Study skills author Cal Newport wrote an interesting post this week that imagines what would happen if every working professional approached their work like a professor approaches the goal of getting tenure. There are a lot of applications in here not just for adults trying to advance their careers, but also for students trying to stand out in high school.
During a tenure review, a panel of experts evaluates a professor's work to assess how much intellectual value that professor has contributed to his or her particular field. Professors can't advance just because they have a lot of twitter followers or because they answer emails quickly. They need to make substantial contributions beyond the daily requirements of their jobs. Newport's suggestion:
Most knowledge work fields, of course, don’t have the equivalent of tenure review. But an interesting thought occurred to me recently: What if they did? Imagine that after a few years a panel of outside experts in your industry was going to scrutinize the contributions you’ve made — not to your company, but to your industry — and fire you if they’re not impressed with what they find. How would this change your daily habits? My guess is that you’d spend less time checking e-mail. I won’t suggest that you formally replicate all the elements of tenure review in your own work life, but there’s something to be said for replicating the basic idea. Every two or three years, for example, consider stepping back and assessing the actual amount of new value you’ve created in your field. If your hypothetical tenure committee is not impressed with the results, fire your current habits. I suspect that there’s a large number of well-educated and ambitious knowledge workers out there who would come away from such a review realizing that their attention has been dedicated almost exclusively toward mastering the shallow: doing what they’re asked as quickly as possible, and occasionally suggesting new “initiatives,” like setting up social media accounts for their company, that are satisfyingly accomplishable, but also easy to replicate and not a source of new value in the world.
Here's how students could approach this.
If you write for your school paper, how much will you contribute to your paper and to your school beyond just writing good articles?
If you play on the tennis team, how much benefit are you creating for your entire team, or for future teams, or for your school, beyond just winning matches?
How much value are you creating in your classes beyond just getting the best grade you can?
If you have a part-time job at a local ice cream shop, how much value are you creating for that business beyond just showing up on time and doing what's asked of you?
Yes, we all have to do the jobs that we're assigned. But the more value we can create beyond the roles we play, the more impact we make and the more indispensible we become.