Intro

We may believe (and I also believed) that in order to progress in our careers, we need to put our heads down and do the work as best as we can in our current role → and that would be enough.

That may get you somewhere, but you’ll definitely hit a ceiling and it would be hard to progress further. The reason?

The reason is that you have gotten all the experience you could from your role and you are not learning further anymore.

Also, if you are just focusing on doing your work as best as you can, you might be sacrificing everything else, your hobbies, additional learnings and your life in general.

In today’s article I’ll share how new experiences and learnings even outside of engineering have increased my perspective and helped me progress in my career.

But how can things that aren't related to engineering help to progress in your engineering career? Well, you definitely want to read on!

This is an article for paid subscribers, and here is the full index:

- What if I tell you that any experience or learning is great for progressing in your career
- Example #1
- Example #2
- Example #3
🔒 This is how I have focused on increasing my overall experience in my career
🔒 Freelance work has been key to progressing in my career
🔒 Traveling and getting to know other cultures
🔒 Doing boxing trainings
🔒 Focus on new experiences but be intentional with them
🔒 Last words

Resources mentioned in the article:

• My secret for growing from engineer to CTO (paid article)

• Work-life balance -> key to long-term career success (paid article)

• How I organized my time as a full-time CTO (paid article)

Let’s go straight into it.

What if I tell you that any experience or learning is great for progressing in your career

It can be anything from meeting new people to visiting a new country or trying out a new hobby.

All of these give you additional perspective, which then positively affects your career. How? By increasing your perspective, you expand your horizon and you start seeing certain things e.g. patterns.

Plus, by new experiences and learnings, you develop additional confidence, which helps you a lot in tackling new challenges.

This works especially well if you are being intentional with your new experiences and you try to map them to what you are doing at the moment and your goals.

Example #1:

You meet 3 new people on a meetup. They are all working in completely different industries + roles and you all talk about career progression and goals. They share something with you as part of their goals, which resonates strongly and gets you thinking.

You start thinking of how you can potentially progress in your career differently and you adjust your learnings a bit. If you wouldn’t talk with them, you wouldn’t know and you wouldn’t adjust.

Example #2:

You start writing online → you start actively posting on LinkedIn and send out a weekly newsletter. In the beginning, you are doubting yourself a lot (like I have), but you still post it, but it’s not getting the expected results. You persevere.

Over time, you try out different things, you get feedback and you adjust the way you write, you focus on brevity, you focus on a clear message, you focus on 1 message at a time and your writing starts to resonate more with others.

The same writing skills (and confidence) that you developed, you use when sending updates to your manager and your team, for writing very clear and concise technical specifications and for taking initiative and ownership with your newly developed confidence!

Example #3:

You pick up a new hobby like for example, you start learning boxing and you go to boxing practices. It’s tough in the beginning → the practices are intense and techniques are foreign, but you persevere.

Over time, you learn the techniques, become a lot more fit, increase your energy levels, you develop discipline and your self-confidence improves because of it.

Being fit and having more energy enables you to get more done within less time. The discipline you develop, you use to consistently learn and get better in all the skills relevant to your role.

And the self-confidence you develop, you use in ruthlessly attacking your goals and putting yourself outside of your comfort zone. The progression is inevitable!

This is how I focus on increasing my overall experience...