4 Pillars of Career Wisdom  

Like many of you, my first and best career mentor is my father. Many studies suggest that for women, strong, positive relationships with their fathers contribute to professional success. Fathers who both challenge and encourage their daughters plant the seeds for a confident adulthood. Many of these lessons are unspoken, of course, but I suspect many of us hear our dads’ actual words echoing in our heads at work.

On this Father’s Day, I am pleased to share my father’s four pillars of career wisdom. My father is a scientist who came to the U.S. with a scholarship and nothing else. He is an immigrant who, in the words of the Hamilton musical, “gets the job done,” so there are no shortcuts here. If you are prepared to put in the time, these practices will serve you well in any professional setting.

• Complete every task at the first opportunity. Have you ever resolved to finish a presentation “later,” only to have an unexpected obstacle, be it illness, a competing project, or family obligation, get in the way? This never happened to my dad before he retired because he did his work the first chance he got. While I cannot claim to always follow this rule, it has saved my bacon countless times, especially when my children were younger. If this seems impossible for you to implement, start by trying it once. When you are asked to prepare something for work with a due date in the future, go back to your desk and start it. If you get interrupted, set it aside. Then turn back to it at your next head-down moment. I promise you will be pleasantly surprised how much better it feels than the looming dread of an impending deadline or an all-nighter.

• Handle your correspondence once. This advice comes from the pre-email age and is doubly relevant now. If you read anything — a letter or an email or even a text — act on it immediately after reading it. Either respond, transfer, or delegate to the appropriate person, or make a decision that no response is needed. If you don’t have time to respond, my father would say, don’t open your correspondence. If you ever have opened a stressful work email late at night, or on vacation, or when you were out with friends, you know that it is wise to consider carefully before delving into work communication. What should you do if you happen to see a work email pop up on your phone when you’re out on the weekend? He and I would tell you to schedule a time on your calendar to respond properly. That’s the 21^st century evolution of this pillar!

• Spend 90% of your time at work doing your job and 10% gaining skills for your next job. If you implement the two practices I just described, you will have more time at work. Fill it by learning how to do your next job. That might be your boss’s job, or it might be preparation for a new role. Either way, the critical part of this pillar is the skill-building. This is not about cultivating contacts or raising your profile; it is about getting stronger in your field. Identify what skill you need to take a step up at work and learn it.  Think broadly about what that skill should be. In my father’s case, this pillar prompted him to learn to speak and write Japanese, which could not have been more valuable.

• Have a hypothesis. A hypothesis is an idea that can be tested. (Yes, I am a scientist, too. Bear with me; I promise this applies to you.) When you are asked a question at work that stumps you, “I don’t know” is not enough. You may not know the answer to the specific question, but you do know a lot about your field. Demonstrate your expertise and your thinking by having a hypothesis, without pretending that you have the exact answer. When you say, “I would expect this to happen because of that, but I need specific information about this other influence in order to confirm my intuition,” it makes a very different impression than, “Let me get back to you.” Follow through by examining your hypothesis with curiosity. With this habit of mind, you are always learning and growing professionally.

The beauty of these habits is that they do not require any special skills, training, equipment, or money. All you need is the discipline to follow through regularly, and your work satisfaction will only grow. In the spirit of my dad, share his advice freely and generously, and have a happy Father’s Day!