In Bring Your Brain To Work: Using Cognitive Science to Get a Job, Do It Well, and Advance Your Career, author Art Markman explains how various psychological pitfalls play out in our work lives, and then instructs the reader on how to overcome them in order to find and keep work worth doing. I’m going to write a few blog posts about this fascinating book and the topic of work generally (one of my favorite topics), beginning today with some of my favorite take-aways from Bring Your Brain To Work, and then moving on to wisdom I’ve acquired in my 20-plus years of work experience beginning with food prep at my parents’ restaurant up through today as a government attorney.
From Bring Your Brain To Work, here are a few of the tips with my commentary:
- Be open to new things- your vision of what a job or workplace involves is limited by your own past experience. I think this advice is particularly important to students and those early in their careers, even those who think they know what they want to do. My first legal job in disaster legal services was actually posted online for months before I applied. It took a conversation with someone doing that work for me to see it as a potential path to doing consumer rights and government legal work (which it ultimately became).
- When applying for jobs, cast a wide net in order to maximize your chances of becoming employed sooner. Markman points out that sitting around waiting to hear back from a few jobs has a literal opportunity cost. My two cents: the application process is dating and always realize that you do not have to get married.
- Talk it through. When trying to identify the kind of jobs or work that you want to do, discuss it with someone. “The advantage of talking to someone else over just thinking about it yourself is that you have to articulate a number of hidden assumptions.” A good conversation partner will talk through what you think you know, help you consider job qualities you may have overlooked, and generate questions for you to take into the job application process.
- Interviewing can tell you a lot about the values of any prospective work place (but not everything). Markman says:
- Take notes about your interactions with a prospective employer so you can assess them clearly, without having to depend on your (unreliable) memory. And, do your own research about your prospective workplace in order to overcome the “retail” face that will greet you when you’re a candidate.
- “Don’t worry about mistakes you make at the interview. You may learn something about how the organization deals with error.”
- How a company negotiates can tell you a lot about what it’s like to work there and what the company values. In my experience, it is invaluable to know in advance how your future colleagues deal with difficult conversations. I prefer to work with people who want to talk through ideas with me and who aren’t put off by disagreement; but I know that is not for everyone. If you are the kind of person who wants to ask your boss a question and get a clear answer, observe whether that’s the dynamic in interviews.
- “A good decision should think right and feel right.” This is one of my favorite tips and it actually comes via Markman’s colleague Bob Duke. I agree that if your brain and your gut are not in sync, it’s useful to pause and consider why. I am guilty of applying for and accepting work because it “thought right” even though it may not have felt right, and I think this is a normal step in a person’s working life as they struggle to identify their core career values.
Do you agree with these? Disagree? Have something to add, whether good advice you received or bad advice you never follow? Please share it in the comments! My next post will discuss principles that are important to me in my work life, and I may respond to comments posted here.
Clementine 