You’ve heard it a million times, “here’s some advice I wish they would’ve told me when I was your age”. In my case, I’m very fortunate to have grown up with great parents, who shared with me a lot of their life experience and knowledge (thanks Mom & Dad). Sometimes though, I was just too stubborn to hear or see it, or maybe I just wasn’t ready. Regardless, I think that much of “What I wish they would’ve told me”, is sometimes actually “What I wish I would’ve listened to, when they told me.”. We often just don’t get it at the time. Maybe we just want to do things differently, or we know better. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not to say I haven’t blazed my own trails, and that I haven’t walked on paths not yet traveled by my mentors. But it’s to recognize, that we often times miss some of the things our elders want us to know. This isn’t to say that the world would be a better place, if we just followed everything our parents, grandparents, teachers, or bosses told us to do. We would then just be a society of automaton, that can’t think for ourselves. Regardless of whether we wanted to hear it, or they never told us, this miscommunication becomes things “I wish they would’ve told me that when I was younger”.
So, now it’s my turn — my reflection on my career sparked an urge to share some of the life lessons I’ve learned in my short time on this rock, and my even shorter time as a Software Developer. The things I wish I would’ve paid a bit more attention to. Those things that I’ve had to learn the hard way. That advice I wish I would’ve heeded. I’m going to try and make it as accessible as possible, but there’s a high likelihood, it will become information lost in the folly of our future generations. Just as lost wisdom of our elders past.
Television will rot your brains… You should read more.
These days with all the streaming services, access to everything our friends and idols do every moment in their lives at the tip of our fingers. Who even has time for reading? Who even wants to read? From as early back as I can remember, I despised reading. My grandmother, and my mother, did their best to try and get me to read as a youngster. Reading to me, giving me access to any books that I desired. I desired a lot of books, I liked the way they looked on my shelf. All with perfect spines. It was obvious that reading was for people who couldn’t watch movies. Why would anyone want to stare at a bunch of text on paper, when they could stare into the wonder that was film?
By the time I was in high-school, I could probably count the number of books I’d actually completed on one hand. For most of my elementary and junior high days, the internet wasn’t much of a thing just yet. So you couldn’t just find the synopsis online. I had to work to do less. I did things like read the first and last paragraph in each chapter. Read the back of the book. One memory that sticks out, was from grade 11. We had to write a book report on The Life of Pi. Obviously, I loathed book reports, because not only did I have to read — I had to write. So instead of actually reading the book, I read part of the book, and relied on chatting with my classmates to “absorb” the rest of the book. I did a pretty good job of gathering the information. I got the scoop on what happened in the book from a friend, we’ll call him Chris, because that was his name. Chris filled me in on the plot. A boy and his family, and their zoo get on a boat to move to Canada, and sell the zoo. On the journey, the freighter sinks leaving Pi and some other zoo animals, Tom Hank’s style castaway’d on a life raft, one being an adult Bengal tiger. They have some trials and tribulations, some of the animals die. Pi and the tiger eventually get rescued. End of story. If you’ve read the book, or seen the movie… Spoiler alert. There’s this whole part about Pi telling an alternate story which involves humans, as the zoo animals. To which you’re left a choice of which story to believe. Apparently, my English teacher thought this was of some of “literary importance”. Thanks a lot, Chris… Needless to say, the grade on that report wasn’t on the fridge.
You’d think this would be enough to push me to the books. Nope. I was able to skate by on minimal effort through high-school, into and through university. In university, the internet was in full force, so I didn’t have anymore “Chris” episodes. However, after university in my early 20’s, I hit my breaking point. I had just finished a climb with a friend from school, we were all going to go out for beers. It was with friends of a friend, she was an engineer, so I figured I was safe. Arts degrees…. amirite? So we go out for beers, and somehow we get on the topic of reading and “literature”. I still get chills down my spine when people pronounce it lit-er-at-ture. The round table ended up on me, and my reply was that I didn’t read. To which, one fellow commented “you can’t read?” I stumbled and tried to recover, “No. No. I can read. I have a university degree… I just don’t read for fun.” “Sure.” He smirked. That rocked me. After that, I would be a “reader”.
It’s been about 10 years since that guy made a fool of me. I wouldn’t consider myself a book worm by any means. But I read everyday. I didn’t start that right away. It just came organically, I just started reading programming books. That evolved into other non-fiction, self help, biography, history, philosophy, etc… I’m not a huge fiction fan though. The thing that I failed to realize, as a kid, youth, teen, and young adult is just why reading is so important. I’m sure someone, at some point in my life told me. I wasn’t ready for it, because it didn’t affect me at the time. I didn’t need reading to get by at the time, and getting by was what I was focused on. I suspect, if you’ve read this far, “getting by” isn’t what you’re interested in.
People have probably spouted the traditional benefits of reading. Things like mental stimulation, relaxation, and increase of knowledge. In order to set myself apart, I won’t use those traditional examples. Hopefully my examples will be more application and less theory. Maybe, they’ll apply more to a modern age. In a modern corporate world, why is reading so important? You’ve heard the saying “Cash is King”. How about “Communication is King”. The way you communicate with your colleagues, mentors, and supervisors determines largely how you progress through your career. You could be the most brilliant entrepreneur, but if you can’t communicate your brilliance, to an outsider you look like a buffoon. In my opinion, strong communication skills are the key to success. You want a successful fulfilling career? You’ve got to be able to foster healthy corporate relationships, you do this by communicating your thoughts and ideas. You hope you get a mentor or supervisor with good communication skills as well. So she can communicate to you, your weaknesses and how you can improve.
Communication, is successfully conveying information to an audience. The key point of that is “successfully”. The thing is, that humans are social beings. We’re made to communicate. A group of like-minded individuals have an easier time communicating, and thus successfully exchanging ideas. If you put the “cache-me-ouside-how-bo-dah” girl (Bhad Bhabbie), in a room of her friends. They’d all understand her. Put her in a room of executives, and you’d have a lot of men in suits scratching their heads. Did someone say cash? In order to be good at communication, you’ve got to be able to communicate outside your immediate circle, or those like minded individuals. As always, you might be wondering why I’m explaining this, and what the hell it has to do with reading. Well — writing is a form of communication, and like it or not, with IM, SMS, and all the various forms of messaging applications. Writing is becoming a very important form of communication in the workplace. So when you read a variety of books, you learn a variety of communication styles, with a variety of communication styles. When you have an arsenal of communication styles, you’ll be more suited to customize your communication style to the audience at hand. This will allow you to have a higher percentage of your thoughts and ideas understood by others.
The second important part, is that reading provides you with better “mental models”. If you read non-fiction, you’ll amass knowledge of history, current facts, etc. If you read fiction, you’ll learn about archetypal story telling. You can use this knowledge to help you frame the massive amounts of stimulus (data) you receive every day. Being able to frame, sort, and organize the data you receive allows you to make better informed decisions. Which in turn leads to better and more successful outcomes.
In summary, if you’re having trouble getting your messages received by others in your world. You should read more, that television will rot your brains.
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss
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