Before You Use Social Media, Do This! - How To Organize & Control Your Life | Cal Newport
Chapters
0:0 0:00:00:00.000 | I abandoned social media,
00:00:01.560 | but now I feel left out and forgotten.
00:00:04.000 | Since I now barely have an online existence,
00:00:06.320 | people tend to make plans that don't include me.
00:00:08.920 | And when I do send somebody a message
00:00:10.360 | to arrange a meetup,
00:00:11.340 | my energy gets sapped waiting for the replies.
00:00:14.160 | Most of my friends communicate through social media,
00:00:16.480 | so my old way of communicating gets lost.
00:00:19.660 | How can I still live a meaningful social life
00:00:22.520 | with this quandary?
00:00:23.640 | - So what do you think,
00:00:26.080 | I don't know if it's a he or she,
00:00:28.240 | let's say he.
00:00:29.960 | What do you think he means by his friends
00:00:33.960 | make plans mainly using social media?
00:00:37.520 | What tool is he talking about?
00:00:39.040 | Because he separates out messaging, which he does do.
00:00:42.380 | - Well, you can message on Instagram.
00:00:43.860 | I think a lot of people do that, especially young people.
00:00:46.480 | - So like using Instagram instead of like iMessage
00:00:50.160 | or WhatsApp.
00:00:50.980 | - Yeah.
00:00:52.360 | Using the communication within those apps.
00:00:55.120 | I know that, like with our guys,
00:00:57.640 | my coach, like in high school,
00:00:58.960 | they use Instagram messaging a lot.
00:01:03.960 | - Okay.
00:01:05.320 | And this, is this different than, is DM Twitter?
00:01:08.080 | - That's DM.
00:01:08.920 | - Or it's Instagram DM as well?
00:01:10.620 | - DMing is-
00:01:13.160 | - Direct messaging.
00:01:14.000 | - That's Instagram.
00:01:14.960 | - Right.
00:01:15.800 | Okay.
00:01:16.680 | So it's like a main way.
00:01:17.560 | It's why like a lot of people-
00:01:18.840 | - And I could see like, you know,
00:01:21.240 | parties and stuff like that being announced there,
00:01:23.680 | especially on Facebook.
00:01:24.680 | Like they, people would invite people more our age,
00:01:28.360 | but I bet you people use a lot Facebook to make plans
00:01:32.800 | and invitations, stuff like that.
00:01:34.320 | - So Instagram does this.
00:01:36.280 | TikTok is not a social network, right?
00:01:38.280 | So it's not TikTok.
00:01:39.360 | There you're seeing stuff the algorithm shows,
00:01:41.280 | but Facebook, Instagram, maybe Twitter,
00:01:45.020 | are probably not as much anymore.
00:01:46.480 | Like Instagram.
00:01:47.880 | Okay.
00:01:48.720 | So I think, my thought here is, okay,
00:01:52.120 | perfectly fine use for social media.
00:01:55.260 | I mean, if your friends are using a messaging feature
00:01:58.880 | of let's say Instagram to meet up,
00:02:01.680 | then use the messaging feature on Instagram to meet up.
00:02:05.640 | Just don't use Instagram in other ways.
00:02:09.680 | Just put up gates about how you want to use it.
00:02:12.000 | Like this shouldn't be too hard.
00:02:14.120 | - Yeah. Same with Facebook.
00:02:15.560 | I mean, if he's a little bit older
00:02:16.920 | and a lot of invitations would be sent through Facebook,
00:02:19.080 | just go on there a couple of times a week
00:02:20.400 | and see if there's any invitations to go.
00:02:21.840 | - Yeah.
00:02:22.680 | So go on Facebook, look at invitations.
00:02:24.280 | Instagram, go on there and look at your DMs.
00:02:26.860 | Don't post things.
00:02:28.880 | Don't really follow anyone except for your friends,
00:02:31.000 | I suppose, if they're posting something.
00:02:33.020 | Don't make Instagram on your phone
00:02:35.460 | a default place to go if you're bored.
00:02:38.740 | Seek out slow distractions instead of fast,
00:02:41.500 | like we talked about in the show.
00:02:43.100 | But to use Instagram as sort of a inefficient version
00:02:47.060 | of WhatsApp, fine.
00:02:48.040 | So I'm glad you asked this question
00:02:50.420 | because we want to be,
00:02:52.900 | when we're thinking about our engagement with the digital,
00:02:55.720 | we want to be very intentional, right?
00:02:58.000 | I really try to steer away from more generic prescriptions.
00:03:03.000 | This is evil, this is good.
00:03:04.460 | Never do this, always do that.
00:03:07.280 | If you read "Digital Minimalism", for example,
00:03:09.260 | my book, "Digital Minimalism",
00:03:11.680 | I don't go in and say,
00:03:12.520 | here's the bad services, here's the good.
00:03:15.260 | I don't go in and say,
00:03:16.100 | let me talk about how bad of a guy Mark Zuckerberg is.
00:03:19.920 | You don't want to support his company.
00:03:21.540 | I said, figure out what you want to do.
00:03:23.960 | Figure out the right tools to do that.
00:03:25.560 | Use those tools to do that.
00:03:26.880 | And anything else those tools try to get you to do,
00:03:28.920 | say, I'm not interested.
00:03:30.320 | Just take control over how you use your digital life.
00:03:33.180 | So there's a chapter in "Digital Minimalism".
00:03:36.120 | If you get that book,
00:03:36.960 | there's a chapter called "Join the Attention Resistance"
00:03:39.600 | that gets to exactly what I think
00:03:40.960 | you need to think about here.
00:03:42.760 | And it's about how do you use the advantageous parts
00:03:46.760 | of these giant attention economy platforms
00:03:49.600 | without being trapped by the other parts
00:03:52.160 | that you're not interested in
00:03:53.880 | and that are poised to perhaps capture your attention
00:03:56.840 | and make your life worse.
00:03:58.920 | And to do that is almost like an act of resistance.
00:04:01.840 | To come into your Instagram,
00:04:03.240 | and it's not on your phone, it's on your computer,
00:04:05.160 | to come into Instagram, but you haven't followed anybody.
00:04:07.040 | So there's just like these weird discover stuff
00:04:09.320 | that the algorithm chose you could care less about.
00:04:11.480 | And you jump in, look at the DMs and jump out.
00:04:14.340 | To do like I talk about in that book,
00:04:18.000 | to use a plugin, so you can go into Facebook
00:04:20.400 | to see Facebook groups where people are posting
00:04:22.520 | about parties, but there's no newsfeed.
00:04:25.040 | That's the attention resistance.
00:04:27.160 | You see, I'm keeping control of my attention,
00:04:30.240 | and you're not going to take control of my attention
00:04:32.840 | by luring me in with these specific really useful features.
00:04:35.720 | I can use those useful features
00:04:38.240 | without having to become a pawn
00:04:40.160 | in your attention economy scheme.
00:04:41.520 | It's like we talked about with YouTube as well.
00:04:44.040 | YouTube is a great library.
00:04:45.080 | YouTube is a great cable channel.
00:04:47.760 | It's a dangerous form of wandering distraction.
00:04:50.920 | So people come in and use plugins, for example,
00:04:54.040 | that get rid of, and this is an example from that chapter,
00:04:56.720 | get rid of the recommendations.
00:04:58.280 | It turns YouTube into like a search engine.
00:05:01.960 | I know I like "Deep Questions,"
00:05:04.400 | and I know the new episodes come out Monday.
00:05:07.680 | So on Monday, I go and I type into the top
00:05:10.600 | "Deep Questions" or "Cal Newport,"
00:05:12.080 | and I click on the latest episode and I watch it.
00:05:14.600 | I use it, it's like turning on the TV
00:05:16.120 | and watching a certain show.
00:05:17.640 | But there's nothing being recommended on the side.
00:05:19.840 | That's it.
00:05:20.680 | If I want to do something else, I'll look it up.
00:05:21.880 | Oh, I want to know how to fix something.
00:05:23.240 | I search for that thing and I get the video.
00:05:24.960 | I watch it, I'm done.
00:05:25.800 | It's a great library.
00:05:26.640 | Another example of the attention resistance.
00:05:28.520 | So if your friends are using the communication tools
00:05:30.600 | built into social media apps, use those tools,
00:05:33.480 | but only use those tools.
00:05:35.800 | And by doing so,
00:05:37.640 | you're sort of giving a metaphorical middle finger
00:05:39.800 | to the owners of those companies anyways,
00:05:41.240 | which itself is kind of fun.
00:05:42.640 | I learned something.
00:05:46.360 | - Yeah. - Communication tools.
00:05:47.560 | I know journalists talk about it a lot.
00:05:49.680 | Journalists find this useful because people,
00:05:52.520 | a lot of very online people that you might need
00:05:54.280 | to like get a quote from for an article or whatever,
00:05:56.560 | that's how they contact them.
00:05:58.440 | Twitter DM.
00:06:00.040 | It's like, it's something I don't have.
00:06:02.040 | I think it's been fine,
00:06:03.160 | but I think there's a lot of that going on in journalism.
00:06:06.400 | DMing people's social media accounts
00:06:08.200 | to try to contact them.
00:06:09.360 | Kind of makes me glad I don't have Twitter.
00:06:13.000 | I think about all the DMs we would get.
00:06:15.520 | I mean, we already get so many emails.
00:06:16.560 | Could you imagine?
00:06:17.840 | If people had the illusion of like,
00:06:18.960 | I could just like directly yell at you about things.
00:06:21.600 | All right, let's do a call.
00:06:24.760 | Do we have a call load up?
00:06:26.160 | - Yes, we do.
00:06:27.000 | Here we go.
00:06:27.840 | - G'day, it's Logan here.
00:06:31.640 | I'm a Kiwi currently living in the US
00:06:33.840 | working as a financial consultant.
00:06:35.680 | I have a question around decentralized social media.
00:06:38.280 | I've spent the last five years
00:06:40.600 | developing my artistic drawing skills
00:06:42.520 | to a proficient level
00:06:43.600 | until I could now generate some real revenue.
00:06:46.320 | I'm not about to quit my day job.
00:06:48.080 | My question is more about
00:06:49.360 | how do I share my content with an audience?
00:06:51.840 | How do I monetize it?
00:06:53.400 | How do I do this and still maintain control
00:06:55.720 | over what I create
00:06:56.800 | while not handing over the reins of these things
00:06:59.760 | and my audience to a large social media company?
00:07:03.160 | Ideally, I would only use social media
00:07:05.120 | as a tool to funnel viewership into some other thing.
00:07:09.000 | Well, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
00:07:10.720 | I've heard you talk theoretically about this idea,
00:07:12.960 | but don't really know how you imagine it
00:07:14.560 | to work in practice.
00:07:16.000 | Cheers for all the hard work, out.
00:07:17.920 | - All right, Kiwi, that's New Zealand?
00:07:23.400 | - I think so.
00:07:24.240 | - All right, excellent.
00:07:25.080 | International audience, I like it.
00:07:27.000 | So what type of art was he saying?
00:07:28.480 | He said visual.
00:07:30.360 | - Yeah.
00:07:31.200 | - Visual, some sort of digital visual art.
00:07:34.840 | Yeah, so once again,
00:07:38.400 | I don't know that particular world well,
00:07:41.440 | but like in my answer to Fab, I believe it was,
00:07:46.440 | the Peruvian musician,
00:07:49.680 | I'll give a similar answer here,
00:07:52.040 | which is, okay, 12 years ago,
00:07:54.920 | how did the artists in this general space,
00:07:58.520 | how did they get noticed and spread?
00:08:00.320 | Go see if you can do that.
00:08:02.800 | Like that's step one, right?
00:08:04.720 | And so it's probably,
00:08:05.560 | you're doing something really original,
00:08:07.040 | and then maybe it starts in a local gallery.
00:08:10.640 | Maybe it starts in someone else's sort of showcase
00:08:14.040 | that they do.
00:08:16.120 | That's a starting place.
00:08:19.000 | Building a digital home is another good idea.
00:08:21.520 | Build a website.
00:08:22.880 | You can have a digital home with a website
00:08:25.160 | where people can come and see your art, right?
00:08:28.480 | And then be okay with not trying to play
00:08:33.000 | the algorithmic amplification lottery.
00:08:35.040 | Be okay with I'm working on this art,
00:08:36.920 | I'm finding like a slower way of developing this
00:08:39.080 | and spread it to an audience.
00:08:39.960 | I have a digital home to point people towards.
00:08:42.240 | Go to this well-designed website.
00:08:44.880 | You can see or buy my art.
00:08:46.520 | You can join my mailing list for updates
00:08:50.200 | if you wanna know when new pieces are coming out
00:08:53.360 | or for sale.
00:08:54.360 | And build a following slowly.
00:08:57.000 | That is a durable following you're going to build.
00:09:01.840 | It's also, I think, a beneficial feedback loop.
00:09:05.240 | You have to interact more with people,
00:09:08.320 | convince people to let you in their galleries,
00:09:10.480 | convince people to buy your work one by one.
00:09:14.400 | That feedback loop improves your work.
00:09:16.360 | Okay, maybe this is not really original enough,
00:09:18.720 | so I need to do something different here.
00:09:20.280 | You don't get any of that feedback
00:09:21.320 | if you're just posting on Instagram
00:09:23.080 | and hoping that like a celebrity influencer
00:09:26.440 | repost one of your things
00:09:27.760 | and then all these people are interested in your work.
00:09:30.280 | So like how did people do this 12 years ago?
00:09:32.400 | Like do that with a good website and mailing list
00:09:36.080 | and be ready for that to be a slow process.
00:09:38.520 | Again, and I left this out in the fab answer,
00:09:40.600 | but the other piece here is the slowness of the process
00:09:44.120 | motivates you more
00:09:45.160 | because you have to work harder and harder
00:09:47.600 | to try to move this thing along.
00:09:49.160 | When you're just posting stuff on Instagram,
00:09:51.280 | you get caught up in what I call checklist productivity,
00:09:54.600 | where you feel like the key to a big accomplishment
00:09:56.440 | is just following some script
00:09:57.880 | that other people don't have access to.
00:09:59.640 | That in other words, the scarcity
00:10:01.000 | that means most people don't succeed is in the information,
00:10:03.200 | not in the actual execution.
00:10:05.200 | And so you could end up in a checklist productivity mode
00:10:07.520 | where what you really care about is
00:10:09.760 | am I posting on a regular schedule?
00:10:11.680 | Do I have good tags and hashtags for the algorithm to hit?
00:10:16.640 | Am I spending enough time following other artists
00:10:19.280 | and replying so they'll follow me?
00:10:20.680 | You get caught up because that's so much easier.
00:10:23.400 | Checklist productivity, anyone can do it.
00:10:25.400 | That's so much easier than saying,
00:10:26.720 | how do I make this better?
00:10:28.800 | This local gallery in New Zealand,
00:10:31.040 | you know, they didn't wanna show this.
00:10:33.280 | Why, how can I make it better so they would?
00:10:35.320 | Let me be around more artists.
00:10:36.400 | Let me meet more artists.
00:10:37.240 | Let me join or start an artist collective
00:10:38.840 | where we're helping and critiquing each other's work.
00:10:42.200 | The slower approach forces you to focus on quality
00:10:45.280 | and lights that fire to keep pushing
00:10:48.760 | in a way that when you're just playing
00:10:50.640 | the algorithmic amplification lottery,
00:10:52.160 | you're like, I don't know, I'm just,
00:10:53.320 | what really matters is some clever trick I do
00:10:55.600 | in my headline construction.
00:10:57.000 | That's gonna please the algorithm.
00:10:59.320 | And all that's energy that could be going towards
00:11:00.960 | making your stuff better.
00:11:03.040 | So for our third and final segment,
00:11:04.840 | like take something that's going around the internet
00:11:06.480 | and react to it.
00:11:08.320 | Today I wanna react to a YouTube video
00:11:11.880 | that some of our listeners were sending in
00:11:14.240 | because it's going around the internet right now.
00:11:15.880 | I'm looking at it now.
00:11:16.720 | It has over 1.5 million views.
00:11:21.120 | And so I thought we would take a look.
00:11:22.640 | For those who are watching instead of just listening,
00:11:27.640 | I have it loaded up on the screen here in the corner
00:11:30.840 | with the closed captioning.
00:11:32.640 | So the title of this YouTube video is
00:11:34.640 | I'm a 33 year old woman with no life.
00:11:38.920 | My advice to young women.
00:11:41.560 | So we have a young woman talking straight to camera.
00:11:43.880 | Here, I'll read the closed caption at the beginning.
00:11:46.520 | I wanna give you some advice on how to deal with this
00:11:50.400 | and cope with no sense of direction.
00:11:52.600 | But for now, I kinda wanna just tell you my story
00:11:54.960 | of how I got here.
00:11:57.280 | And it's not long and it's not that sad.
00:11:59.520 | All right, so then we get a story from this person
00:12:02.680 | talking straight to camera
00:12:04.000 | about why she is now 33 years old
00:12:08.400 | and feels like she has no life.
00:12:09.560 | So let me summarize.
00:12:10.440 | I took some notes here.
00:12:11.280 | Let me summarize the story that she tells.
00:12:14.040 | Coming out of college,
00:12:16.920 | she was interested in digital media,
00:12:18.760 | got a good internship in digital media.
00:12:22.920 | But then when she applied for what she described
00:12:24.760 | as fun media department jobs, she didn't get 'em.
00:12:28.800 | They kept saying, "No, you don't have enough experience."
00:12:30.520 | And so not able to get those jobs she desired,
00:12:34.840 | she fell back and said, "I'll just do retail."
00:12:38.120 | So she kinda fell back for retail jobs.
00:12:41.080 | Some time passed, an opportunity came up for her
00:12:44.240 | to get a quote, "good project manager job."
00:12:47.040 | So this is a job with benefits, normal salary.
00:12:50.760 | I think this was out West.
00:12:52.880 | But then after a little while,
00:12:53.720 | she got fired and has no jobs.
00:12:58.160 | As she says, it was so devastating.
00:13:00.000 | It's back like she was when she was looking
00:13:03.400 | for her original jobs after her internship.
00:13:05.560 | She's having a hard time finding a solid job.
00:13:07.640 | She did some contract work for about eight months.
00:13:10.280 | But now she says, "It feels like no one wants to hire me.
00:13:12.600 | "No one wants anything to do with me."
00:13:14.920 | Because they feel like she doesn't have the right experience.
00:13:17.640 | It seems like her new plan,
00:13:19.680 | based on what she says in this video,
00:13:22.480 | is to make content for YouTube
00:13:24.320 | and hope maybe that works out.
00:13:27.520 | All right, so there's a couple things
00:13:30.120 | I wanna talk about here.
00:13:31.840 | First of all, I wanna say,
00:13:33.920 | this is a useful type of video to exist.
00:13:36.560 | I think having people actually talk about the realities
00:13:40.760 | of their engagement with the world of work is really useful
00:13:44.120 | because we don't really get a clear picture,
00:13:48.320 | especially young people.
00:13:49.160 | They don't get a really clear picture about how this works.
00:13:52.560 | You have sort of abstract books maybe,
00:13:54.880 | and then you have the typical YouTube TikTok
00:13:59.520 | presentation of work,
00:14:00.960 | where it's usually a lot of people
00:14:02.240 | who make a living on YouTube and TikTok
00:14:03.960 | kinda talk about how they make a living
00:14:05.040 | on YouTube and TikTok.
00:14:06.920 | And then maybe you get exposed
00:14:07.760 | to some sort of celebrity workers,
00:14:10.320 | famous writers and artists and sports stars,
00:14:16.120 | this type of thing.
00:14:16.960 | That's kind of it.
00:14:18.480 | So we don't really get exposed to a lot of the reality
00:14:21.520 | of how the world of work works and what to expect
00:14:24.320 | and how hard it can be
00:14:25.440 | and how emotionally hard it can be.
00:14:29.280 | And so to see that and have someone
00:14:31.280 | just say it straight to camera,
00:14:32.960 | no holds barred, I think is really important.
00:14:36.720 | Oh, this is how the world of work can work for most people.
00:14:39.240 | And it's really hard.
00:14:40.120 | And if you're feeling emotionally drained
00:14:42.720 | by your difficulty in the world of work,
00:14:44.360 | instead of feeling like you're an outlier,
00:14:46.240 | you watch a video like this,
00:14:47.080 | you say, yeah, this is, I'm not alone.
00:14:49.600 | Work is hard.
00:14:50.440 | We just don't hear those stories.
00:14:52.480 | Those stories don't get amplified.
00:14:54.240 | Second, however, I think this video
00:14:57.040 | is a good reason to revisit some ideas
00:15:00.360 | from my 2012 book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You."
00:15:04.600 | 'Cause I think in addition to being a useful window
00:15:07.520 | into the reality of the world of work,
00:15:10.320 | this video also gives a reality,
00:15:12.480 | a window into the reality of how a lot of people,
00:15:15.240 | she's a young millennial,
00:15:16.840 | but Gen Z probably feels the same way,
00:15:18.600 | but especially millennials, just when we were raised,
00:15:21.960 | it gives a window into some of the issues
00:15:23.400 | with how we think about work.
00:15:25.320 | So the model that comes out of this video,
00:15:28.320 | at least this was my impression,
00:15:29.920 | was a model of work in which you figured out
00:15:33.800 | what you wanna do, digital media, whatever it is,
00:15:37.960 | and then you wait to get chosen to do it.
00:15:40.560 | So then someone chooses you,
00:15:43.120 | you say, okay, I will let you come
00:15:44.400 | and do this for my company.
00:15:45.680 | They choose you to do it.
00:15:46.920 | So it's like getting into college, right?
00:15:49.520 | Getting accepted into graduate school.
00:15:51.320 | And then you're good.
00:15:52.600 | I got chosen, I put out my applications,
00:15:55.000 | and someone said, I choose you.
00:15:56.560 | You get to come into this world now
00:15:58.200 | and be a digital media, whatever.
00:16:00.720 | And if that doesn't happen, then you're kinda lost.
00:16:03.720 | So you figure out what you wanna do.
00:16:06.400 | You put yourself out there.
00:16:07.360 | Hey, can I come do this for you?
00:16:08.920 | And either they say yes,
00:16:11.120 | and you're happy, or they say no,
00:16:13.000 | and then you really could end up in a hard situation.
00:16:16.040 | What's the alternative model to think about this?
00:16:19.520 | Well, it's the model from my book,
00:16:20.640 | "So Good They Can't Ignore You,"
00:16:21.600 | which is based on career capital.
00:16:24.280 | It says the whole job industry, the whole job market,
00:16:28.800 | it's all about what do you have to offer
00:16:30.680 | specifically that's valuable.
00:16:32.120 | And the collection of your rare and valuable skills,
00:16:35.000 | your skills that are rare and valuable to the market
00:16:37.480 | in general is what we call career capital.
00:16:39.080 | The more of it you have,
00:16:40.240 | the more opportunities and leverage you have.
00:16:42.560 | And therefore, the whole game,
00:16:43.720 | especially right out of college,
00:16:45.360 | is building career capital as quickly as possible.
00:16:48.600 | It changes the way you think about things,
00:16:50.120 | because especially when you're young,
00:16:52.440 | you're not focused on what do I want my job to do for me?
00:16:56.040 | All right, I found this would be,
00:16:57.200 | this job has all the things I want.
00:16:58.600 | I hope they select me.
00:17:00.160 | And instead turns it around and say,
00:17:01.240 | what can I offer to the jobs?
00:17:03.720 | Well, not much yet because I'm new.
00:17:06.120 | So let me get my foot in the door somewhere
00:17:07.760 | and aggressively build up rare and valuable skills.
00:17:11.720 | This is the only way I have to take control over my career
00:17:15.400 | is to be good at things that people need.
00:17:17.520 | Now I can start to dictate.
00:17:19.040 | I want this position instead of that.
00:17:21.320 | I don't wanna do this work, I wanna do that work.
00:17:23.040 | I wanna be remote.
00:17:24.120 | I'm taking the summers off.
00:17:25.680 | I wanna make a lot of money.
00:17:26.600 | I wanna live in the city.
00:17:28.160 | You get more and more autonomy and control of your career,
00:17:31.960 | the more valuable you're making yourself.
00:17:33.560 | And when you have this mindset,
00:17:34.640 | it changes the way you approach your day-to-day jobs
00:17:36.840 | because you approach the jobs from the standpoint
00:17:39.120 | of a musician who's trying to get to the first chair
00:17:43.240 | in the symphony, practice.
00:17:45.000 | How do I get better?
00:17:46.120 | What am I not good at?
00:17:46.960 | How do I get better at that thing?
00:17:49.040 | Now, especially when you're young,
00:17:49.880 | you don't have as much going on.
00:17:50.960 | You have the time and energy
00:17:52.040 | to actually do this career capital development.
00:17:54.400 | When you don't have this mindset,
00:17:57.160 | when you have the mindset of I wanna get chosen
00:17:59.280 | for the job that's meant for me,
00:18:00.600 | it can lead to a lot of these type of traps.
00:18:02.480 | And there's a lot of, I think, bad luck
00:18:05.360 | and unfortunate circumstances
00:18:06.600 | that happened in the story as well.
00:18:08.320 | But there was also, I think,
00:18:10.280 | some mindset unforced errors, right?
00:18:13.400 | So for example, when she didn't get chosen
00:18:16.560 | for the kind of dream digital media job
00:18:18.840 | that her internship had prepared her for,
00:18:20.880 | what did she say her only other option was,
00:18:24.080 | was just to go back to retail.
00:18:26.080 | As opposed to say, well, I have a college degree
00:18:29.240 | and these other types of things.
00:18:31.120 | There's gotta be somewhere I can get in my foot in the door
00:18:34.640 | and start building up the skills really fast
00:18:37.360 | to then take more control.
00:18:38.560 | Oh, it's gonna take five years of building up skills
00:18:40.720 | to take control.
00:18:41.560 | So I don't need to be in the digital media department
00:18:44.280 | of this place.
00:18:45.120 | I just need to get in somewhere
00:18:45.960 | and start building up skills.
00:18:46.800 | I can move my way over there, right?
00:18:47.920 | So when you get rid of the,
00:18:49.520 | if it's not my dream job, then why bother?
00:18:53.040 | I should just sort of go back and work at retail.
00:18:54.680 | That's maybe an unforced error you wouldn't make
00:18:56.640 | if there was career capital thinking.
00:18:58.520 | It also just affects how you approach your work
00:19:00.480 | when you think about accumulating skills
00:19:02.160 | versus just, do I like this job?
00:19:04.560 | Yeah, I like this job, but maybe not.
00:19:06.160 | When you're just thinking about the job
00:19:07.400 | and if it's what you want,
00:19:08.720 | you're not building up aggressively your value
00:19:12.400 | to the organization, you're vulnerable.
00:19:14.800 | And then when the downsizing happens,
00:19:16.960 | you might be closer to the choppy block
00:19:19.320 | because they don't point you and say,
00:19:20.360 | well, she does this for us that no one else does.
00:19:23.920 | She's invaluable over here or there.
00:19:25.720 | Of course, she's not gonna be the one we let go.
00:19:27.480 | So there's a mindset change that could help.
00:19:30.360 | Now, of course, the whole problem with all of this
00:19:33.360 | is it's not the difficulty of doing this
00:19:36.240 | is not evenly distributed.
00:19:37.560 | For some people, a career capital mindset
00:19:40.560 | is gonna come much easier.
00:19:42.520 | They have many more opportunities to do it
00:19:44.840 | just because of who they are
00:19:46.200 | or the opportunities or connections they have.
00:19:47.840 | It's not a fairly distributed system,
00:19:50.760 | but it still seems to be the way the job market works,
00:19:55.760 | even if it works differently for different people.
00:19:59.080 | So we shouldn't let our frustration
00:20:00.480 | with this system is not fair,
00:20:02.440 | hide the reality of how the system works,
00:20:05.400 | which is it's a market.
00:20:06.600 | Skill is what matters.
00:20:08.680 | Building skill is the way to think about it.
00:20:10.600 | Hey, if you liked this video,
00:20:11.720 | I think you'll really like this one as well.