Introduction
Life is full of crossroads and new beginnings. Whether you're just starting out in your career, changing directions mid-life, or simply looking to improve yourself, the path forward can seem daunting. In her book "What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20," Tina Seelig offers a wealth of practical advice and inspiring stories to help readers navigate these crucial moments.
Drawing from her experiences as an entrepreneur, educator, and neuroscientist, Seelig provides a roadmap for personal and professional growth. This book isn't just for twenty-somethings – it's for anyone facing new challenges or seeking to make the most of their potential. Through engaging anecdotes and actionable insights, Seelig tackles important topics like decision-making, creativity, leadership, and building relationships.
While no single book can provide all the answers, "What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20" equips readers with key principles they can apply to their own lives. In the following summary, we'll explore five essential lessons from Seelig's work, learning how to take intelligent risks, connect with others, and leverage our skills to achieve our ambitions.
Embrace Problems
One of the most counterintuitive yet powerful pieces of advice Seelig offers is to embrace problems rather than avoid them. Many of us instinctively shy away from difficulties, but doing so often means missing out on hidden opportunities.
Problems as Opportunities in Disguise
Seelig points out that some of today's most successful companies were born from initial failures or unexpected challenges. Take Slack, for instance. This popular messaging platform didn't start as a communication tool – it began as a failed gaming startup. As the original concept floundered, the founders noticed that the internal communication system they'd built for their team showed real promise. By pivoting and repurposing this system for a wider audience, they created a product that revolutionized workplace communication.
Similarly, Instagram's journey from a traditional social media platform to a photo-sharing giant illustrates the power of embracing problems. When their initial concept failed to gain traction, the founders zeroed in on the app's photo filter feature, which users loved. By doubling down on visual sharing, they transformed a struggling startup into one of the world's most popular social media platforms.
These success stories highlight a crucial lesson: giving up at the first sign of trouble means missing out on opportunities to innovate and improve. The founders of Slack and Instagram succeeded because they maintained an open, tenacious attitude and were willing to work through problems rather than abandoning ship.
The Power of Persistence
Entrepreneur Jeff Palmer's story further illustrates the value of persistence in the face of failure. When Palmer's electronic organizer, Zoomer, flopped in the market, he took an unusual approach. Instead of sulking or giving up, he personally called every customer he could find who had purchased the failed device.
Through these lengthy conversations, Palmer gained invaluable insights into what users disliked about his product and what they truly needed in a personal organizer. This qualitative feedback revealed an unmet consumer desire for better on-the-go organization and scheduling capabilities. Armed with this knowledge, Palmer developed his next product – the Palm Pilot – which directly addressed these frustrations and became a massive success.
Palmer's experience underscores a vital principle: problems will always arise, but addressing them head-on is the only viable path forward. By viewing setbacks as opportunities for learning and improvement, we open ourselves up to new possibilities and solutions.
Identifying the Real Problem
Of course, embracing problems is only the first step. To truly benefit from this approach, we need to correctly identify the issues at hand. This often requires a deep dive into all facets of a situation – a process product designers call "need finding."
Seelig emphasizes the importance of thoroughly analyzing exactly where and how end users are frustrated. She quotes Einstein, who said, "If I had an hour to solve a problem upon which my life depended, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask." This highlights the critical nature of problem identification in finding effective solutions.
Sometimes, identifying unresolved needs means daring to think beyond the status quo. Seelig uses the example of balloon angioplasty to illustrate this point. Before this technique was developed, the standard treatment for arterial blockages was highly invasive bypass surgery. When the concept of inserting and inflating a tiny balloon to open clogged arteries was first proposed, many surgeons were skeptical simply because it was so different from the established norm. However, once doctors recognized that it addressed the unmet need for a less dangerous procedure, balloon angioplasty quickly gained acceptance and transformed cardiovascular care.
Overcoming Problem Blindness
Seelig points out that we all suffer from a degree of "problem blindness" – the tendency to assume that because we don't perceive a pressing unsolved need, none exists. Often, we're simply oblivious to our own unmet needs.
The story of 23andMe illustrates how challenging these ingrained assumptions can lead to groundbreaking innovations. Founder Anne Wojcicki faced significant regulatory barriers and consumer wariness when she set out to democratize access to personal genetic information. However, she remained confident that empowering individuals with their own DNA insights could have a profound impact on millions of lives.
To start re-examining our own implicit assumptions and blind spots, Seelig suggests taking an audit of our daily habits – from our waking time to our social circles and leisure activities. By listing out alternatives and actively hunting for small frustrations that often betray wider unmet needs, we can begin to see the world with fresh eyes.
As actor Alan Alda put it, "Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in." By embracing this mindset, we open ourselves up to new possibilities and potential solutions that we might otherwise overlook.
Don't Fear Failure
While embracing problems is crucial, it's equally important to overcome our fear of failure. Seelig argues that our tendency to avoid thinking about our failures and missteps can be counterproductive, as it prevents us from extracting valuable lessons from these experiences.
Failure as a Natural Part of Growth
Failure, Seelig reminds us, is a natural and inevitable part of expanding our abilities and trying new things. In fact, the only reliable way to avoid failing is to stay perpetually within our comfort zone, never challenging ourselves – a recipe for stagnation rather than growth.
Interestingly, attitudes toward failure differ markedly across cultures. In some societies, public failure is seen as a terrible disgrace. Seelig shares an anecdote about an Olympic medalist weightlifter from Thailand who partially attributed her victory to changing her legal name several times – a common tactic among Thais hoping to bury past public failures.
The Impact of Cultural Attitudes on Innovation
Research shows that societal views on the stigma of failure can either enable or significantly dampen innovation. For example, Sweden's notoriously harsh bankruptcy laws mean that entrepreneurs whose ventures collapse often remain permanently in debt, vastly disincentivizing the creation of new companies. On the other hand, when Japan lifted similar laws punishing business failures, the number of high-potential startups founded in the country substantially increased.
This cultural acceptance of failure is likely why Silicon Valley has evolved into such a hotbed of innovation. In the Valley, failure has long been accepted as a routine, even necessary step along the path toward success. "Fail fast and often" is a common mantra, with bankruptcy even seeming to bolster rather than destroy future fundraising prospects among local startups.
Learning from Failure
At its core, all learning stems from first failing and then analyzing why. Seelig uses the example of an infant learning to crawl or walk – falling down repeatedly is an intrinsic part of the universal process hardwired into our physiology. Similarly, you don't learn football from books or piano from sheet music alone. Hands-on doing precedes success – and often doing means temporarily failing.
This principle extends to entire industries. Most venture-backed firms flop, but VCs keep investing because occasional massive outlier hits more than justify the risks across their portfolios. In publishing, the vast majority of books sell under 3,000 copies, but rare breakout hits are so wildly lucrative they carry the whole business model. Similar "fail more, succeed bigger" models sustain the toy, music, and film industries.
Knowing When to Quit
However, Seelig is careful to point out that this doesn't mean we should fail as a matter of principle. When personal or professional failure clearly looms ahead, it's not always wise to stoically grit our teeth and double down on a doomed path. Sometimes, quitting can be the smartest move.
Seelig advises that it's often a good idea to leave bad-fit jobs that sap our spirit, unfulfilling relationships, or stagnant projects that refuse to pan out despite our best efforts. The key is to move on smoothly, with our head held high and our mind open to new directions.
Extracting Lessons from Failure
Whether we persist through early mistakes or quit efforts that reveal themselves as ultimately failed experiments, Seelig emphasizes the importance of squeezing lessons learned from the experience. Our very errors contain valuable data if analyzed sincerely. Every fall makes us wiser, provided we take the time to reflect on what went wrong and how we can improve in the future.
By reframing failure as a learning opportunity rather than a final judgment on our abilities, we can approach challenges with greater confidence and resilience. This mindset allows us to take calculated risks, push our boundaries, and ultimately achieve more than we might have thought possible.
Make Passion Your Starting Point
While embracing problems and overcoming the fear of failure are crucial, Seelig also emphasizes the importance of passion in our pursuits. However, she cautions against blindly following the conventional wisdom of "Follow your passion!" without considering other factors.
The Limitations of Passion Alone
Seelig points out that for most people, passion alone is rarely enough to build a successful career. Making it work requires aligning our dreams with genuine skills and market realities. She bluntly states that passion without talent won't cut it – just loving basketball doesn't make you a good player. It might be better to enjoy pickup games than pursue a doomed professional career.
Moreover, even abundant talent might not pay the bills if there's no demand for it. Trying to sell exquisite artistic paintings full-time often proves futile because the market is simply saturated.
Finding the Sweet Spot
However, this doesn't mean we need to retire our bold dreams in favor of a dreary 9-to-5 job. With pragmatism, Seelig argues, we can converge passion, skill, and market needs to find a fulfilling and sustainable career path.
The first step in this process is discovering our true passions. Seelig notes that it's rare to know what our passions are from a young age unless we're child prodigies like Mozart. She encourages readers to be prepared to try unexplored pursuits to uncover what deeply excites them. Take a cooking class! Try fencing! Our passions may lie where we least expect to find them.
Breaking Out of Narrow Lanes
As our interests emerge, Seelig warns against letting others limit us into narrow lanes. Well-meaning guidance often tracks us onto rigid paths – for example, kids who are good at Lego are often told to be engineers. But these innate skills can transfer to unexpected domains.
To illustrate this point, Seelig shares the story of Professor Nathan Furr's circuitous career path. Furr began college as an English major before realizing professor salaries were far too low to support his goals. Instead of abandoning his passion entirely, he pondered where else he could apply his research, writing, and critical thinking talents.
Lacking business experience, Furr slowly built relevant credentials through finance clubs, consulting internships, and networking. Without abandoning English, he pivoted his skills to new settings where he could thrive both financially and spiritually.
Adjusting Goals as Awareness Grows
Seelig emphasizes that it's never a failure to adjust professional goals as our awareness grows. Unexpected detours often reveal fulfilling destinations. The advice to "Follow your passion" still contains truth, she argues, when framed as an internal compass rather than an inflexible roadmap.
The key is to first understand what intrinsically motivates us. But we must also cultivate practical skills and chase real-world opportunities. Harmonizing these elements unlocks careers fueled by passion but grounded in reality.
Embracing the Meandering Path
Seelig reminds readers that the path ahead will meander, not run straight. But by fusing our passions with pragmatic skills, while exploring emerging possibilities, we can create something far beyond our initial dreams.
This approach allows us to remain true to our core interests and values while adapting to the realities of the job market and our own evolving skills and experiences. It's a more nuanced and flexible way of pursuing our passions that can lead to greater satisfaction and success in the long run.
Work Hard at Getting Lucky
One of the most intriguing concepts Seelig explores is the relationship between hard work and luck. She notes that successful people often humbly credit "good luck" for their achievements. And while chance does play a role – two equally talented singers might perform at the same open mic night, but only one gets noticed by a record producer – Seelig argues that there's more to luck than mere randomness.
The Interplay of Luck and Preparation
The truth behind luck and success, Seelig contends, is that those seemingly serendipitous breaks always flow to the hardest workers. Putting in long hours generates opportunities for luck to blossom. And when a lucky break does arrive, preparation ensures we can fully capitalize on it. As scientist Louis Pasteur famously said, "Chance favors the prepared mind."
To illustrate this point, Seelig shares the story of author Michael Lewis and his apparently lucky career. A chance dinner chat with a top finance executive's wife landed Lewis a coveted Wall Street job. Later, when the 1987 stock market crashed, Lewis, uniquely prepared as his firm's derivatives expert, penned a bestselling book on 1980s Wall Street greed.
But was Lewis merely lucky? Seelig argues no. When a random encounter tossed him a job lead, Lewis seized it assertively. When recession ruined his colleagues, Lewis spotted an opportunity to publish a smash hit book. At every turn, he grabbed chances and directed them.
Strategies for Maximizing Luck
Seelig offers several strategies for maximizing our own luck:
Build Trust and Connections: People offer more opportunities to those they trust. Instead of envying others' success, build authentic connections, empathy, and goodwill. Help solve problems without expecting anything in return. Every time we do, we deposit more into our "trust bank" for the future.
Adjust Your Mindset: Bitter people notice chances but fail to act, muttering "I could have done that" later. Disappointed people leap before they're properly prepared – they ace interviews but flop in new roles for lack of skills. The lucky person sees openings and prepares to grab them.
Refresh Your Perspective: Familiar scenes stop sparking creative ideas. Seelig suggests pretending we're tourists and our mundane workplace is brand new – what problems or prospects pop out?
Value All Experiences: Lucky people know no experience is ever wasted. Seelig uses the example of Steve Jobs, who dropped out of college to take seemingly pointless calligraphy classes. But his aesthetic and minimalist sensibility later massively influenced Apple's iconic product designs.
Luck as a Constant Force
Seelig likens luck to a constant force, like the wind. Our job is to set our sail to catch it. Stay open and alert to chances. Invest time and effort to prepare for opportunities. Tend constantly to our relationships and interests - that broad base nourishes luck. Then, when the gusts come, we can ride them toward our hoped-for destination.
By reframing luck as something we can actively cultivate rather than a purely random occurrence, Seelig empowers readers to take more control of their destinies. While we can't control every aspect of our lives, we can certainly increase our chances of success by being prepared, open-minded, and ready to seize opportunities when they arise.
Be a Mensch
In the final key lesson of her book, Seelig introduces a concept that might seem out of place in a guide to professional success: the importance of being a mensch. A Yiddish word meaning "a person of integrity and honor," being a mensch is about more than just being nice – it's about embodying kindness, decency, and ethical behavior in all aspects of life.
The Untapped Resource of Kindness
Seelig argues that there's one key resource that ensures positive outcomes, both professionally and personally, yet remains strangely untapped: kindness. While talent and expertise surely enable success, overlooking basic human decency can hinder our potential. This is because simple courtesy and kindness create surprising opportunities.
Practical Ways to Enrich Your Network Through Kindness
Seelig offers several impactful yet easy ways to enrich our networks through kindness:
Express Appreciation: Every favor we request, from a short coffee with a mentor to brainstorming advice, imposes opportunity costs on others' time. Yet few properly convey gratitude nowadays. A genuine thank-you email after each interaction can make a world of difference.
Remember It's a Small World: With billions of people, it seems unlikely an old colleague or neighbor might influence our future. But surprising interlinks happen often. Former subordinates can become mentors. Childhood friends sometimes have connections to hiring managers. Seelig advises us to burn no bridges.
Safeguard Your Reputation: Seelig uses the metaphor of interactions as drops in a pool. Positive exchanges add clear water. But negative ones stain the pool red. A few dark drops can ruin the hue, and many subsequent positive additions barely dilute the taint. So stay thoughtful and kind. Treating everyone well, from receptionists to CEOs, builds valuable trust.
Consider Long-View Ripples: When at a crossroads, Seelig suggests envisioning proudly telling our grandchildren our life story, accounting for every decision we made and every action we took with pride. Even incorrect decisions seem wise if intentions are sound. Does acting self-serving now align with our future self's standards? This perspective can help us keep our actions in check and avoid future regret.
Apologize Well: If we err, Seelig outlines the essential elements for a sincere apology: it's offered in a timely fashion, it owns the mistake, and it promises improvement. With the apology out of the way, move forward constructively. There's no need for long speeches – sincerity matters most.
Choose Ethics Over Self-Interest: When forced to pick between self-interest or ethics, Seelig strongly advises choosing what's ethical. She warns that intelligent people often rationalize convenient but incorrect choices. Don't become that opportunist. Prioritize integrity.
The Essence of Being a Mensch
All of these points boil down to being a mensch – a person of honor who helps others without expecting gain. A mensch sees beyond status and judges individuals by their character. A mensch knows that kindness yields compound interest over time. And being a mensch unlocks success and fulfillment that talent alone cannot.
Seelig encourages readers to express thanks, tend to their web of human connections, check their long-view motives when choices arise, and default to lifting others up rather than profiting at their expense. Follow the golden rule. With conscientiousness and moral courage, she argues, achievements will follow.
This emphasis on ethical behavior and kindness might seem at odds with the cutthroat world of business and career advancement. However, Seelig makes a compelling case that in the long run, being a mensch is not just the right thing to do – it's also the smart thing to do. By building a reputation for integrity and kindness, we create a network of goodwill that can open doors and create opportunities far beyond what we might achieve through talent or hard work alone.
Conclusion
In "What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20," Tina Seelig provides a wealth of practical advice and inspiring insights for anyone looking to make their mark on the world. Through her five key lessons, she challenges readers to rethink their approach to problems, failure, passion, luck, and interpersonal relationships.
By embracing problems rather than avoiding them, we open ourselves up to unexpected opportunities and innovative solutions. Learning to view failure as a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block allows us to take calculated risks and grow from our experiences. Making passion our starting point – while also considering practical skills and market realities – can lead us to fulfilling careers that align with our values and strengths.
Seelig's insights on "working hard at getting lucky" remind us that while we can't control every aspect of our lives, we can certainly increase our chances of success by being prepared, open-minded, and ready to seize opportunities when they arise. Finally, her emphasis on being a mensch – a person of integrity and kindness – underscores the importance of ethical behavior and human connection in both personal and professional success.
These lessons, woven together, create a roadmap for navigating the complexities of modern life and career. Whether you're just starting out, changing directions, or simply looking to improve yourself, Seelig's advice offers valuable guidance for making your place in the world.
The journey ahead may not be straightforward, and there will undoubtedly be challenges along the way. But by embracing problems, learning from failures, pursuing our passions wisely, cultivating "luck," and treating others with kindness and respect, we can create lives and careers that are not only successful but also deeply fulfilling.
As we move forward, let's carry these lessons with us: approach difficulties with curiosity and creativity, view setbacks as opportunities for growth, align our passions with practical skills, stay prepared for lucky breaks, and always strive to be a force for good in the world. With these principles as our guide, we're well-equipped to face whatever challenges and opportunities lie ahead.