Six-Word Memoirs, Career Moves, Reverse Sear
Thursday Three: Episode 4
read time 4 minutes
Here are three interesting ideas you won’t find doomscrolling.
TL;DR
Six-Word Memoirs
How to figure out your next career move
The best (and easiest) way to cook a perfect steak
Six-Word Memoirs
Two weeks ago, we had our Revenue Kick-Off meeting where I learned a ton. However, one exercise particularly stood out to me.
We were asked to write a Six Word Memoir. I had never heard of this before, but apparently it’s a thing.
In November 2006, Larry Smith, founder of SMITH Magazine, challenged his readers to describe their lives in six words. A bunch of readers replied, and he called those brief stories Six-Word Memoirs. And hence, the Six-Word Memoir project was born.
Where’d this idea come from?
Smith’s six word challenge was inspired by one of Ernest Hemingway’s legendary bar bets: could he write a whole novel in just six words?
So, he wrote:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
Interesting… I mean I guess that’s a story? I don’t know. Hemingway probably lost that bet.
Nonetheless, that’s where the idea came from.
So why were we tasked to come up with our own Six-Word Memoirs at RKO?
Because it made it much easier to connect with people.
It’s easier to strike up a conversation with someone when you have a few words they’d use to describe themselves.
What’d I write?
Sales Engineer, HackerOne, Entrepreneur, New Jersey, CrossFit, Writer
My challenge for you?
Reply to this email with your Six-Word Memoir!
How to figure out your next career move
Every six months or so, I have a career conversation with my boss. The purpose of these conversations is discuss the trajectory of my career.
More tactically:
Identifying what positions I might be interested in in the future
Creating a timeline for when and how I can make a switch into one of those roles
List some core skills I’d need to succeed in my job and prepare myself for my desired future role
My next career conversation is one month from now, so I’ve been doing some research on what roles I may want to pursue in the future.
In my research, I found this heat map that identifies potential roles SEs might be interested in, based on the skills they find most enjoyable.
You might be saying “Okay, Austin. But I’m not an SE. Why are you sending me this?” Well, I think the framework is applicable for any career. You just need to build your own heat map.
Here’s how I’d approach doing that if I weren’t an SE:
Create a list of adjacent careers—in other words, roles where you have skills to offer in exchange for new experiences
Create a list of skills or characteristics—these can be skills you have, skills you would need in future roles, or skills you would like to learn. Make sure to write definitions for each of these things. For example, Coaching/Teaching: sharing your knowledge and experience with others through coaching and mentoring.
Map the skills to the roles—make sure to give each one a rating indicating the necessity of that skill for the desired role:
Red = Primary Match, meaning it is certain you will need this skill for this particular role
Orange = Partial Match, meaning it is almost certain you will need this skill for this particular role
Yellow = Slight Match, meaning it is probable you will need this skill for this particular role
Once you have everything mapped out, you’ll be able to see which roles might make the most sense for you to pursue in the future.
Respond to this email if you do this exercise!
The best (and easiest) way to cook a perfect steak
I love steak. Ribeye…New York strip… You name it, I eat it.
But every time I cook steak, I either:
Over cook it — which really bothers me because then I feel like I’ve wasted $30+
Or I undercook it — which at last is recoverable…but arguable pisses me off more because that means I failed at cooking it and I need to turn the stove or grill back on, after having already cleaned up, to cook it up to medium rare
Now I’m no five star chef, but I AT LEAST feel like I should be able to cook a steak well MOST of the time. So I turned to some experts for help…
A few weeks ago we had a Super Bowl party. Two of my friends cook steak really well — one is actually a chef. I told them about my challenges and asked “What’s your secret?”
They laughed and said, “Have you ever done a reverse sear?”
I stared blankly. “Reverse sear? Sounds complicated.”
But, I was wrong. They explained to me how it works in five simple steps:
Season steak
Pre-heat oven to 250°F
Place steak in oven and cook to 115°F
Sear steak in hot pan for :45 on each side
Set steak aside until thermometer reads 125°F
Easy enough. So I practiced on a couple of steaks, and oh boy… In Rachael’s words…
“This is the best steak you’ve EVER made.”
Music to my ears. I’ve cooked dozens of steaks for the two of us. Most undercooked. A few overcooked. It felt good to finally nail one.
Austin’s Recommendations
There’s nothing I nerd out on more than personal finance. Okay, maybe CrossFit… But I love jamming on personal finance too.
If you’re semi-interested in personal finance, you’ve heard of Mint—Intuit’s budgeting app they recently decided to shut down, which left me scrambling to find a new app!
Luckily, my boss is a huuuge personal finance guy and recommended I check out Monarch Money. So I used it for a month and fell in love with it. They make it super easy to categorize transactions and track your net worth.
I actually like it better than Mint.
If you want to try it out, Monarch is is offering a free 30 day trial. Grab it below and let me know what you think.