If You’re Asking Someone to Be Your Mentor then You’re Doing it Wrong
It should look less like them helping you and more like you helping them.
Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.
The #1 way to increase your productive output is to have it pulled out of you by an older experienced person who is unreasonably demanding, incredibly supportive, and has your deepest respect.
Even if you think you’re working hard already, a person like that can accelerate your output by multiple orders of magnitude by
- pointing you in the maximally productive direction and
- motivating you to sprint even faster and longer than you previously believed yourself capable.
But here’s the catch: in order to find that person, be worth their time, and have that extra productive output pulled out of you… you typically have to be an incredibly hard & talented worker in the first place, already producing a solid level of productive output.
You are not going to run into this person if you’re just coasting. You have to turn the dial up from 1 to 10 yourself, and hold it there for a while, before you meet the person who gets you turning the dial up to 100.
If you’re asking someone to be your mentor then you’re doing it wrong.
It should look less like them helping you and more like you helping them.
It starts with you bringing something to the table.
You’re a missing piece in a puzzle that they’re trying to solve.
Except you’re not a perfect fit initially.
You kind of, sort of fill some gap initially, and you show signs of being able to grow to cover the remaining area.
And they recognize that, so they invest their time into helping you grow into that perfect fit.
As you grow, you also expand into other gaps in the puzzle, maybe even some that you didn’t anticipate, maybe even some that your mentor didn’t anticipate.
And you grow to fill those gaps in the puzzle as well.
Eventually you cover enough of the puzzle that you yourself become a puzzle-master looking for puzzle pieces.
And that’s how the cycle continues.
A key takeaway:
When reaching out to someone you hope to work under, make sure you very clearly communicate the following:
- show that you understand what puzzle they're solving
- state what missing piece of that puzzle you think you can fill
- state what evidence there is that you can fill that piece
Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.