Learning and Careers

If you're like most people, your career will play, is playing or has played an important role in your life, but how much should personal passions come in to play regarding what you're doing either for your career or even for fun. How can you approach your learning strategically, So you can both benefit from and enjoy what you're doing? How can you handle push back if you want to change in ways that others around you may not expect? What if you have a career catastrophe? All of these questions, and more, will be explored this week in Mind Shift. [MUSIC]

We often face real challenges in our life between what we want to do, our passion and what kinds of opportunities there are out there in the working world. Let's take me, for example, as a young person. I had an absolute passion to study linguistics and to learn another language. Like many young people, I was a little headstrong. My father, on the other hand, kept saying, you can't easily get a job in linguistics. He nudged me towards learning something science-based. After all, he had had a great career as a veterinarian. I couldn't afford to go to the university on my own back then. College loans weren't easily available, but there was one way to learn the language and actually get paid for it and that was to join the army. That's why at 18, I began studying Russian at the Defense Language Institute. I was convinced that my father was wrong. And somehow, I'd find a great career for myself doing what I loved, but that's also how I found myself at age 26 in a career dead end.
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Although the military taught me a lot, when I decided to leave the military and return to the civilian world, I discovered I'd inadvertently put myself in a sort of trap. There wasn't a lot of call for people whose only professional skill was the ability to speak Russian and who knew little else. Much as I love the Russian language, I had put my focus on developing one single skill without thinking about how much that skill was really needed in the working world and without thinking about whether other skills might complement and enhance my ability to get the kinds of jobs I wanted to have. This is part of what I call the Passion Trap. We're often encouraged to follow our passions by well meaning people, friends and teachers, especially who don't themselves have to suffer the consequences of long term difficulties in getting a job. Friends after all, often want to make you happy right now. So, they'll often tell you what they think you want to hear. Teachers have a job teaching about their passion. This means that they benefit from encouraging you to take the classes and even aim towards their professions even if the chances of you actually getting a job related to that profession are minimal. On the other hand, parents, much like my father are often only focused on your finding a successful career. They can be less concerned about what you feel are your internal passions, especially if they, themselves have had a difficult life and they know how hard it can be to make a comfortable living. This push and pull between our internal passions, and the needs of the working world isn't something that just relates to young people. We often feel these forces throughout our lives. There are internal desires, the external needs of the world and many different influences from our family, our friends and our teachers and mentors. There is no one single answer to all this, but there are thoughtful ways to address this challenge as you think about your career and your approach to life long learning. Thinking visually about your talents can be helpful. That's what we'll cover in the next video. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] [SOUND] [MUSIC] Most people think about their career development as taking the form of a sort of a T. So you have your arms out, and the T going down. In other words, you have one heavy-duty skill, that's the downward part of the T, and you complement it by taking some superficial knowledge of other things. That's the initial approach I took to my career. I learned Russian, and also learned a smattering of other skills, like how to type, how to drive [SOUND] a truck. The challenge of course, is that I found myself without too many opportunities. But there's another way to think about careers. That's the pi approach, which is promoted by Patrick Tay, an elected member of Singapore's Parliament. Notice that this career approach has sort of two legs, gives you more balance, right? And you have one main skill, say accounting, but you also want to supplement that with knowledge in another area, say counselling. The second area may be directly related or it may be quite different from the first. If time and money are tight, you should try to build your second skill out of what you're already familiar with. When I went to look at second skilling myself, I took a clue from what I'd witnessed in the military. Having at least some technical competence in your skills toolkit often means you have more opportunities. So that was a big push for me towards getting a second set of skills in engineering. Even though I didn't think I had any passion or talent for engineering. To my surprise, when I began getting better at my engineering studies, I began to realize I liked engineering and I found something more. My previous background as a linguist actually enhanced my studies of engineering and my ability as engineer. I'd learned about chunking and interleaving and deliberate practice. In other words, I'd learned how to learn. I thought more creatively about my engineering studies because of my passion for language. There are many examples of people becoming successful at their passion only because they stopped focusing directly and solely on that passion, and instead began incorporating real world considerations. For example, writer Scott Turow initially had trouble making it as an author. So he took a step sideways instead to attend law school. The real world expertise he acquired as a lawyer gave his fiction extraordinary power. His books have since sold more than 30 million copies around the world. As you know, my hero in science is the father of modern neuroscience, Santiago Ramon y Cajal. Cajal's father was a doctor who pushed his son hard towards becoming a doctor, but Cajal himself wanted to be an artist. Here it was, Spain in the 1860s, and the arguments between a parent and child were the same as they are today. Cajal's father pointed out that it was almost impossible to make a living as an artist but Cajal resisted strongly. Until, that is, Cajal finally realized that the real world is important. In fact, he was going nowhere fast. Finally, he began turning his attention towards working to become a doctor. It was very difficult for him. He flunked some major examinations, but he kept trying. However, he never forgot his passion for art. In fact, he brought that artistic passion into his study of medicine which ultimately played an important role in helping Cajal win the Nobel Prize. So remember, you can bring a second skill into your work because of your passion, or simply because it enhances or complements your first skill. You may have to spend some parts of your life focusing on one thing in order to get deep skilling in that area, but you don't have to give up on your passion. In fact, your passion can greatly enhance your creative ability in your other skill. In the end, it's never a good idea to just blindly follow your passion. In fact, look at the real world and work to both follow and broaden your passions. Your life will be greatly enriched. [MUSIC]

In the last video we talked about careers and skills as being either t-shaped, with only one deep skill, or pi-shaped with two areas of emphasis. But of course there are other ways to think about careers and skills and don't forget that hobbies can also play a role in your life of learning. Not do they make you happy, they help keep your brain fresh and agile. Sometimes they can even end up enhancing your career. For example, one of my hobbies is to watch a bit of television in the evenings with my husband, Phil. And this help me develop insights over the years about how the video medium looks and works, which in turn has helped me to build better MOOCs.
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But look at how other people think about building their skill sets. Scott Adams, who's the creator of the famous Dilbert cartoon, points out that he's got mediocre skills in a lot of areas. He's a second grade artist, with reasonable writing, business, marketing, and social media skills. Put all those middling skills together, however, and it becomes clearer why Adams has been so successful as a cartoonist. His overall talent stack is terrific, even if he's not particularly good at any one area.
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Many individuals focus on acquiring a specific skill, say, a certain programming language. But they forget that other skills, such as being able to speak humorously and effectively, can add formidable value to their talents stack. US sales entrepreneur Rodney Grim for example, keeps his focus on his broad profession in selling electronics. As he points out. >> I'm a jack of all trades. While this limits me from truly excelling at one thing in particular. It also serves as a strong defense in a technological world where the rate of change is only accelerated. I've been an electronics technician, a programmer, a salesman. I also own my own business. And I shift my roles drawing on my background as opportunity and change dictate.
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>> Brian Brookshire who's worked as an online marketing specialist, looks at second-skilling from a related perspective.
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>> To tell the truth, often there really isn't that much difference between someone who's been on the job for six months and someone who's been working that same job for six years. So second skilling doesn't need to be as difficult as you might think.
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Skill development careers are typically logarithmic and not linear. Which means that, while developing deep expertise may take a long time, often, you can rapidly accelerate to the point of diminishing returns in a fairly short period of time. And this is often good enough to get a toehold in a new area. Personally, I find that I really enjoy requiring lots of new skills because of that thrill you get with the initial rush of progress.
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>> Sometimes you might find yourself blocked when you're aiming for a certain career. For example, Princess Allotey, couldn't afford to go full time to the university to study the mathematics she loved. >> So I intend to give back to my community. I volunteered as a math teaching assistant, and I taught kids math in Ghana. I certainly proved language can improve things for kids in Ghana. And I ended up going around Ghana making presentations. Surprisingly, I developed this skill what I always wanted to do enough, and that was public speaking. >> Intishar Rashad from Bangladesh has also made the most of a startling change of fortune. >> When I graduated from high school, I decided to go into the military to become an air force engineer. However, due to an accident, I suffered a severe spine injury and it seemed to ruin my potential career choice. Instead of losing hope, I changed my mindset and now I'm a medical student focusing on a career in medicine. >> So if you're blocked, either temporarily or permanently in what you want to learn or do, that's often a great opportunity to second skill yourself, or do something else that's equally exciting or fulfilling. Once you started learning the new skill, you'll often be surprised to see the powerful enhancement it makes with relation to your preexisting skills. And remember, non-academic topics can be invaluable assets to your career. For example, Singapore entrepreneur, Adam Koo, found that his skills in magic And in DJing, completely unrelated to his degree in business, have taught him a lot about how to effectively engage with audiences. The result, he now runs one of Southeast Asia's largest private educational institutions training to tens of thousands each year. In the end, it's always important to keep your mind open and to keep learning. This is the best way to ensure your skills don't become obsolete. Read, take MOOCS, and take courses and seminars to keep yourself prepared, no matter what twists or turns your career may take. Do you have a skill or hobby that's been overlooked but that could be valuable? Are there new technical areas you could start now to gradually learn about that you've previously dismissed as being something you wouldn't be able to do? Head on over to the discussion forum and let us know about some of your hidden talent, potential and desires. And get ideas from the hidden talent and potential of others. [MUSIC]

One tough challenge is deciding when young people should be directed towards a specific career, because this decision can have reverberations that can last throughout people's lives. In some parts of the world, students are sorted into career paths early on. At age 16, for example, they may be sent to either vocational training for the skilled trades or towards more academically oriented training. In other parts of the world, this choice is sometimes delayed. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these approaches. People choose career paths for all sorts of reasons. In some countries, the parents often make the choice, regardless of what their kids want to do. In other countries, the students themselves often make the choice, despite the fact that they may have almost no real world experience with the job choice they're making. Or sometimes, people simply come from a background where they've had no previous access to quality education or even to any proper education at all, which means that their career choices are limited from the outset.
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Or people can be on a very wisely chosen career path but then once they're exposed to new opportunities and insights, they may want to change. Career change, and change of all kinds, is easier to do in some countries and cultures than others. And, of course, it can be easier to jump from some disciplines than others, age is also a factor. But as you probably gathered, my own sense is that well thought out career change, and change of any kind, whether a small shift to acquire a different set of skills that enhance your abilities to do your job within your company, or a major shift to a new career. Forms of vitally important, creative fuel for all societies. One of the biggest hurdles to changing career paths or a change of any sort can be well meaning friends, parents, and colleagues. It's not like this sort of push back from others is necessarily a bad thing. It makes you consider your choice very carefully. One important rule of thumb, is to avoid going into debt while learning new skills at the field you're hoping to move into is poorly paid. There's something very wrong in spending a large amount to acquire a new knowledge or new skills, only to be poorly paid when you ultimately get out on the job. If you are considering career change or even simple second skilling, here are a few tips for dealing with the push back from others, who might want you to stay the way you are. With the dabble approach, you simply start gradually learning in the new area, either online, through reading or by taking local classes. This is a slow approach. But it can also help ensure that you, yourself, can gradually grow with the change, which will make the transition less jarring for all involved. The double life approach is much more intense than dabbling. With this approach, you basically compartmentalize your life and avoid talking to people about what you're trying to do. This can be a more stressful way to tackle your change, but it can have an advantage. It can prevent others from trying to talk you out of your goals because you'll appear to be continuing just as usual. For example, you may continue working as a musician while you're taking side courses to prepare you for a career in health care. And then there's being a contrarian. Take pride in being a contrarian. The more others say you will fail, the more it can help bolster your internal resolve. Keep in mind, however, that it's important to choose reachable and doable interim goals and check points to assess your progress. For example, if you tried as hard as you can, but repeatedly get very low scores on the test to get into medical school, it maybe time to reassess your dream of going to medical school. >> And don't forget that who you are is not just you.
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Who you are also depends on your environment. This means, that by changing your environment, you can speed up the process of mind shifting. I shifted from physics to biology by immersing myself in the best neuroscience environment I could find. I picked up a lot of facts, but much more important, was what I learned by osmosis without conscious awareness of what it was I was learning. I learned how to think like a biologists, by being around biologists and interacting with them. I did make a conscious effort not to fall back on what I had been, a physicist and mindset and skills of a physics. I took a vow of physics poverty to remain open to what was new around me rather than revert back to the old thought patterns. This approach also works for learning a new language, you get to observe the culture along with the language.
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>> In your attempts at career change, you don't want to minimize important considerations. Like whether you've got at least the basics of what it might take to succeed. Be willing to solicit and listen to valid criticism about how you can change and improve. You don't want to be like the cluelessly bad karaoke singer, warbling haplessly into the night because his friends always told him he was great. If you are a friend, parent, or mentor, of a potential mind shifter, try your best to remain open to other people's ability to change. And if you're the one who's making the change yourself, count yourself lucky if those around you are supportive, and use the opportunity to enjoy your new learning path. [MUSIC]

If you have long term goals in a difficult to master area, one of the best things you can do is to immerse yourself in what you're learning. For example, if you're planning to become successful in the restaurant business, one of the best things you can do is to get experience in every aspect of restauranting that you possibly can, from busing tables, to serving, to managing accounts. Without this kind of experience, it can be a lot easier to make mistakes that allow your future business to fail. This may seem obvious, but sometimes the cockiness that helps fuel and, results from our success in one area can go to our heads. Even eminent scientists, for example, have been known to fail disastrously when they tried to jump into a new area without getting themselves properly prepared. My co-instructor, Terry Sejnowski, for example, took these ideas into account when he switched from the study of physics to the study of neuroscience. >> I was advised to get neurons under my fingernails. I worked hard over years to master the biology I needed to truly understand the new discipline I was moving into. At the same time, I practiced selective ignorance. I knew that my expertise with computers, a rare asset in the late 1970s, could mean that I'd be dragged into computer related work that would keep me away from the biology I needed to master. So I vowed not to touch a computer during those years, giving me time to focus on the biology that I needed to master. >> Selective ignorance, then, is another important career tip. You want to master all the details that you can that will support you in what you're trying to learn or do. But at the same time, you don't want to simply start being used by other people as a tool for their own work. Marketing specialist, Bryan Brookshire, has some additional insight along these lines. >> I told a former boss that I wanted to learn how to do everything at the company and her reply was, don't do that. You've got to cultivate selective ignorance because if you know how to do everything, then you become everybody's go to person and that can interfere with getting your own work done, and that turned out to be pretty good advice. Cultivating selective ignorance has often prevented me from getting drafted into projects that I had no interest in participating in, or time for.
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>> So there you have it, general competence, along with selective ignorance are two important keys for career success. [MUSIC]

The imposter syndrome is that feeling that you're not as good or as talented as the other people around you. It's actually a very common feeling, especially if you're venturing into a new or different area. Often, feeling like an imposter makes you afraid that you won't be able to succeed at whatever tasks lay before you. After all, you think, if everyone around you is somehow more talented or knowledgeable, what chance do you have to succeed? These feelings can make the tasks ahead of you seem even more formidable and difficult. Your mind tells you, you only got to where you are because of good luck, and you suspect that good luck might not be enough to continue to propel yourself forward to success. Psychologists often say that feeling like an imposter is a bad thing, and you should just stop feeling like that. But here's an important point. Doubting yourself isn't always bad. It can keep you more open and flexible to seeing and doing what you need to do to succeed. And in fact, people who are open to self doubt tend to be more successful in the long run. Why is this? As it turns out, people can tend to fail, not so much from under confidence, but from overconfidence. History is filled with the stories of business executives, generals, and politicians who only listen to others when they reinforce their own convictions. These leaders then steer with blithe abandon towards disaster. Doubt, of course, can be overdone, but it can also be undervalued. In fact, if you're full of doubt, that means you have a mindset that leaves you more open to what's going on around you. It can spur you on to try harder, and as we know in this course, it's persistence and flexibility that can be what matters most in the long run, not genius. It's natural that most of us except, perhaps, the most brash and narcissistic can fall occasional pray to feeling like an imposter. Accepting that these feelings are normal and re-framing them to our advantage forms a healthy way to move forward

Wherever you are in your career path, whether young, mid-career, or even in retirement, it can help to keep your eye on the big picture of societal trends in relation to your special skills. When I was young I followed my passion into a box of having a single special skill, the ability to speak a second language. I didn't think or plan to complement that ability with other skills that could give me more flexibility in the job marketplace. We know that language and culture are important. But in today's society, technological, scientific, and mathematical literacy and expertise are of increasing importance, as well. So if you have a soft-skill area of interest, it can be a good idea to balance that with some technical or analytical skills. But likewise, if you already have sharp analytical skills, it can be a good idea to enhance your talent stack by working on your soft skills such as speaking ability or writing. On a side note, I wish I had a dollar for every older student I've had in my engineering classes, who like me, followed their passion, and spent a lot of money to get a first degree in a subject that was difficult to get a good job at. I'm not saying engineering is the only field to study, although I will admit to a little bias for engineering as good general training in today's society. But be aware how easy it can be during the career selection process to fall into a [SOUND] sheeple mentality. Where you and your friends don't find out until it's too late that you've put yourself into decades of debt studying a favorite subject that's better off as a hobby than as a career. What if you get fired or laid off from a job? A valuable point to keep in mind here is what I'll call, the golden rule of career catastrophes. And that is, it is never as bad as you think it is at the time and there is always a silver lining. [SOUND] Almost always as a result of being either fired or laid off, you ultimately find yourself happier in the long run. Even Pete Best, who was kicked out of the great band The Beatles, right before they went on to world fame, was able to find a wonderful silver lining in his career catastrophe. After his ousting from the band, he would go on to meet his wife, the great love of his life. Keep in mind that it's not usually a good idea to become too settled for too many years doing the same job. You can slip into a career rut that can be difficult to get out of. Even if you're doing a variety of activities for your work, your mind can still be following into the route or rut. Which means it can gently be moving towards stagnation. In any case, you may think you have the perfect career, but things can change in a heartbeat. One simple swap in management can mean an upheaval. Even great scientists like Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize winning co-discoverer of DNA made a point of changing his area of focus to keep himself fresh as he grew older. At age 60 he switched from the study of molecular biology to the study of consciousness. This is something like spending your life as a construction worker and then deciding you're going to switch to become an expert in creating great embroidery. The result, Crick's lively intellect retained its sharp ability to focus until his dying day

You maybe surprised to learn that some of your worst traits can sometimes be some of your best traits. This means that when you get down on yourself for some of your bad characteristics, it's a good idea to start reframing your thinking. In this video, we'll help you get started. Let's take for our first example having a poor working memory. As we've already mentioned, having a poor working memory often indicates that you're more creative. When something falls out of the slots of your working memory, something else tends to pop in. Do you have to work harder to keep up with people who have that steel trap sort of memory? Sure, but you wouldn't want to give up the joyful advantages that your creativity gives you. And of course, people with less capable working memories are more likely to see short cuts and to have conceptual breakthroughs. Poor working memory incidentally is often correlated with Attention Deficit Disorder. So if this condition is making your learning tougher for you, it's important to realize it also gives you advantages. You may argue that a strong working memory not only helps with problem solving, it also helps with getting good grades but research has shown that there's a counter correlation between school grades and creativity. In other words, sometimes the better your grades, the worse your creativity. For some reason my fellow professors who were usually the best of the best students seem to get annoyed with me when I bring up that little factoid. Maybe that's also the origin of the old saying, the A students end up working for the C students. But there's also a correlation between disagreeableness and creativity. It may simply be that disagreeable people are more willing to be brats, to throw aside that compliant deferential behavior of their more agreeable peers. Are you a contrarian? That too can serve as an advantage when everyone's telling you you just can't succeed, you're contrarian nature combined with a little bit of common sense can be just the ticket to prove them wrong. What about being a worrier? Well, as a worrier myself, I'll be the first to admit that worrying has got some unhealthy aspects to it. But anxiety can allow you to anticipate possibilities by mentally reviewing different scenarios even if they're negative. And that's not all bad. Doing a bit of worrying and then reframing your thoughts to calm your brain in the ways we've discussed earlier is a great way to go. And how about being a naive dreamer? If you're naive, it's a nice idea to partner and work with more practical people. But a little bit of naive dreaming helps keep the world moving forward on a positive note. No one would want to give that up.
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Based on all of this, what seemingly bad characteristic do you have that might have a good side to them? Join the discussion forum and let other people know and see what intriguing traits other people have.

For a long time, emotions were considered unreliable compared with cognition. This has all changed in the last few decades. Emotions are important for social interactions, learning, and decision making. Emotions are complex brain states, associated with positive and negative experiences, and they are accompanied by facial expressions. Darwin wrote a book about visual expression as a form of communication that is important for survival, and natural selection. Paul Ekman is the world's leading expert on facial expression.
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He was the real world inspiration for Cal Lightman in the TV drama series Lie to me,
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although Paul is lot nicer person than Cal.
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Ekman went to Papua New Guinea to find out if pre-industrial cultures responded emotionally with the same facial expressions that we do. He found six universal expressions of emotion in all human societies that he studied. Happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust.
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Emotions are typically slow in onset and can last for a long time. Can you remember the last time that you got angry? How long did the angry mood last?
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There are groups of neurons very deep in the brain stem called neuromodulatory systems that control your levels of arousal, motivation, and attention.
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Last week, we saw that one of them, the serotonin system, was important for regulating social interactions. Another brain stem system that fans out over wide regions of the brain, uses a chemical called noradrenaline.
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Edronax is a drug that works along the lines of Prozac, except that it is a reuptake inhibitor for noradrenaline, and it increases its activity.
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It could be more effective than Prozac in helping patients who are depressed and lack the capacity for sustained motivation. Whereas, serotonin activation results in serenity and mellowness, noradrenaline activity is involved in increasing drive motivation. When a closely related molecule manufactured in your adrenal gland, called adrenaline, is released in your blood, it makes your heart pound faster and prepares your body for vigorous physical activity, paralleling the increase in mental activity triggered by noradrenaline inside the brain.
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Is depression caused by imbalances in serotonin or in noradrenaline? These ancient neural systems interact with one another like players in an orchestra. So part of a serotonergic drug's efficacy, may be indirect by altering levels of noradrenaline. This interaction complicates the search for effective treatments for mental disorders, and reminds us, that although we talk about this or that chemical system, brain systems are deeply integrated. There is another powerful motivational system in the brain that uses dopamine, and is centered in the few groups of cells in the midbrain. This system of dopamine neurons underlies both the motivational and the emotional facets of extraversion.
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High dopamine levels puts people in a good mood, energizes some people to seek out new worlds, and to go boldly where no one has gone before. But not too high a level since that leads to Tourette Syndrome, characterized by uncontrolled ballistic movements, and a blue streak of swear words, which you can imagine on your own. Your dopamine neurons can be interrogated when you need to make a decision. What should I order from the menu? You imagine each item, and your dopamine cells provide an estimate of the expected reward.
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Should I marry this person? Your dopamine cells will give you a gut opinion that is more trustworthy than reasoning.
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Problems with many incommensurate dimensions are the most difficult to decide. For example, how do you trade off a sense of humor, a good dimension, with being messy, a bad dimension? Or hundreds of other comparisons. Your reward system reduces all these dimensions down to a common currency, the transient dopamine signal. Dopamine is a central part of reinforcement learning, which occurs when you associate a sensory input with a reward. Such as Pavlov's dog, in which food odors are are associated with salivation. Dopamine is released in the brain when an unexpected reward occurs, and dopamine levels are reduced from baseline, when an expected reward is not received. Dopamine neurons receive inputs from a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which evaluates cortical states and assigns value to them, and is involved with learning sequences of motor actions to achieve a goal. Although this form of learning might seem simple, it has now been shown that reinforcement learning is the basis for the most powerful artificial intelligence system ever created. It is not just your cognitive systems, but also the impetus provided by your emotional systems that make you intelligent. Go is an ancient game that is highly popular in Asia. The 19 by 19 Go board is much larger than the 8 by 8 chessboard, which makes it possible to have several battles raging in different parts of the board, white against black pieces, vying for territory.
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Go is to chess in difficulty, as chess is to checkers. If chess is a battle, Go is a war. It has been thought that Go was so difficult that no computer program could ever play at championship level. However, this changed when the Korean Go world champion played a match with AlphaGo, a program based on reinforcement learning that played itself many millions of times. It came as a shock to many when AlphaGo won the first three games, winning the match, and exhibiting an an unexpectedly high level of play. The three neuromodulatory systems based on serotonin, noradrenaline, and dopamine interact strongly with the emotional systems in the brain. Without them, we would not be human. With them, we are able to form social bonds, evaluate dangerous situations, and learn new skills.
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I often wondered why Spock, on Star Trek, had such a flat affect. Could it be his neuromodulators were low? Think about it. [MUSIC]

his week we've talked about how careers get launched and how your own career can develop and change through your life. Your own internal feelings about what you want to do, of course, can play a critical role in your long term happiness. But society and culture can also have a dramatic affect on your career choices and decisions. As can your parents, family, and friends.
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Given all this, and also given the nature of the real world, it's often valuable to carefully assess whether the learning you're doing with relation to your career might be putting you into a passion trap. That is whether you may be pursuing an interest you like, that teachers, professors, friends tell you is great, but which in reality may put you in debt while providing little opportunity for growth or comfort in the long term. Second skilling yourself using a pi rather than a T shaped way of cultivating knowledge related to your career, is a great approach. Sometimes, simply being okay at several or even a lot of things can be better than being a superstar at only one thing. For example, you can be one of the most brilliant coders in the world, but if you don't know how to read people enough to negotiate a good salary, you can't really benefit appropriately from your great skill.
Play video starting at :1:43 and follow transcript1:43
Sometimes people you know can be opposed to new learning that you may wish to do, or changes regarding your career. There are three ways to handle this opposition. Dabbling, leading a double life or being a contrarian. All three approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. We learned that sometimes selective ignorance can be better than general competence. After all, you don't want to be caught up fulfilling other peoples' desires while neglecting your own. In fact, sometimes your worst traits can be your best traits. Being disagreeable, a contrarian, a worrier or a dreamer can have positive sides that can be beneficial in the long run. If you use these traits wisely, feeling like an impostor isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. It leaves you more open and flexible, and helps you to avoid the over confidence that can sometimes lead to disaster. We also stepped back to look at the neuroscience of how we interact with others. The three neuromodulatory systems, based on serotonin, noradrenaline, and dopamine, help form the emotional systems of the brain. These systems, in turn, help us to form social bonds, evaluate dangerous situations, and learn new skills.
Play video starting at :3:12 and follow transcript3:12
One more thing. Don't forget the golden rule of career catastrophes. It's never as bad as you think it is at the time and there's always a silver lining. See you next week for the exciting course wrap up.