometimes you can’t just stick to doing what you’re always doing. You’ve got to try to mix it up a little.
Dan Schawbel is the Founder of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm. He recently made the Forbes Magazine 30 Under 30 list and his second book called Promote Yourself: The New Art of Getting Ahead is due out in the Fall of 2013 by St. Martin’s Press. He is offering an online course called “Build Your Personal Brand in 4 Easy Steps.”
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