Love Your Job

CHAPTER 7 How to Upgrade Your Game ■ ■ ■

When Adam Bryant, a reporter for The New York Times, asked Kat Cole, president of Cinnabon, what advice she gives to employees who are ambitious and want to move up, her answer did not surprise me. “Take your development into your own hands and be curious about the entire company,” she responded. “If there’s something you want to learn, go learn it.”

That practical, hands-on approach can open doors to a potential promotion or lateral move—but more than that, it can ramp up your personal enthusiasm and curiosity about your job and push it in new directions. Learning is inner power. But it’s up to you to take the initiative.

In this chapter, we probe ways to get back in the game intellectually and pick up new skills. You will find that “learning” doesn’t even have to be directly related to your job for it to make you view your work from a different perspective. I attend lectures. I travel to new places as often as I can. I recently took an eight-week online course, “A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior,” that had nothing to do with my current job—or so I thought. But these types of activities enrich me in ways that trickle down.

How about you? Write down in your journal all the activities you participate in that spark your brain cells. Go deep. I bet you’ll surprise yourself by how subtle your yearning to learn has been and how, without even realizing it, you’ve been feeding it.

The Benefits of Learning New Tricks

The inner implications ...