Omar Usman – 3 Things I Learned from Body of Work Pamela Slim

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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