EP-55: 3 Pieces of Advice That Changed my Life

Jul 7

Jul 7 EP-55: 3 Pieces of Advice That Changed my Life

Taking advice is a funny process. Sometimes, it stops you dead in your tracks. You feel like the main character in a movie that had a revelation and the words of wisdom change the trajectory for how the ending will unfold. Other times, you’ll vehemently disagree with advice because deep down you know it’s right, but you’re scared of what will happen if you listen. I’m not the smartest guy in the room, but I’ve surrounded myself with some incredibly intelligent people who’ve shared with me what they’ve learned along the way. Today, I want to share with you three pieces of advice that changed my life. Keep in mind, it’s up to you to decide what to do with this information. I’m not saying that you must do anything or dismantle your current way of thinking, but what I am sharing are the experiences I’ve had with following these words and seeing how far it can take me. So, use your best judgment and decide for yourself what’s right.

Double Down on Your Strengths and Forget Your Weaknesses

The first time I heard these words, I didn’t know what to do with them. All of my life, I’ve been aware of my weaknesses and I’ve done my best to improve them. That’s what I’ve always been taught. If you have a flaw, you are supposed to work on it until it’s gone. When it comes to academics, this might sound familiar to you. Think back to middle school or high school for me. When you received your report card when you were young, if you had all As and Bs, but had one F, I bet you solely focused on the F. You dwelled on it and were most likely scolded on the failure mark. In order to rectify this, all of your time and energy was spent bringing up that grade and by default, you didn’t spend as much time studying other subjects. Maybe those other subjects went down a bit or maybe they didn’t. The point is that this mentality stays with you for the rest of your life.

I see it all the time with new people coming into the instructional design field. They are hyper aware of their weaknesses and tell me that they’ll dedicate all of their time into practicing until this area becomes a strength. However, what if I said that you should do the opposite? What if you double down on your strengths and turn a skill you are good at into a skill you are excellent at? It’s a weird way of thinking, right? Let me give you two examples in the real-world though on how this has helped me.

The first time I started to recognize this advice is when I was designing an accelerated degree program for the future of manufacturing. It was intense and I could work 80 hours a week and still find something to do. During this timeframe, I was involved with every aspect of designing each course and a new course was launching almost every other month. I was stretched thin and told my supervisor about my concerns and she asked me where I was struggling the most. To be honest, it was all a struggle since I was so new in my career, but if I had to identify one area over the others, it was with authoring tools. I was trying to teach myself and I simply did not have the time to learn how to use the products and build them at the same time. I knew what I wanted them to look like, but I couldn’t figure out how to transform the ideas into the software. With the wave of her magic wand, my supervisor said, “Oh, don’t worry about that. There’s room in the budget to hire a freelance designer. They can build it. You just need to tell them exactly what you want.” Wait, that’s a possibility? I thought I had to do everything?! Sure enough, she wanted me to focus more on what the learning experience was going to be over fretting about tiny details. I had never thought about that way before, but in the grand scheme of things, I had a million more important items to worry about instead of trying to decide if a button should be a circle or an oval. By being able to focus on other elements with design, my skills started to truly develop.

This same instance happened again later on within my team at MIT. At the time, there were four of us who all shared the title of “Instructional Designer and Program Manager.” I’ll admit that it’s odd to have two job titles in one, but it does fit the bill. After we designed the online programs like a typical instructional designer, we would then own them and they became a part of our portfolio. This meant being involved with staffing, marketing, promoting, operations, logistics, etc. As you can imagine, having such a multifaceted position meant the team members were excellent in some areas and needed assistance in others. Personally, I love working with people so participating in public speaking events, conducting pilot programs, and assisting learners were all right up my alley. However, when I was trying to fix a bug in our LMS, it was a serious struggle. Every team member felt the same way in that our strengths weren’t being utilized correctly and our supervisor had an idea on how to fix this.

One day, we wrote down on sticky notes all of the position’s responsibilities and all of our current and future projects. Then, we placed them on a wall for us to visibly see everything. This activity essentially created physical manifestations for all of our daily activities and projects. One-by-one, we walked up to the wall and grabbed the sticky note with the activity we loved to do. By the end of this process, each person gravitated towards different areas. Two of us sided with the creative side of design and working with people. One person chose more of the program management and operations side of the house. The final team member selected more of an IT and engineering route. By the end of the exercise, we essentially created new jobs and responsibilities for ourselves with focusing more on our strengths instead of our weaknesses. This exercise positively changed the energy and vibe among the team and provided a much better way to use our strengths.

So, for you my friend, don’t worry about your weaknesses. Identify where you are a rockstar and find ways to take your skill set to the next level. This advice truly helped me and I hope it can help you too.

Leave to Grow

This advice was a hard pill to swallow. I can’t recall a time where I was given advice and then I had to go ask others for their advice and the advice. The truth is, I didn’t want this advice, but I needed to hear it. As most of you know, I’ve well documented my struggles with trying to become an instructional designer. The majority of the feedback I received was pretty much the same thing. That was until I spoke with one of the deans at my university and asked what she would do in my position. I could tell she didn’t want to say the words she was about to tell me, but it needed to be said. The culture at the university I worked during this timeframe was changing. There was an extra perceived sense of value with bringing in outside perspectives. This friend of mine had sat in some of my interviews and heard the conversations of the hiring managers. She sensed that all I knew was one university’s way and I needed to leave to grow.

I really struggled with this advice. I prided myself on loyalty and I had been affiliated with the same university in some shape, way, and form since 2006. So, instead of trying to be promoted from within and being valued for my time there, it would be wiser to leave and to try and come back later? It just didn’t make sense. I always admired people who stayed at one company for 30, 40, and 50 years because it demonstrated loyalty and trust. Leaving felt like I was turning my back on my friends and colleagues, but I sensed that she was right.

I ended up creating a pros and cons list to help me visualize what it would mean to embark on a new journey. This exercise did help me to see that my career had completely plateaued. I had learned all that I could and my skills weren’t developing more so it was indeed time to move on. It’s been five years since I made this change, and every single day, I’m so glad that I decided to take that leap. By all means, it was not easy and you can read the whole story of my journey in this blog post. One of the byproducts of this transition was that I stopped equating years of experience to skills. My first years at Northeastern University and MIT felt like 5 years at my prior university if that makes any sense. I was asked to do more, I was given more chances, I was allowed to experiment, and most importantly, I had the right mentorship in place to help me when I stumbled. Sure enough, I needed to leave my comfort zone to grow. I’m thankful for this growth because the old me would have never felt confident with sharing my instructional design experiences online. But hey, it happened and now you are reading this blog or listening to this podcast.

So, I’ll share this piece of advice with a bit of warning message. You may not need to take as drastic measures as I did. However, leaving your comfort zone could allow you to grow, especially if you feel like you are stuck in the rut of a typical 9-5. Take a chance and see what happens.

Reinvent Yourself Every Five Years

Have you ever taken a shot in the dark and hope that someone responds back? That’s where this advice came from and I’m so glad I took that chance. Back in 2019, I was developing a leadership program with one particular professor at MIT and he was just different. I never knew what he was going to say next because he had story after story about his adventures and how they tied into his lessons. At times, they were almost unbelievable. One day, he was telling me stories while training astronauts. The next day, he mentioned fighting poverty and helping third world countries. When I say he was different, he truly was and I respected him for it. I started to dive more into his work and read about his career and that’s when I noticed something unusual.

He had been at MIT for his entire career, but he never seemed to stay in one department. This is a bit unusual for higher education. Once you find your calling, you tend to stay in that lane. For instance, someone who has made a name for themselves in online higher education will typically make a career out of online higher education. He didn’t do that at all though. He jumped around from department to department, acquiring various titles along the way. As someone who was new to the MIT culture at the time, I was so curious on how he had built such a personal brand at the institution and if he had any advice for me.

As we were wrapping up another work session, I asked him for his secret and what I could do if I wanted to make a career like his. “Reinvent yourself every five years,” is what he said. If you do this, your career will never plateau and you’ll always be engaged with your work. “You didn’t even have to buy me a drink to get that advice!” he said as he walked away laughing. I paused and let the words sink in. Was there anyone in my field who had done this? Instructional design is pretty nuanced, but the more I thought about it, the more I started to notice what others had done. It was actually really interesting to see where some people started and then when I had first heard of them. Even now, if you were to conduct this exercise of trying to map out timelines from those you read about, you’ll see that they first started talking about simulations, and then moved into cohort-based learning, and then moved into microlearning. The reinvention of the personal brand doesn’t need to be in the ID space.

As I was searching for more examples, I found one literally in someone I talk to every day. My dad was reinventing himself as an educator and it never dawned upon me. He has worked in higher education for as long as I can remember, but he transitioned from a faculty member, to a dean, and recently to an expert on neuroscience. Every day, he would tell me about a new article, book, or audiobook that he enjoyed about something in neuroscience that went way over my head. Before I knew it, he was networking with experts in neuroscience, attending classes at Johns Hopkins, and then started to give his own presentations on neuroscience. He had reinvented himself into the neuroscience guy at his university. This is just one example of the many folks out there who have done this, but it’s not as apparent unless you are paying close attention.

As for myself, I feel like I’m constantly reinventing between platforms and content. At first, it was all about the blog and the podcast and then the book changed all of that. For some people, they have no idea that I have any of those platforms and only know me from YouTube. I mainly was talking about how to make podcasts for courses and how to finish dissertations, and that morphed into backward design and working with subject matter experts. At the end of the day, instructional design is my passion and there are so many areas to explore and grow into.

So, for you, map it out. Where does five years take you? Is there an intersection between your passions and your work that could intersect to make a name for yourself? This could be finding new passions at your organization or starting up a new project. There is nothing stopping you from diving in further to other areas and running with it.

Well, that’s all I have for you. At the end of the day, everything we talked about is advice. You can take it or leave it. Either way, I hope just one thing resonated with you.

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