Your Career is the Best Fit Line

Hi Friends!Apologies for the late send this week. Between the election and drama in the crypto industry, I got a little sidetracked. But, anecdotally speaking, so did everyone else. Over 50% of my meetings have been canceled so far. It was just one of those weeks. Anyways, this one’s short and sweet. I used this metaphor (or is it an analogy? I don’t know…) twice this week, so I thought I’d share it all!Happy Informational Interviewing!Emma

I feel little cringe about quoting Steve Jobs. Yes, he was a genius, but he was also a real jerk. Nevertheless, this quote is really spot on (I first encountered it in Millie Tran’s viral deck “What am I doing with my life” which you should definitely check out).

This quote is spot on because it speaks to the utter opacity of the plot when you’re down in the swamp mucking about looking for the next gig, job, assignment, fellowship, project. Where is it all going? What is it all leading to? What’s the narrative, the through-line, the connection? You may think you know where you’re headed. But, tbh, you probably don’t.

Your career (perhaps life, even) is a lot like a scatterplot. Each experience is one data point on the scatterplot. After about a decade you can plot a best-fit line. (Yay AP Statistic!). If you want to get where you’re going (wherever that may be), the best way approach is to get a lot of data points on your graph as quickly as possible. You can do this by having experiences. Experiences include jobs, internships, volunteer opportunities, stuff that happens at school, etc…

The idea is to rack up as many experiences and as much contextual knowledge as you can as quickly as possible. Don’t listen to the boomers who gripe about job-hopping millennials (or Gen-Zers?). Don’t stay where you don’t belong a minute longer than you have to. The sooner you get a sufficient number of data points plotted, the sooner you’ll be able to see your best fit line.

Of course, the absolute quickest, cheapest and easiest way to plot a new data point is to… DO AN INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW!

Informational interviews also help you plot your next data point more thoughtfully and methodically. That means that your data points (read experiences) start to cluster along your best fit line, and you get fewer and fewer wild outliers that have nothing to do with your purpose and your path.

Not to knock the outliers. Those can have value, too.

Anyways, you get the idea. Your experiences are points on a scatter plot. Your career is the best fit line.