Good morning. It's Rohan with your latest Career Supplement, your personal mentorship email that takes a few minutes to read, but contains stuff that will speed up your career by years. |
Today's Mentor's Corner is at the intersection of two things I love: career advice and tennis. I'll take you through the strategies of one of the most successful tennis coaches of all time. It turns out, his strategies on the court have some incredible parallels with navigating the challenges of our professional lives. |
I had fun researching and writing it. It was a little different though, so I'd love to hear what you think :-) Shoot me a reply if you enjoyed it. |
Estimated read time: 6 minutes 15 seconds |
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☕ CAREER PICK-ME-UP A 30-second bite-sized career insight. |
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Today's pick-me-up is from a LinkedIn post I made this week (lightly edited): |
| | | | Three scheduling hacks that make me more productive: | 1. I avoid scheduling meetings when I'm most productive (for me, this is after my first coffee). I only let myself do deep work at this time. | 2. I group similar tasks together. I might respond to all my emails in one block, or combine all short check-in meetings together. | 3. Whenever possible, I turn meetings into emails. I'd say, "Could we handle this via email instead? It'll be a little easier for me." | The goal is to reduce context switching - the invisible but very real cost that comes from shifting between unconnected work. |
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P. S. If you're not yet reading my writing on LinkedIn, go here and hit the ' + Follow' button. Over there, I share a mix of career strategy and mid-week motivation. Topics coming up: navigating office politics, how to motivate a team, and the science of becoming more 'lucky'. See you there. |
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📈 Mentor's Corner Insights put together by me or coaches who usually charge $750+/hour and mentor senior execs. One practical lesson a week that will make a measurable impact on your career, delivered right to you — for $0. |
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Have you mastered the 'inner game' of your career? |
The other day, I rewatched highlights of this year's U.S. Open women's final, where something happened that rocked (in a good way) the world of tennis: |
Coco Gauff, a 19 year-old, won the whole thing. |
(The final was tense, and everyone was super emotional when she won — it was her first Grand Slam, and the American did it on home soil. Here's the 4-min video of the last point if you enjoy watching tears of joy!) |
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Amazing. |
This got me wondering… |
Given the fact that "success leaves clues"... how exactly did Coco get so good? |
So I did a little digging, and found a pretty big one: |
She's coached by none other than Brad Gilbert, who's made champions out of Andre Agassi, Andy Murray and Andy Roddick. (that's a lot of Andrews) |
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Now.. |
Here's why you might find Brad Gilbert interesting: |
When he was a player, he knew he wasn't the most physically gifted, and realized he'd have to find another way to win. So, he dived deep & mastered the "inner" game of tennis, so much so that he's known as the expert of "psychological warfare." |
So, I'm discovering all this… |
And I just have to know… |
What were these "psychological warfare" techniques he was teaching that turned his students into champions, sometimes after only a few months of working with him? |
So to find out, I ordered his book, which is appropriately named: |
"Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis" |
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As you can imagine, it was a fascinating read. But as you might not imagine, it was also chock full of career lessons. |
So, today, I wanna cover a few that really stood out. |
👕 Change your shirt |
The first one's really simple: |
When his players are in a funk, and need to mentally regroup, Gilbert tells them to not only change their thoughts.. but change their shirts too. |
Why? |
Because a fresh "environment" allows the new thoughts to "stick". |
Applied to your career: |
If you're in a funk, and want to turn things round, first turn your environment around. You could clean your desk, buy a little desk-plant, or close all your browser tabs and restart your laptop. |
Need to clear your head? Change your surroundings. |
🌱 "Start well, rather than at the end" |
Conventional wisdom says, "finish strong," which I do agree with. But far more important? Setting your intention to begin with. |
Most projects start poorly. They're poorly scoped, the goals aren't clear, and people don't know who owns what. It's why most projects fail. |
Instead, focus on starting well. You can build that all-important momentum to begin with, which'll carry you through to the end. |
✔ Focus on consistency |
Here's a Gilbert quote to frame & put on your desk: |
"You don't need to be the best player to win, just the most consistent." |
I know, it's a cliche. But it's true. Every day doesn't need to be your most productive. You just need to somewhat productive, every day. |
An easy way to track this: |
At the start of your day, write down one task that, if you get done, will make today a win. |
It might be as simple as sending an email to your team, or fixing a bug. Just get one key task done, every day, and 'future you' will love you for it. |
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🎾 "Can I keep my serve?" |
At the end of a tournament, Gilbert's looking over Andre Agassi's stats, and notices something shocking: |
While Agassi was in the top 3 when it came to returning his opponent's serve.. he wasn't even in the top 50 for defending his own. |
So he tells Agassi to forget all about winning or losing, and just turns his career into a simple game: |
"Can I keep my serve?" |
And by focusing on that one thing, Agassi became one of the top 3 servers of the game, and went on to become world champ at the US Open shortly after. |
Like Agassi's serve, what's your one thing you need to improve? |
There's a beauty in keeping goals simple. We often aim for so much – getting promoted, becoming a better manager, building our personal brand. But doing everything is hard. So, like Agassi, find one thing that helps with all your goals. |
For instance, your goal or 'serve' might be to become a clearer, more organized communicator. It's an easier goal to work towards and it helps with everything else. |
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🚧 Stop dwelling |
"It's ok to be angry at a missed shot," says Gilbert, "just don't dwell on it several points later." |
And so it is with our careers too. |
We're always going to make mistakes. And that's fine. Where it's not fine is when we start dwelling on them, which ironically causes us to make even bigger mistakes. |
🥊 Where the real enemy lives |
Ok, one last Andre Agassi story. |
By 1995, Agassi had won Olympic gold and major titles, becoming world #1. |
Things changed quickly. By 1997, he plummeted to world #141, stopped winning titles, and even failed a drug test. |
At the time, he asks Gilbert: "Has tennis passed me by?" |
Gilbert says: "If you re-dedicate, refocus and prioritize, you'll be fine." |
In other words, it's all about mindset. Agassi prioritized tennis again, and 15 months later, returned to #1 in the world. |
I think this is great career advice too. When we hit slumps, sometimes it's a good idea to hit pause and ask: What are my priorities? What can I do differently? |
Often, it's not about a complete overhaul. It's about fine-tuning your focus and remembering what's important. |
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I hope that struck a chord even if you aren't a tennis fan! If you get value out of my writing, please do one of these things: |
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🤣 |
(related: here's a short post I wrote on LinkedIn on how to say no at work) |
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🔎 Speed Up Your Job Search One actionable piece of advice to help you hack your job search. |
How to say you manage employees on your resume |
Read the full article here. |
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Managed a process re-engineering project to improve and consolidate end-to-end service processes; restructured communication flow among 10 departments, and cut down paperwork by 75% Hired and trained team of six employees with two direct reports; promoted 6 months ahead of schedule
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What'd you think of today's email? |
👍 I loved it. |
🤔 Pretty average, step it up. |
🤢 Not enough value. |
Here's what someone said about my last one. Thank you Prasanna! |
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