Omar Usman – 3 Things I Learned from Body of Work Pamela Slim
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the book Body of Work by Pamela Slim, which provides a playbook on how to assess relationships, inventory skills, and develop skills to find commonality in one's work. They stress the importance of sowing seeds and planting a tree to see if it bearing fruit. The success of learning to cook and the importance of learning to cook in a professional setting are also discussed. The book provides a framework for thinking about work success and a hustle to achieve success. Viewers are encouraged to subscribe to the book and buy it.
AI: Summary ©
In this video, I'm sharing 3 things I
learned from the book Body of Work by
Pamela Slim. And this book is basically how
to find that one thread that ties everything
that you do together.
See, previously and, you know, our parents' generation,
for example,
we used to they used to give us
advice about going to school, getting in with
a good company, and establishing a good career.
You would go in, you would, you know,
you would get trained, and you slowly get
promoted and move up and grow and develop.
And at the end, after, you know, 20
or 30 years or whatever, you get a
nice pension retirement,
and you'd have this entire career to look
back on that you had built. And that
was kind of what you left behind. And
it was fulfilling, satisfying, all of all of
those things. But now times are different.
See now people go to work and they
work for a company for maybe 2 or
3 years, and then they switch, and then
they go somewhere else. And they're not just
switching from one company to another, but they're
oftentimes changing careers.
And even if they don't want to change,
you know, we go we have a lot
of layoffs and things like that that environmentally
affect us, and we're sometimes forced to. And
so now we have situations where people are
they'll say things like, I'm an accountant full
time,
but on the side, I'm pursuing a photography
business. Or I'm a data analyst,
but I'm also trying to write a novel.
Or I'm a project manager, but I also
volunteer
doing, you know, for a particular non profit.
And so we have what we do, but
we also have the other things that we
pursue on the side. And a lot of
times, they seem very disconnected.
Nothing is tying them together other than the
fact that it's simply the same person doing
it. And so this book gives you it's
basically a playbook. It teaches you how to
go through and assess
your
relationships, your inventory of skills, and all these
different things to find the commonality in what
you do. And so the three things that
I took away was number 1, obviously, is
the idea, the mindset
of creating a body of work. And a
body of work, which what Pamela Slim says
in the book, it's basically
everything that you create, that you contribute tangible
or intangible,
at the end of your life, that's basically,
that is your legacy.
It's the impact that you left with this
body of work that you created, whether it's
the things that you were doing full time
or part time or freelancing or whatever it
may be, but put all together,
that's the body of work that you're going
to look back and reflect on and say
that this is what I have left behind.
When we have that mindset of wanting to
create a body of work, it really starts
to shape and affect the decisions that we
make. And so maybe I'm deciding between
2 different graduate programs or 2 different job
offers.
Well, now if I'm looking at it with
a mindset of a body of work, that's
going to change the way that I make
the decision because now maybe I'm not looking
so much only at
the monetary and vacation policy and the company
culture,
but now I'm starting to look more at,
am I going to develop the skills that
I want to develop? Am I going to
be given a chance to grow? Am I
doing meaningful work? Am I serving the type
of people that I want to serve? Am
I solving the types of problems that I
want to solve? And when I'm able to
do these things and I I give myself
a lot more purpose,
I'm more driven, but I also have something
that I take more pride upon
and looking back and saying that this is
the legacy that I left behind.
The second thing that I took away was
the idea of sowing seeds. If you've been
following the videos that I've been doing, one
thing that you'll start to notice is that
there's a certain commonality
and that some of the lessons are very
basic
and, dare I say, maybe even cliched to
some extent, such as the idea of sowing
seeds. And who's willing to put the work
of, let's say, planting a tree
even though they might not live long enough
to bear its fruit, just see it bear
fruit. Who's willing to do that type of
work? But
the real the real insight
comes from the nuance that the author adds
into that the author adds into those basic
lessons. In this case, it was the idea
of 20 x ing the amount of seeds
that you plant. See, Pamela Slim says in
the book that, yes, we're gonna plant seeds.
We get to 20 x your effort if
you truly want to plant the type of
seed that's going to leave the type of
legacy that you want to leave. So if
you're gonna be testing
3 product ideas, for example, test 60. If
you're gonna be pitching
5 new clients on something,
pitch a 100 new clients instead.
Whatever it is, if you really wanna leave
a body of work, if you really wanna
have that meaningful impactful legacy,
it's going to require a hustle. You have
to 20 x the effort to get the
types of results that we want to get.
The third thing that I learned from this
book, and this was one of my favorite
phrases,
was something that Pamela Slim calls success
dysmorphia.
And what that means is that we judge
our level of success through somebody else's lens.
And what that does is it's not only
demoralizing,
but it makes it very difficult to grow
and to develop and to try new things.
I remember watching the show Masterchef Junior with
my kids, and I was blown away because
cooking is something that I've been I've wanted
to learn. I've maybe tried to learn a
little bit. And now I turn on the
TV and I see these 8 year old,
9 year old kids,
and they've got very advanced cooking skills, you
know, flavor combinations, you know, all these different
things that it might take me years to
learn. So it's very easy to look at
that and say, well, what's the point of
doing that? Thinking about someone that wants to
become a photographer.
They might go on Instagram and they see
all, you know, they see all these amazing
professional photographers and they say, well, look, I'm
already at this particular stage in my life.
There's no way that I have the time
or the capacity
to learn and to get to that level.
Well, the thing is is
that the problem with that is that we're
judging our success through somebody else's lens. And
when we do that, we're not gonna be
able to do it. Instead, we need to
have a different mindset. We need to have,
obviously, like a growth mindset, but also we
need to change our definition of success.
And one of the examples that she gives
in the book is let's say for example,
someone's trying to lose weight. They develop a
habit of walking 30 minutes every day. Now
it's very easy to say, well, okay, I'm
still overweight. I'm still not in the shape
that I want to be. And I look
around and I see all these other people
at the gym or whatever, and they're in
that peak prime physical condition that I want
or the physique that I want to have,
what is walking 30 minutes every day going
to do for me? What she says is
that you have to change your perception.
Maybe it's saying that, okay, I've got a
full time demanding job. I come home, I've
got family, I've got kids, I've got other
demands on my time. I've also got the
freelance or volunteer thing that I'm doing. So
I've got all of these things going on,
and if I've still managed to carve out
30 minutes a day to go for a
walk, I need to take some pride in
that effort and say, well, you know what?
With all these challenges that I have, I've
managed to walk for 30 minutes every day
and that in and of itself is a
success.
And so we take pride in that accomplishment.
And one of the things that she one
of the people that she quotes in the
book says that their definition of success
is having gratitude
for what they're able to do in that
moment,
but still having the desire
to continue to strive and to succeed and
to improve. And that drive
to continually improve,
that in and of itself is success. And
so that's 3 things I learned from the
book Body of Work by Pamela Slim. Got
a link to buy the to get the
book in the show in the description below.
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