Belief System

I wrote most of these about a year before putting them here. They're how I see things at the moment, and I expect them to keep changing.

On doing the work

Fight the hard battles. I avoided them for most of my life, and it took until 25 to work out what that costs. Fight the ones where the problem looks insurmountable and the reward is disproportionate. Give yourself a chance at them at least. You might surprise yourself.
Work hard. The long hours and the weekends aren't for whoever you're working for. They're a measure of how much of your mind you can get involved in something, and how far past what's expected you're willing to go.
Good work takes time, effort and focus. Given three projects of varying effort and impact, the instinct is to split your day across all of them proportionally. I've tried that and failed every time. Find the one that matters most and do that one properly: spend time with it, sleep on it, break it into parts, execute each part well. This is hard as an employee, where not visibly executing leaves you with nothing to show.
Avoid lazy work. Superficial work you never dig into, because it's rare that anyone pulls you up on it. It's easy to get away with, which is exactly what makes it tempting. Over a longer run, the non-lazy work is what gets noticed.
Don't get followed up with. If I had to pick one thing to get great at, it would be becoming someone nobody needs to chase.

Don't assume context. Don't assume anyone but you has it. Be as descriptive as you can about what's in your head.
Give honest, ruthless feedback. If you don't like the smallest thing, say so and get it fixed. The harder you push for something to be fixed, the likelier it is to actually get fixed. Better still, go past feedback and fix it yourself. None of this happens unless you're genuinely attached to the problem.
On disagreeing with your boss or your colleagues. Step back and ask whether you disagree strongly enough to halt the whole thing. Usually it's better to keep moving. Voice the disagreement anyway, and if you're genuinely not convinced, do your best to get what you wanted.
Make it easy for people to help you. We badly underestimate the effort on the other side of a request. Before asking, work out what you can do to reduce it. Instead of "can you get me signup data for Mumbai", say what it's for, exactly which numbers you need, and what you'll do to save them time. Two minutes on your side saves twenty on theirs. The same holds generally: make yourself easy to work with, because your colleagues want the same outcome you do.
Avoid FU responses. The lazy reply that doesn't bother explaining why you would or wouldn't do something. "This isn't in line with our current product strategy, thanks for the suggestion though."

Try things while you're young. The fastest way to find a direction is to try a lot and quickly rule out what you don't want to do for the rest of your life. A good question to ask: can I do this forever?
Walk away from drama. Some of it is hard to escape and some is easy: family hardest, work easier, friendships easier still. Cutting it out leaves your mind free to wander toward things it actually wants. That includes not debating with family, which is only ever an attempt to prove a point, and nobody leaves happy.
Cut the small talk. The best conversations are the deep ones, and you can have them with anyone, including a stranger. My favourite question at the moment: if money wasn't a problem, what would you spend the rest of your life doing?
Oration is extremely overrated. Substance is extremely underrated.
Don't oversell yourself on the promise of an expectation. If it works out anyway, great. If it doesn't, you never expected it to.