The Adventures of Johnny Bunko is an absolutely brilliant graduation gift, in my opinion. It shares some big, powerful ideas about careers in a format that’s very readable and attractive to people who might not want to sit down and absorb a three hundred page career tome. Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a career, personal productivity, personal development, or entrepreneurship book of interest. Without really paying attention, I picked up Daniel Pink’s book at the library. I just glanced at the cover, noting the subtitle (“The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need”) and that it was written by an author I like, and checked it out. I got it home, opened it up, and found I was in for a surprise. The book is actually a manga – a short graphic novel drawn in the black-and-white Japanese style. At first, I didn’t know what to think, but after reading it, I realize that this style was a brilliant choice. It takes the relatively mundane topic of careers and presents it in an entertaining and unusual fashion, one that’s particularly relevant to a younger audience (yes, I was a huge manga fan in my college days). But is the advice worthwhile? Instead of destroying the rather fun plot of, I’m just going to delve a bit into the six big points the book presents for career management. There Is No Plan There’s a lot of talk out there about “career planning” – deciding in high school and college where you want to go with your life. In my opinion, most of that talk is bunk. By the time you get through your college career, the world will have changed. By the time you’re ten years into your professional career, the world will have drastically changed again. ![]() ![]() Acdsee license code. You’re quite likely to find yourself, ten years from now, in a career path you couldn’t have possibly considered today. Five years ago, if you had told me I would be living as a personal finance writer, I would have laughed at you. But look what happened. Don’t spend all your time planning out what you’ll be doing in your career in ten years. It’s hard to predict that. Instead, focus on the now and the skills and relationships you can build that will serve you no matter where your path leads you. Think Strengths, Not Weaknesses People hire based on strengths, not weaknesses. People become rich because of their strengths, not because they balanced out their weaknesses. Everyone has a few natural talents and passions. The people that really succeed are the people that figure out those passions and talents and hone them while finding ways to minimize their weaknesses. This runs completely counter to the idea that if you have a glaring weakness, you need to work on it and improve it. If you know you have a weakness, the best thing you can do is to find ways to have that weakness affect you as little as possible. Investing significant time in improving that weakness is a fool’s errand – it’s time that you’re not accentuating the positive. It’s Not About You The people who rise to the top are the people who offer value to others, not people who take the value of others and contribute nothing. Are you useful to your organization? Are you useful to your peers? Are you useful to the community as a whole? If you are, you have value. If you’re not – if all you do is gobble up time and resources – you don’t have much value in your career. Look at the things you do through this lens. Is this activity leading to some sort of value for the organization or for others or for yourself without taking as much value away? If it’s not, you’re treading on dangerous ground.
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