Published on 2025-02-02
Written by: Shannon McKinney
I just finished reading 50 Ways to Excel in your First Job (And in Life) by Antonio Neves and wanted to give a review and summary for the most memorable points (in my opinion).
To start with, there were many great pointers in this short coffee table book and many great metaphors. I wanted to pick out the ones that I either haven’t heard before or the ones that I thought were great reminders for my own career path.
Antonio’s first point was to everyday, “Make a decision” to go above and beyond. I reflected and also connected this point to advice my manager gave me not too long ago. He told me that his kid is in his “hating school” phase. And that he told him that everyday you have a choice to either have a good day or a bad day. If you choose to have a good, optimistic attitude, you can then choose to have a good day. One of my goals is to wake up and choose to have a great day and to do exceptional work. And I believe this is possible with a matching attitude throughout your day. (Even though it gets hard to keep sometimes).
This point stuck out to me because it tells us to take your situation and think about how you can make it better. If you are stuck in a bad situation, instead of focusing on the bad, focus on the good this situation can give to you. Focus on how you can grow and learn from it and how you can prevent it from happening again. This ties into the last point about being optimistic too!
This I thought was a great reminder to prioritize my work. I often find myself over-committing and saying yes to too many things. By prioritizing and respectfully saying no, I can make the most out of my time and allow myself to focus on the most important tasks.
This point was all about visualizing your dreams and manifesting positive outcomes instead of focusing on the worst-case scenario. I know I have practiced this visualization before for dance but this point opened my mind to the other applications this practice could have. Many sport players visualize the perfect pitch, the perfect goal, or the perfect throw to mentally prepare themselves to perform. Doing this for an important meeting, presentation, or conversation could be just as effective! I plan to try this the next time I am stressed about a presentation at work.
I liked the notion of a “CEO Mindset” because when you think of CEOs, you think always seeking out new opportunities, always looking to improve and always putting themselves and their company first. If you apply this to your own life, you can make strides in your work and relationships in your career.
Recently, my leadership development program has been stressing the importance of a personal brand. I like to think about it like this: Imagine you’re a youtuber and you share your art. Well, you need a name people recognize and can look up to find your channel, you need a logo or design you can sell on stickers and put in the corner of your videos, you need a phrase that you say that people can hear and think of you. All of this goes into your brand. And the same is true for professionals in other fields too. You need to be able to look yourself up online and find information that represents you and makes you different than everyone else out there. You need to be able to stick in peoples minds so when an opportunity arises, they think of you first.
Its who knows you. This point ties into the last one well. You need people to be your sponsor and advocate for you and your goals. But they first need to know you. Be your own PR department and represent yourself and your brand.
I thought this point was some of the best advice someone could have given me. Here, he talked about setting up “informational meetings” with people you can learn from and to ask them questions. I tried this recently with someone who worked on a really interesting project in my company and teh meeting was a huge success. I learned a lot about the project and the company’s goals for it but more importantly, I increased my networking circle. Now that I’ve meet with this person, they know me and know my goals and I now have a relationship with them. I would highly recommend trying this out!
This point really resonated with me not because I want more vacation time (although who doesn’t) but because this principle could be used in a variety of different cases. For example, if your team decided on the approach to use for the new project. Instead of informing higher ups like “Can we use this approach for the new project?” say: “We plan to use this approach for the new project”. It makes it sound like the decision is already made and it makes it hard for them to say no and change the decision but leaves space for a conversation as to why your team made this decision.
This is a killer statement to improvement. Just because you’ve always done it a certain way, doesn’t mean a change couldn’t improve on teh process. This was a good reminder to always look for statements like this in the workplace and to come up with new and innovative solutions.
Having just had my performance review, this point stuck out to me. Antonio says to have an agenda in these types of meetings and find ways to add in things that your manager must know about you. I likened this to how politicians answer questions. They always bring the question back to their main point and the point that makes them the best candidate.
This was a great reminder to always practice gratitude. This actually inspired me to start a daily gratitude journal that I keep next to my bedside so I can remember to practice gratitude when I wake up and before I go to bed every night.
This story really resonated with me firstly, because I liked the silliness of the story he shared but, more importantly, because of the message. Antonio tells a story about visiting Alaska and being the only person with an umbrella. When he asked a local, he said “Its only water”. The notion that when bad things happen in life, like a rain storm, “in time, it’ll dry” really puts things into perspective. It reminds me of another famous phrase “Time heals all”.
I loved this one as Antonio’s 50th point. This reminded me not to sweat the small stuff. But you could also look at it from the perspective that your successes are for YOU and not anyone else. You are the most important person when it comes to your own journey and you should be the one to care the most about it too.
I loved this book and thought it had amazing advice inside, especially being a young professional. But I think many of these points are applicable to any part of your career journey. My goal is to implement this advice into my daily habits but to also remember to reflect and be grateful for where I am.