I made the mistake of doing way too much when I started at YouTube in 2016 (my first full time job as a software engineer). I was active in a few ERGs, helped at conferences, dedicated a lot of time to mentorship and more.
In high school and college I was so used to quantity being over quality. It was more important to be โwell-roundedโ than extremely good at one skill.
Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it โwell-roundedness,โ a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it.
- Peter Thiel, Zero to One
Take a look at your calendar for this week, what are you dedicating your time to? How much of it is directly impacting your teamโs OKRs vs things outside your teamโs goals?
Do you fall into the habit of saying โyesโ to things just to be a team player?
While it might feel like youโre moving yourself in the right direction by getting more work done, youโll notice at the end of the quarter you donโt have anything significant to show for. Too much of your work was split into multiple streams and now you donโt have a big achievement to list in your self review.
Action time:
Letโs take some inventory. What is something you can remove from your week (or month) right now? How can you say no to one of your current commitments outside your team goals?
If you want help wordsmithing your โno,โ let me know!
Thanks for reading โค๏ธโ๐ฅ
Eden
P.S. Sorry for being behind on our newsletter! and I were heads down working on our application for Y Combinator. Wish us luck! ๐งก
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Get to Staff ๐ช to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.