If you are stuck in your career, unable to move ahead or want to develop a network that can help you start up, this book is just what you need.
It’s a self-help book aimed at helping you take a hard look at your career, long-term goals and start planning on how to achieve them. It also delves into dealing with setbacks and failures, primarily drawing from the author’s personal experiences.
In Dorie’s own words,
“The Long Game is a practical toolkit that shows you how to keep prioritising what matters most, doing small things over time achieve your goals, and being willing to keep at them, even when they seem pointless, boring or hard.”
What are you optimising your life for? Are you running it on auto-pilot mode as you check off tasks on your to-do lists? Checklists, while a good productivity hack, often gives one a fake sense of busyness — that you have a lot on your plate and hence not enough time to focus on actual priorities. So, how do you make life clutter-free and focus on the North Star?
Dorie is very straight to the point throughout the book, often times sounding like that voice in the back of your head that keeps at you, re-centering you every time you digress. She categorises situations into – requests, opportunities and obligations – and suggests one to weigh the pros and cons before saying yes to any of these. But how do you decide if something is worth your time or not? You simply need to ask yourself the following questions:
- What is the total commitment?
- What is the opportunity cost?
- What’s the physical and emotional cost?
- Would I feel bad in a year if I didn’t do this?
Assess and, then decide, whether to say yes or no to an event invite, a speakership opportunity, a vacation with family, a freelance gig or more.
I like the point Dorie makes about thinking in waves. She talks about four key career waves that make one an expert – Learning, Creating, Connecting and Reaping. It’s important to know how long to stay in a wave and when is the right time to shift to another to ensure constant growth and development.
This book has a lot of nuggets packed into it. One truly fantastic concept dealt with in the book is strategic patience. But I won’t divulge more than this in the review. Read the book to know what that is and how you can be the driving force and not just a pillion rider.
My favorite quote from the book reads:
“…the foundational skills necessary to become a long-term thinker: a willingness to say no, because you’ll never achieve your own agenda if you don’t have room to set one in the first place; a willingness to “fail,” understanding that what most people call failure is simply useful data you’re gathering; and a willingness to trust in the process long enough to see results.”
The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.
She specialises in storytelling, streamlining unstructured thoughts and conversations into content (prose, graphics or videos). She likes to meet new people, forge friendships and have conversations on just about anything.
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