If I Were 22: Don't Worry, You Won't Always Feel Like a Geek

This post is part of a series in which Influencers share lessons from their youth. Read all the stories here.

Hey 22-year old me. This is a note from yourself, 25 years on.

We both know that you’re kind of a geek, full of book and screen learning from a good techie school and eager to head into the world and make a big impression on it. But we both also know that you don’t have much of an idea how to do that, or how to have a good life while doing so (like many geeks, you have tendencies toward introversion and brooding).

So here’s some advice. If I had known and done more of the things below over the past quarter century, I’d be more of a person you could be proud of. So do them and make me proud of you.

And not to give too much away, but the Red Sox do in fact win the World Series and you do in fact get the girl. So relax, and get to work on the following:

Tackle big challenges: I interviewed tech guru Tim O’Reilly onstage at SXSW (which, trust me, gets huge) and he exhorted the young geeks assembled there to work on the problems that matter instead of chasing fast-and-flashy success and cash. He quoted Rilke’s poem “The Man Watching”

What we choose to fight is so tiny!

What fights us is so great!

If only we would let ourselves be dominated

as things do by some immense storm,

we would become strong too, and not need names.

That’s gorgeous advice.

Learn a lot about numbers and words, and even more about people. Math comes pretty easily to your kind, but make sure you’re getting good at the right kinds. Calculus is very likely to be totally useless to you, but probability and statistics are endlessly valuable. Distance yourself from your geeky brethren by learning to write well, and distance yourself even further with interpersonal excellence. If you’re a decent behavioral economist, a lively conversationalist, witty dinner guest, and a dependable keynote speaker, you will always be in demand.

Read poetry. Plenty of movies, music, TV shows, and books will come your way, because our culture celebrates them and talks about them a lot. You’ll have to seek out poetry, though. And you must; it’s where the deepest insights and best guidance are to be found. Start with Rumi, Tyndale, Shakespeare, Rilke, Mary Oliver, Czeslaw Milosz, and Billy Collins, and go from there. Poetry will make you a wiser and calmer person; it actually has that power, as the lines above show.

Use data to guide your own behavior, drama to persuade others. Like everyone else, you’re biased and gullible. So you need to be rigorous about evaluating claims and decisions based on the evidence, rather than on how attractively or persuasively they’re presented. Ignore the pitch, in other words, and focus on the particulars. Most other people are not also geeks, however, so leaning heavily on facts and figures is not the best way to sway them. Learn instead how to weave together evidence, stories, anecdotes, rhetoric and all the other elements of the gentle art of persuasion.

In short, be Sherlock Holmes internally and Don Draper to the rest of the world.

When it’s time to move on, go. Most of us stay in the wrong arrangements — professional and personal – way too long. You will add many years and countless opportunities to your life if you go as soon as you know it’s the right thing to do. This gets harder to do as commitments (mortgage, marriage, children) mount, which is all the more reason to be more fearless and exploratory early in adulthood.

Be a good disciple until you’re ready to become a good leader. And always be a great colleague. Humility, courtesy, and hard work will be your best ways to achieve all three of these. The rule here is simple: do exactly the opposite of what you see on just about all "reality" TV shows; they’re horrible templates for how to be a professional (or a decent person, really). It’s sad but true that backstabbing and Machiavellian scheming do sometimes work, but human decency and excellent performance work even better.

Spend more time on your loved ones. Geek hero Clay Christensen (you haven’t heard of him yet, but you will) points out a profound temptation: that of responding to the demands and opportunities of your work life because they provide much quicker feedback — and often gratification — than building and reinforcing relationships with your family, friends, and partner. Make it a point, often, to put the work down and to go be with them. Trust me, the work will still be there when you get back.

Learn to dance. I don’t mean this as a metaphor; I mean learn to dance. Swing, salsa, merengue, foxtrot, tango, the works. It’ll make you very popular with women (I assure you that you’ll enjoy this). It’ll also make you less awkward and self-conscious and more confident and fun to be around, and it’ll let you move more lightly through life.

That last one was a metaphor.

And don’t worry too much about the fact that you’re already starting to lose your hair. You’ll be better off without it.

Good luck.

Photo: Author at 22