I started my first full time job at the age of 23. One year into a new job with The Times of India was not what I had dreamt of . Starting with a English broadsheet in a hindi heartland – Indore had its own set of challenges. Industry challenges apart, I wish to touch upon few learnings from my early corporate life – and wish I had done these things differently
A) Knowing your passion : It is the holy grail. If you don’t know it – you wont enjoy what your are doing. The difficult part is to know your passion, easy part is to follow it at that age. Most – including me failed to understand what is my passion and hence succumbed to the usual grind of doing a PG & getting into a job – I found. My advice – Avoid this trap.
B) Take more risks : Risk is least when you have not much to loose. 2-3 years of your life must be invested in figuring out what works and what wont. Experience comes out of wrong decisions. So do not shy away from taking risks. Get the fear of failing out of your head. You will any which way not succeed early on. So better to build your experiences of what not to do at this age.
C) Find a mentor : Very important . I had none. I could had been somewhere else if I had one. Finding a mentor is also tricky. Not an easy task. But if you have followed above two points – chances are you would have found one by now. So use your mentor as a sounding board. Talk, communicate, express, articulate your doubts with your mentor and you would fast track your learning curve.
D) Write a lot : Nothing works like good old habit of penning your thoughts. Now it is even simpler with Evernote, Twitter, and all sorts of applications available to you. I used to write a lot – but I wish I wrote more. It is like a mirror to your self. You can revisit your image in future and understand your growth or de growth. It is powerful benchmark about how have your grown in your thoughts, attitudes, approach to life, finance and many other hygiene factors.
E) Financial Awareness : When you take risks, you also learn to experiment with money. Risks and financial awareness go hand in hand and allow you to understand how financial planning and awareness can help you in later stages of your career.
I want to keep this note crisp and think I have almost covered what I wish #IfIWere22 today. I am happy what I have achieved and I am hoping to go on and get what I still dream of. someday I would write back on how have I fared in achieving those dreams.