Learning on the job

A few months into the airline management traineeship I joined last year, I got moved into my second role rotation, in business analysis.

My work prior to joining the airline industry included sitting in editing suites watching advance episodes of The Amazing Race Asia to craft digital content for its fifth season, producing influencer campaigns, and interviewing athletes, artists and entrepreneurs for A Life Less Ordinary. Seemingly overnight, I was expected to make sense out of data like an intern in Zion learning how to figure out the Matrix’s ‘digital rain’:

The first few weeks were tough. Sleep-losingly tough. While I had an intuitive sense of what to do, I felt like I had no idea how to analyse a problem in the context of my airline, nor did I know how to use the tools I thought I’d have to be using as effortlessly as Instagram in order to do my job. You don’t have online tutorials on navigating airline revenue management systems. You get a thick, chunky manual and very little time to experiment. There is no crash course on airline economics, there are four-year degrees instead. 

Within days, the excitement for the role, and all its possibilities, was drowned out by a consistent feeling of not being good enough.

Naturally, I came out unscathed and unbruised. 😀. 😅. 🤥. But I’m not going to bore you with the details of my mental anguish. Instead, I share below a few directives I’ve adopted as I trekked from painfully unconscious incompetence to moderately conscious competence in the role. I say ‘moderately’ for the obvious reason that a few months on the job can’t possibly turn an Oprah-loving podcast producer into a suave and savvy airline business analyst.

How to become better at work

• You’ll never have enough time for it, but invest in learning time. Staring at numbers and panicking wont help. Figure out the sweet spots in your schedule to focus, even if only for 10 minutes a week, and commit.
  
  
• Understand how to get things done, and 10x your learning by building a second brain. Make the most of productivity tools like OneNote and managing your time using Things/Reminders/To-Do.
  
  
• Find the best resources available to you, however scarce they may seem. Ask for help. Read, watch, and listen to things. I’ve listed a few of the books and courses that make up part of my self-curated curriculum at the end of this post, recommended by friends or experts who work in finance, aviation management, and consulting.
  
  
• Take copious notes and remix them to make them discoverable and understandable.
  
  
• Get good quality feedback on a regular basis and reflect often. At work, that looks like a weekly catchup with my manager and monthly breakfast/lunch with a mentor I trust and respect. Outside of work, it’s the informal FaceTime calls, email back-and-forths, and knowledge sharing with the unofficial ‘mentors’ in my life from entrepreneur friends to parents.
  
  
• Figure out exactly what problems need to be solved. If you’re struggling to engage with a problem, reframe it.
  
  
• Recognise little wins to build positive neural pathways and change your brain chemistry for the better.
  
  
• Be equanimous and calm down. Meditate, even if it’s for a couple of minutes. Psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher, Tara Brach, does several free short guided sessions, like this one.

It gets easier if you let go of perfection

It’s natural to want excellence from day one. Getting good at anything, work or otherwise, comes with disappointment as well as satisfaction. Rather than letting it defeat or demotivate, see the struggle as a sharpening of your tools. And consider ‘satisficing’, or making decisions that are ‘good enough’ rather than the very best. Focus on the pragmatic, rather than the ideal.

Acknowledging this normal and human aspect of pretty much any journey with equanimity allows you get on with it. Eventually, ever-so-subtly, you’ll find yourself getting slightly excited over some part of your work that used to intimidate you. Or at the very least, you’ll be able to finish up your work day and disconnect, reengaging with the other things that matter in life.

These are my practical takeaways from being new to a job, some of which may work well for you. Reflecting on your own experience and coming up with your own will serve you well in similar situations in the future, saving time, minimising anxiety, and perhaps even making the newness of it all exhilarating.

Featured image: shot while browsing one of my favourite bookstores in the world, Dickson St Bookshop in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Further reading

Books

• Bulletproof Problem Solving by Charles Conn & Robert McLean
• Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs by Karen Berman and Joe Knight
• Show Me the Numbers by Stephen Few
• Straight & Level: Practical Airline Economics by Stephen Holloway
• The Sporty Game by John Newhouse (check out this blog post that revisits this eye-opening book about the business of building airliners decades after it was first published)

Masters at directives

This post was inspired by several great people who have all learned from their life experiences, boiling them down into life lessons in some shape or form:

• Entrepreneur and programmer Derek Sivers, for example, has the simplest and most succinct I’ve seen, crafted by reading over 200 books and making things from companies to code.
• Hedge fund manager Ray Dahlio, has the most comprehensive in his book, Principles.
• Wired magazine founder, writer, photographer, and conservationist Kevin Kelly has a particularly optimistic and fun list that he shared on his 68th birthday.
• After interviewing over 35,000 people, here’s what Oprah Winfrey knows for sure.

Other resources

Excel with Business bootcamp: advanced Excel, PivotTable, business analysis training in short and super accessible chunks.

Farnam Street, a blog about learning, mental models, and more by an an ex-Canadian spy.

What is ‘Getting Things Done?’

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Also published on Medium.