Please, please, and please, focus.
"You’re wearing a tee shirt, jeans and sneakers to work. Why?"
Hi guys,
Hope you’re well. I’m doing okay, Alhamdulillah.
I write this at 10:54 am on a bright Sunday morning. In all honesty, I’m not in the best physical x mental state to be writing (as I only slept at 4am and still have a banging headache from my round 2/post-Fajr sleep), but I promised myself that I would post something today. So here I am!
First, sorry I disappeared for a while, the past couple of weeks were just back-to-back for me. It has included everything from 3 trips to 3 cities over the past 3 weekends to fulfill work and family-related commitments, to dozens of 1-on-1 2023 career goal-setting sessions with my CC community. And all in the middle of navigating some major life decisions!
In all, Alhamdulillah robbil alameen. Through everything, Hameed’s Newsletter has been very much on my mind, and the good news is I have a long list of topics I hope to cover in the coming weeks.
Anyhoo, let’s dive in. 🤠
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I recently listened to the Founders podcast episode on Ralph Lauren, a summary of the stories and lessons from the life of the American fashion designer and entrepreneur, and it had a genuine impact on me.
So I thought we could go through a few of my takeaways together.
Just two lessons for today, okay?
Okay.
1 - Take dressing seriously
In July last year, I was a “buddy” to an intern at work. You know, very basic stuff like helping them settle into the city, showing them how to use work tools, giving them professional and personal advice, etc.
Here I was, still finding my feet in the company, but I already had an opportunity to influence the experience of another person. It was a very pleasant experience. During one of our catchups, while getting dinner together, my buddy asked an interesting question.
Buddy: Hameed, why do you dress the way you do?
Me: How do you mean?
Buddy: You dress very informally to work. I’m wearing a white shirt, formal trousers, and office shoes, but you’re wearing a tee shirt, jeans and sneakers. Why?
Me: Hahaha you know we don’t have a dress code, right? You can wear whatever you like unless it’s a client meeting.
Buddy: I know, but most people still dress somewhat formally and yours just seems different to me.
I initially disagreed, but after thinking through it, I realized that he was right. I did dress more informally than the average person, and while it had never been an issue, I would much rather be seen as being over-dressed than under-dressed. By the following weekend, I had requested the name of his clothing store and was doing some shopping of my own! 😅
This was a lesson that Ralph Lauren did not need to learn. As a nobody in his first job, his dressing was so consistently immaculate and fashionable that a journalist actually interviewed him and wrote a 1-page article about him in the local newspaper!
His colleagues were like, “What? Who cares what Ralph wears? He’s still a bloody rookie!”. But the combination of Ralph’s natural interest in fashionable clothing and the reputation he began to develop as a noteworthy ‘designer’ made it much easier when he eventually decided to make a living out of it.
While fewer and fewer organizations have strict dress codes for employees and students, there is very little benefit in dressing poorly. If everyone wears jalabiyyah and sweatpants to work, then join them! 😂
But if there’s a lot of variation in what people wear, then being better dressed would help you to be taken seriously.
2 - Focus. Focus. Focus.
If you’re anything like me, it can be very difficult to focus.
At almost any given moment, the list of things I’m interested in doing is much more than the things I can realistically achieve. And new requests, commitments, and exciting opportunities potentially worth pursuing do not stop coming! And I know many more people face this.
Can Oguchi spend her weekends resting, working on a startup idea, volunteering for a youth church, and building a portfolio for remote job applications all at the same time?
Should Abdullah only keep selling ‘pams’ on IG while all his friends seem to be making more money from selling perfumes and shoes?
One of my favourite quotes is from Robert Lefkowitz, a 2012 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. He said that whenever a new trainee joins his research group, his first piece of advice is the following.
“Your success in my laboratory will be determined by four factors: the first is focus, the second is focus, the third is focus, and the fourth is…focus!” 😂
The truth is that without focus, it is very difficult to make impactful progress in anything. When Ralph Lauren became an entrepreneur, he decided to focus on only one thing. Ties.
It was only after he became renowned for his tie designs, had several committed customers, and secured the distribution network of Bloomingdale’s that he ventured into other pieces of clothing. As you can imagine, it was much easier to transition from being a talented ties designer to a talented clothing designer than if he did not have any prior reputation.
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As you begin a new week, I hope you pay some attention to what you wear and how that might impact your reputation within your organization.
And as you chase whatever it is you’re chasing in work or school, please, please, and please, focus!
** Jara content:
وَٱلَّذِينَ جَـٰهَدُوا۟ فِينَا لَنَهْدِيَنَّهُمْ سُبُلَنَا ۚ وَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَمَعَ ٱلْمُحْسِنِينَ
As for those who struggle in Our cause, We will surely guide them along Our Way. And Allah is certainly with the good-doers.
- Chapter 29 verse 69
** Shameless plug:
In case you somehow missed it, I run a community for young people trying to have high-impact careers. We usually have articles, podcasts, or community events every other week.
Some of our previous community event guests include a former Partner in one of Lagos’ top 3 law firms, a Nigerian leading a €700m business unit for FAANG in Europe, and a Canadian-Malaysian entrepreneur and BioTech executive.
It’s a paid community, and many of Hameed’s Newsletter subscribers are involved in it as well. Please shoot me an email if you want to join us. 😊
Have a great week. ✨
Haha! I have had something similar to this. In my job search, I decided to develop my analytics skills and I've dabbled into everything from pandas, numpy, matplotlib, seaborn, tableau, R, different flavours of SQL, Power BI,etc and I can confidently say now that I'm an expert in none. Last month I decided to devote more energy to Power BI though. It's definitely easier to sell myself as a Power BI+Excel guru when applying for jobs than "I have an idea on how to use 200 tools". I'll definitely go back to each of those guys over time though. But I'm starting with building a strong base. Thanks for the reminder. It's good to see you again.
A good read as always.