What I Would Tell Junior Me About Mentorship
What I'm Up To (Contributing!), What I Reflected On (Lackluster Mentorship), and What's Occupying My Mind (A Clickbaity book) - all part of Allen's Friday Flights
Introducing my Friday Flights.
These are a flight of personal updates from me and it’ll be centered around what I’m up to, what I reflected on, and what book (or even thing) occupies my mind. Makes sense why I’d have a different selection of topics since I often choose samplers and flights when I go out.
I’ll still maintain the Wednesday Explainers, but Friday is for everything else!
Ciao!
Allen
Btw. If you want to find and sample different kinds of newsletters, I recommend signing up for “The Sample”.
Inside:
What I’m Up To
What I Reflected On (Career Breaks)
What book occupies my mind
What I’m up to
TL;DR: Turns out I like contributing to others by default.
I am getting joy in engaging the Morning Brew Learning Alumni Community. If you are interested in any program, you can get a $100 discount through me
My Restatement Job Board Newsletter for CPAs and CISAs is one of my favorite things to put together.
I’m trying to figure out Ecommerce advertising with my cofounder and let me tell you, we’re spending money to learn that’s for sure.
I am currently interviewing for all kinds of roles. All. Kinds. I have broken the game.
I’m committed to posting 1 APAHM/AAPI piece of content per day on LinkedIn.
Assassins Creed Odyssey is game that I finally get to play, and wow I love how Greece comes alive! I am literally walking across Athens.
What I Reflected On
TL;DR: I hate traditional mentorship models and ways of thinking.
As I have engaged many people who are looking to take their own career break and reflected on my own experience on my break - I’ve come to a crossroads-like realization on the topic of Mentorship.
Through out my years at EY, and my interactions in non-profits such as ISFFA, ALPFA, and BAP&AS - there has been a consistent narrative around mentorship and how I need to find mentors to have a great career.
After hearing the same talk track for years, seeing the same programs be implemented, and seeing these mentor-mentee relationships be lackluster, I have now rebelled at the concept of mentorship, at least in its current form.
Here’s what I would tell junior me:
Don’t do:
Don’t worry about finding mentors and sponsors. You are an Asian American Millennial Male, this concept isn’t going to work for you.
Don’t participate in those programs either, they are useless.
If its a “networking mentor” program, run.
Do:
Find intellectual sparring partners. Casually engage.
Adopt a personal board of directors. Casually curate.
Find who you want to genuinely contribute to, and then contribute something, and then go have that convo with that person who operates in the same space. Casually engage.
Create mentee-mentor moments where you come up with an oddly niche and specific problem that shows you did the work, have gone through the critical thinking, and need to talk it out. Professionally engage.
Follow 5 types of leaders that share a lot - newsletter or LinkedIn - specifically areas you are scared of, have a shallow understanding of, or otherwise are unknown to it, and follow their content. Passively learn through their writing.
Send written updates often, small, and frequent to all of them including peers who you know root for you. It gives them a way to root for you more. Persistent engagement.
What book occupies my mind
TL;DR: To be happy, you need to have the courage to be disliked.
The Courage to Be Disliked
“No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences—the so-called trauma—but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.”
I picked up this book last month after Ali Abdaal gave a Youtube Book Review on it. It’s written in a Socratic dialogue method which entails a young unhappy adult talking to a wise old philosopher and having a discussion on what it means to be happy.
Admittedly, the title is very clickbaity, and I held very high skepticism. I still do, but there are some points that come across the book that I found to be both profound, and very valuable in understanding how one could actually approach things.
The best way for me to describe my thought process is “This is Absurd!”, with a slow creeping realization that “This is plausible” to “Hey, this is useful and applicable”.
It’s a rich book, and I can’t really bring it down to three takeaways. So instead, here are some quotes. If you like it, or if it piques your interest, or in otherwise elicit even a negative reaction, that’s an indicator you should pick up the book!
Life is a series of moments
We create goals, and then create the emotion or mindset we need to meet them
Do not live to satisfy the expectations of others
Your past does not determine your future.
Inferiority Complex and Superiority Complex are the same.
All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.
It doesn’t matter what happen to you in the past, what meaning you assign to it matters.
How to experience it: I recommend reading this, or using the audiobook like I did, over the course of 5 different sessions, as the book is structure to have dialogues “over 5 nights”. This is very much a thinking book, and there is a bit of passive reflection you will need to do after going through each section. It’s not a long read, totaling 6 hours casual.
Where to get it (Affiliate links to me <3):