What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

Title:What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 (A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World)

Author:  Tina Seelig
Language: English

Genre: Non Fiction/Self-Help

This book is light-weight yet loaded with simple useful tips in life, as the tagline said 'Skip the Mistakes Everyone Else Makes'. I'll sum up some key points from the book.

When we are facing challenges, it requires different point of view to turn it to opportunities. Many times we look at a problem only based on one perspective, framed by rules or conventional wisdom. As a matter of fact, we can question this conventional wisdom, and revisit the rules. We'll be amazed how there are so many unseen opportunities.  

Opportunities are abundant. At any place and time you can look around and identify problems that need solving.

The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. Nobody will pay you to solve a non-problem.

This ability to view the unseen opportunities is the key point in becoming an entrepreneur. The first step to create opportunities, is to identify the problems, or we may call it 'need finding'. After identyifying the problem, we need to find creative ways to leverage limited resources to reach the goals. In this book, Tina gave some example about how famous people from big companies, such as Apple, Cirque du Soleil, Kimberly-Clark, identify the problem and make the best of it.

The author, Tina Seelig, is a PhD in neuroscience from Stanford, and the executive director of the entrepreneurship center at Stanford Univ. As a matter of fact, entrepreneurship is a skill needed by everyone even in different field. If you are and engineer or a scientist, it doesn't mean that you don't need entrepreneurial skill. It is preferable to be 'T-shaped people', with a depth of knowledge in at least one discipline and a breadth of knowledge about innovation and entrepreneurship. This will lead to work effectively with professionals in other disciplines.  

In the process of working towards your goal, failure is inevitably peeking on the corner.  Failing is not fun, there's no doubt about that. But, it can be an incredible opportunity in disguise. Failure may give us a break, and force us to reevaluate our goals and priorities. Often, it even propels forward much faster than continued success.

You may be familiar with Steve Job's story. When Steve Jobs was fired by Apple, the company which he founded, he had nothing left. But, he made his way. He founded other companies NeXT and Pixar. Also, he found the woman who would become his wife. Then Apple bought NeXT, he returned to Apple, and he had an amazing wife. He was pretty sure none of this would have happened if he hadn’t been fired from Apple. 

It was an awful tasting medicine,but the patient needed it.

You may think that successful people are lucky. In fact, there’s no such thing as luck. It’s all hard work. But, “lucky people” have something in common, that make them luckier than others. Lucky people are observant, open-minded, friendly, and optimistic. They can take advantages from the occurrences, and invite luck their way. 

One of the most common question from the students is "Will this be on the exam?". Students learned that all they need to do is meet the minimum requirement to get the grade they want. As they grow up, in the society, they may do the same way. At work, they only put some efforts to meet the boss' requirement. They are not motivated to reach further and beyond. In fact, you need to deliver more than 100 percent in every task you perform. Life isn’t a dress rehearsal and you only get one chance to do the best job.

Never miss an opportunity to be fabulous. 

You can watch her video in TEDxStanford.