Fuck! I’m a graduate

The day had arrived, I waked up in the morning feeling like any other day throughout my student life. I had dressed a bit more formal than I normally did to go to class and took the bus. It was the last time I was taking that bus to uni. That day, I wouldn’t sit down on a chair listening to the teacher, but all the opposite.

Unstoppable

I’m writing this post a bit more than a year after I presented my thesis. I remember feeling excited, I wasn’t too worried about doing well on the presentation, because I had chosen a topic I was quite passionate about. I knew I had done a good job.

Once I left that room where I spoke about Open Innovation for half an hour in front of a row of teachers and a few students, I felt empowered. I walked down the hallway with the compliments of the jury in my mind, feeling unstoppable, it was the time I had been waiting for two years.

There was a little bit of truth in that thinking, I was free. But I had no idea how hard it would be life after uni where grades don’t mean much…

To know what you want, do what you don’t

I graduated in business and marketing already with some experience in digital marketing, mainly in social media management. Plus I had an advanced diploma in business communications that I took during my gap year in England.

At that moment, I had pretty clear that I wanted to work in digital marketing. However, I didn’t know exactly in which area so I decided to first specialise in digital marketing paying a (pretty expensive to be honest) course from the digital marketing institute in association with a local business school. After that, I planned to start learning design and photography, which I’m still doing. The purpose of this? Becoming a freelancer, how? I had no idea — Now I learnt how but we’ll leave that for another post 😉 –.

Photo by Brendan Church

While still in uni, I had looked for different ways to learn digital marketing; as it wasn’t the mayor of my degree. I got my first experience through an internship in a magazine while I was living in England (which I loved). Back in Galicia I took another internship in a super cool small digital marketing agency (where I still go for coffee and advice). But in between, I also did some remote work for an international start up, and it was then when I felt in love with the idea of freelancing. Actually, I always had the entrepreneurship bug, though management is not my thing (that could be a third post); so freelancing made more sense.

He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.

Charles Caleb Colton

Welcome to the jungle

During my last two years in uni I spent plenty of time planning what I would do after graduating. Strategising how to reach my goals. I know, not everybody does this, many just worry about squeezing their last months of naps in the afternoon and parties on Thursdays, clever people. But I knew landing my dream job wouldn’t be easy so I needed some clarity.

When you’re a student, you know that if you study, you pass. It’s that easy. However, out there, in the wild — let’s call it “the jungle” — nothing comes easy. Why? Because you constantly depend on others decisions. The more you think about the outcome of decisions that are not under your control, the more you’ll despair.

In the case that you want to land on a job, the more you think about others deciding to hire you, the more frustrated you’ll become. If you want to gain experience freelancing, well, in that case you’ll have to work on your decisions but earning money won’t depend on you while you’re still building a portfolio.

Once you land on your new job, you’re not finished either. If you’re lucky enough, your first job will be your dream job, otherwise you’ll learn where you don’t want to work. If you were smart on your job search and worked hard, it does depend a bit on you, but still, more people are taking decisions.

So, what do you have control over? Learning from failure and correcting the things that led you to bite the dust. I mean to be unsuccessful, we’re not going to war, no worries. So, If you work hard and don’t give up, you’ll reach your goals. Or maybe some new goals.

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.

Earl Wilson

Today I feel like not feeling

I would say the first thing you feel after uni is excitement, the second, insecurity, and the third, failure. You’ll probably commit mistakes, and you’ll always feel it will be the last time but it won’t. And there is a fourth if you chose entrepreneurship, when you compare yourself with those classmates who are already working and climbing the ladder.

And then, the most dangerous feeling, indecision. There is a small line in between indecision and giving up. Meaning that you drop your plans and get into the first job that comes across. Or in that expensive master that will land you in a good company (not criticising expensive masters if that was your first choice from the beginning). Sacrifice your dream doesn’t often go well as you can end up accepting that you won’t pursue a fulfilling career anymore. But, I believe indecision is good when you learn how to channel it.

Photo by Ian Schneider

I find myself indecisive all the time, however I’m very clear about the main things that I want. I’ve learned to use indecision to set up my priorities although I have to constantly take over so it doesn’t paralyse me.

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

Jimmy Buffett

My reasoning, correct me if i’m wrong

Definitely life after uni is not easy, life in the jungle is cruel. Everybody is fighting the same battle and there’s very few people that will help you. It’s not because they are assholes, they just have the same problems that you have. But, lots of things depend on you and for those that doesn’t, you just need to be persistent. That’s what successful people say (hope it’s true).

In my personal experience; learning from failures, persistency and listening to others advice wisely, without letting them decide for you; — I said it over and over you need to focus on what what depends on you! — there is a way out. Just keep in mind that it can take longer than choosing the first job that comes across. And remember that you can’t compare yourself to others that are not chasing the same things as you, surround youself with a few likeminded that cheer you up instead.

Last by not least, each career path has it’s own process and timings, ask any doctor…

I thought it would be hard to write 800 hundred words about this topic but I ended up with more than 1200! So whatever you are planning, just do it 😉

Thanks a lot for wasting you time - I mean investing - reading my thoughts. Feel free to tell your own experience on the comments, maybe  I can help - or you can help me! - Also subscribe and give me a like if you found this post interesting so I find motivation to keep writing more stuff!

This is not another self improvement advice, the “never ready enough symptom” is real

Personal development is the clue, the effort is the excuse.

“Fully prepared for what you are going to do”, that’s the meaning of ready according to the Oxford Dictionary, and ironically getting ready is what holds back most of us from achieving our goals, developing our crazy ideas and having any aspirations in life. It’s what I just defined as the “never ready enough symptom” Yeah, I know, I’m affirming something kind of weird and you might be asking where did I get this idea? Basically, life it self and some digging on the internet.

Ready… steady… GO!

Think about this, when a race starts, you have three-seconds to get ready and start running, there is no way back. However, when it depends on us to decide if we are ready or not is when we dive fully into the task of preparation…

Time consumes our motivation, our crave for the new and even our hopes for dreams to come true. And, yes, I know getting ready takes time. Seems nothing else but irony that what is supposed to help us achieve our craziest challenges, our thrilling dreams and the biggest of our ideas, ultimately turns into the drug of procrastination, negativity or just laziness.

Personal development and fighting excuses

So, Am I saying that you should go and climb the Everest without training first? No, that’s not the matter here, I know preparing is important and sometimes crucial. No one runs a marathon without good training, no surfer has learned to ride at Jaws and you can’t become an astronaut before studying. There’s a lot of stuff to do in order to aim at that big dream you want to make a reality. But if you’re doing all that stuff, you’re in the right path.

The problem comes earlier in the process when we say: “let’s get ready!”. Just when excitement takes control and you start planning all you are going to do (yes “planning”), everything turns overwhelming. –– This is going to be big you know, so big that it has become impossible, unaffordable and let me tell you what; life is not that bad as it is to complicated with all this. –– The excuse usually sounds like this: “People who succeeded had to work very hard and that’s not for everybody… It’s too late for a career change… or; I better watch a movie, and, besides, with work, I don’t have time…” –– Sorry for the terrible interpretation, but that’s basically what happens, am I right? –– It is not a matter of difficulty or effort but more of personal development.

Do you want to change your life? Dream big, start small

It’s hard to visualise without an example but this doesn’t only apply to big dreams like someone wanting to climb the Everest. Dreams can be more simple and we forget about them anyway, new career ideas are the most common example. This often happens when we can’t see that it’s possible to start working on little things that don’t completely change our lives and enjoy the process without worrying about what the outcome will be.

When you focus on the outcome, it’s hard to see where is the start, what are the small steps to reach the podium. The excitement for the price, for success, it’s a source of motivation but also of dizziness and negativity. How do we go from nothing to the top? How can we reach our goal fast and effortless? Because we can’t wait for that sweat celebration that moved us from the beginning. We want to be professional athletes, not amateurs who train all day to become something.

Nothing is built from the top, and it’s hard to start from the bottom when we are just looking at the outcome. The secret is starting from the small things, getting a sense of what is needed, investing the small time that won’t suppose an effort, start enjoying and visualise the strategy in the long term.

Enforcing our commitment must be something that comes naturally and gradually as we start overcoming the difficulties and increasing the amount of work invested. This will happen as we find ourselves closer to the outcome.

Overcome “THE NEVER READY ENOUGH SYMPTOM” fast, bad and wrong

Starting from the small things that will ultimately take us where we want to be is one way to overcome THE NEVER READY ENOUGH SYMPTOM (sorry I just made up this term). Another way to overcome the overwhelming task of getting things done is by giving it a try first. Matt Trinetti, a writer specialised on career change advice wrote a very interesting post “Fast, Bad And Wrong: A Mantra For Creating The New And Impossible”  – about the methodology used by Physicist and author Safi Bahcall to write his book “Long Shots”.

FBR consists of doing everything fast, bad and wrong to get somewhere near to what you want to achieve. And, from there, start improving the result. This is a personal development technique very effective in order to avoid the sense of overwhelmingness when we start working on something from scratch. It goes without saying that it cannot be applied in every case. Please don’t do things fast, bad and wrong if your goal is building something, investing all your money or simply doing anything risky…

Also, be aware that when following FBR is easy to pivot from the initial idea of what you planned. Matt Trinetti mentions an example from Mark Maples . 93 per cent of the startups where Maples invested pivoted from their initial idea, he said: “Should we even care what the initial idea is?”. Well, in my opinion if these startups where sticking to what they had initially planned, they wouldn’t have taken the plunge in the first place.

To wrap up, just follow Nike’s slogan “Just do it”, act impulsively and go for that dream of yours without expecting big changes. Starting from anything you feel ready to take and see how things go. Doesn’t matter if you start from the basic or you jump to the fast, bad and wrong strategy, just do something. Not everybody lives from dreams, but that doesn’t mean that you have to leave always awake. Let dreams be part of your life.

–– I just applied the FBR writing this post ––

I guess if you got to this point of my messy writting, is because you had the same experience. Don’t hesitate to share what holds you back from feeling ready for your big projects and how you plan to overcome it! I may share my own on the next post.

Techno-Human Intelligent Systems:

 

The title of this post might sound like some sort of new sci-fi movie but sadly is just a new business term, an interesting one though.

 

To get started, take a look at the past, when successful businesses were focused on creating internal knowledge through applied sciences in order to develop new technologies and to be more efficient than their competitors. Now look at the current context of rapid changes and fast paced environments, traditional rational-based principles and technology assets are essential but insufficient. New gadgets and the internet have made technology and knowledge incredibly accessible, making it very hard for companies to keep innovation within the organisation walls as a competitive advantage. On today’s open environment, applied knowledge is openly shared and new technologies are quickly available for anyone to market them. Thus, competitiveness relies more than ever on the creativity needed to turn all the knowledge and technology available out there in outstanding products and services, effective business models and innovative business solutions.

As rational knowledge and technology assets alone are not enough, it is necessary to integrate them with the emotional features of human life and understand that emotions play a fundamental role in the organisational life and in the pursuit of business excellence (Schiuma Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity (2017)). Technologies guarantee efficiency and control, while emotions bring creativeness, art and personality. The integration of the latest technology, the available rational knowledge and human emotions is what is called Techno-Human Intelligent Systems. Emotions refer to the feelings and artistic thoughts of employees or even stakeholders in general, well managed emotions can bring innovation into the company. We are not just referring to the kind of innovation based on new technological enhancements. Emotions can produce disruptive innovation, effective business models, new approaches to markets and a resilient brand image, all determinants for business success.

Take as an easy example Apple, they haven’t been the first ones to market most of their devices, but they have developed a relationship between their products and their users emotions. Apple has a focus on how technology can intersect with humanities, and they encourage their employees, as well as their customers to be emotional and to turn their emotions into art by using their products as a tool. What they have achieved is embracing all this creativity into to their brand and into the organisation, what allows them to make their products stand out for their aesthetics and creative features.

Other tech companies like Google or Microsoft encourage creativity among their employees as well, but they are far more open companies that share their projects before they’re finished and complete them with external help. They follow what is called Open Innovation, consequently, as their products are already public while being under development, their launching doesn’t get the initial impact that Apple’s products get. However, as Microsoft and Googles’ new devices are polished and gain market share, they increase their aesthetics and creative features as well.

 

Feel free to leave any comment.

“The information revolution”

It’s been a while since I wrote my last post but I haven’t given up on the blog yet. My goal was to write at least every month (at first, every week lol) and I’m finding it very difficult, but as I’m trying to specialise in On-line Marketing or at least something related to computing, I feel it’s worthy to push ahead with the blog.

Today I’m just going to bring up an interesting topic that I heard a lot in the media recently. In case you don’t know about this, millions of jobs are at risk due to the developing of new technologies and robots that can replace workers at doing repetitive tasks. I’m sure I’m not the only one who heard about this lately, and this isn’t any prophecy coming from sceptics living in a cave, in fact, this topic has been up for discussion at the last World Economic Forum in Davos.

We’re immerse in a second industrial revolution, that one called “the information revolution”. It’s not hard to imagine the impact that some of the cutting edge gadgets and breaking-throughs in robotics which are under development right now could have on people’s jobs. For instance, if self-driven cars became a reality, millions of people whose job is basically driving any type of vehicle could lose their job. To self-driven cars we need to add up drones, robots, the e-commerce as a substitute of regular shops, big data, new algorithms in software and many more innovations. It’s not that any job can be done by a machine or a computer but very crucial professions for the job market could disappear and we’re not doing a lot to find new careers to all these people who could face long term unemployment.

It’s clear to me that if technology continues developing at this speed, we’ll need to be able to adapt to it at the same speed. I mean, the system needs more flexibility to find new career paths suitable for those being substituted by a very clever software, otherwise we’ll see inequality rise, consumerism decrease and our social stability being seriously threat. Right now education is not flexible enough to adapt to the job market needs and we’re used to making a choice for life when it comes to our profession. I don’t think labour will be totally substituted by robots, take the industrial revolution as an example, market trends and new industries are impossible to predict and could create new professions. However, in the short term it will definitely have a very negative social impact if nothing is done to avoid it.

I’m for using technology and robots to create more opportunities, more jobs, new professions, and a better distribution of the wealth and not to destroy jobs and enrich just a few. It’s also crucial for large international companies. Who is going to buy what automatised factories can produce if most of the people can’t make ends meet? Well, the current system would be just like herding cats.

This is a very informal piece of writing probably full of mistakes of all kind but I just wanted to bring up the topic. I hope I can search for more information and write a more accurate version including facts and new insights, plus better written. Anyway I welcome any opinion on the matter!

Cheers for reading 😉