I met a friend a few days ago, and he gave me a tempered glass with a good thermal insulation effect. When I got home, my daughter-in-law made fun of her. She said, "Your friend did it on purpose. I gave you a box of wolfberry last time, but this time I'll give you a thermos!"

I was stunned for a moment, and then I understood: it is standard for middle-aged men to soak wolfberry in a thermos!

A faint wisp of melancholy rose up like smoke, and after a brief blur, the recently popular information emerged in my mind:

Huawei fires 34-year-old employee
37 is a tacit age line for HR
ZTE's 42-year-old R&D director...

Public opinion seems to have been intensifying the mid-life crisis, and it seems that when we are 40 years old, we really only have to be fired.

Is that true?

No no no !

Do not! no way!

As long as you don’t give yourself water when you are young, continue to invest in yourself in the following three areas:

ability
energy
Influence

Each of us has a chance to smooth out a mid-life crisis!

1. Ability

A person's success in the workplace depends on three factors:

ability
Location
trend

Ability is the foundation. If you don't have the ability, you can't go far. With the ability, you have the capital to choose, only then can you make achievements in an important position, and only then can you enter the trend of the times to fight the storm.

In the personal ability, there are four kinds of ability, which are the core:

emotional management
Self-learning
solve problems quickly
values

Let's expand and talk.

1.1 Emotional management

When some people encounter setbacks, they fall into depression, depression, lethargy, and it is difficult to extricate themselves;

Some people become complacent and arrogant as soon as they have small achievements, and there is no other person in their eyes;

Some people get angry whenever they disagree, blowing their beards and staring at their eyes.

Some people feel that others look down on them as soon as they are neglected, and then become discouraged, feel sorry for themselves, and deny themselves;

Some people are criticized by their bosses, and they speculate that their bosses are going to marginalize them, and they are in a constant state of panic...

We are swirling with emotions all day long, and from time to time we have to be emotional slaves. And once we become emotional slaves, we will lose objective judgment and make choices that have no value or even damage the value of the moment.

Therefore, Kazuo Inamori said in "Dry Method" - don't have emotional troubles:

Wipe away the emotional troubles in your heart, keep your head up high, look forward, take new actions in new directions. This attitude is very important to our lives.

And to get rid of emotional troubles, Albert Ellis' ABC theory of inducements can help.

A represents the specific people or things we encounter on a daily basis (inducing events) that stimulate us.

There are two types of precipitating events:

The first category is major crises, such as floods, earthquakes, famine, disease, etc. We know that these kinds of things are true, and we tend to be resilient and often miraculously rebuild our lives after being devastated.
There are many events in the second category, such as daily annoyances, feelings of helplessness, worries, troubles, decisions, and difficult people. Each of them has little energy, but it often leaves us distracted, and the combined effect is fatal.

C stands for two things: how you feel and how you act in the specific situation that happened at A. Say you're rushing to an important meeting and you're stuck in traffic, and as you're more likely to be late, and you really start to get anxious, irritable, and annoyed (the way you feel at C), you might start Fighting in and out of boxes, changing lanes at will in traffic, honking the horn, scolding other drivers... (your behavior at C)

B is for thinking. The way you think and interpret specific people or things determines your emotional and behavioral responses at C.

Albert Ellis believes: "An important principle of being free from people and things is that it doesn't matter whether what happens at A is true or not, what you think at B will determine to a large extent what is happening at B. Your feelings and actions at C."

Simply put, your interpretation of external stimuli determines your emotional and behavioral responses .

So, we should do the exercise for B:

The idea of the exercise is simple: identify the triggering events that often make you emotionally out of control and misbehave, reinterpret them, and look for appropriate feelings and behaviors. But it's really hard to do, and it takes practice, practice, practice.

In the book "Why My Emotions Are Always Swayed by Others" (Machinery Industry Press, 1st edition in June 2017), there are specific practice methods on pages 18 to 23, please refer to them to practice seriously.

Control your emotions and do your own thing. It's a long way to go, start now.

1.2 Self-directed learning

After many people go to work, they wait for the boss to assign tasks when they go to work, and passively work according to other people's instructions. Learning is over.

But in fact, when you get out of the campus, the learning really begins !

As a software development engineer, you are faced with various new technologies, new requirements, new problems, and new bugs every day. If you cannot learn independently, you will be quickly eliminated.

After work, we must cultivate the ability to learn independently.

In the process of developing independent learning ability, there are several very important points:

Develop a habit of being proactive
Discover how you learn
online learning

(1) Develop the habit of being proactive

Being proactive is the premise of everything. Only by developing the habit of being proactive can you spontaneously explore, discover, analyze, and learn when you encounter problems.

What is truly proactive, see Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

(2) Discover how you learn

Peter Drucker's article "Self-Management" published in the June 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review put forward the theory of "reader type" and "listener type". Reader type people prefer to obtain information by reading, Listeners prefer to listen to information.

For example, leaders who are accustomed to understanding the working status of their subordinates through daily, weekly, and monthly reports are often readers, and leaders who are accustomed to understanding the working status of their subordinates through various meetings such as daily meetings, weekly meetings, monthly meetings, and project progress meetings. Often the listener type.

Knowing how you get information can help you choose the right way to learn.

For example, I am a reader type. I am accustomed to obtaining information through reading, and I feel that I am more efficient. However, when I listen to others, I often forget after listening. I have to record the key points during the listening process, and then I can recall them later.

There are many ways to learn, the most important thing is to find the one that suits you.

Some people learn by reading, some people learn by writing, some people listen to audio, some people watch videos, some people like to discuss with others, some people like to think alone, some people read books first and then practice , Some people practice first and then read books when they encounter doubts...

You can try a variety of methods, slowly debug, and find a "learning method kit" that suits you. For example, I am now learning a new technique, following the pattern of "reading-practice-reading-writing articles-practice". In particular, writing technical articles is very helpful to me. I often record key points while practicing, and after practicing, I combine notes and review materials to summarize them into technical articles to share. More than 80% of the technical articles on my technical blog are written this way.

(3) Online learning

It is often not enough for us to learn alone, we also need to learn to learn online.

There are three levels of online learning:

example
coach
Expert Network

To learn online by example is to find a person in your team with stronger technical ability and work ability than you, study him, analyze him, find out his learning methods, habits, and knowledge system, extract what suits you, improve your learning efficiency. At the same time, I also use him as a benchmark, so that I have a goal of catching up and surpassing, so that I will be more motivated to learn.

A coach is someone who is far more successful than you and can give you guidance and feedback. If you find such a person, often his words can save you a lot of detours.

But to find a coach, you have to have a string in your head: you can do something useful for the coach.

The so-called expert network is a network composed of a group of experts. For example, if you have a WeChat public account marketing expert, new media copywriter expert, growth hacker, front-end gurus, book planner, payment system architect, distributed architect, product manager, An expert network of Node.js source code contributors, agile coaches, and more, so you can get pertinent, professional advice from specific experts when you need them. Of course, you must also have the very specialized knowledge or ability that is necessarily required.

1.3 Quick problem solving

It must be remembered that in the workplace, all practice should be results-oriented. When the result is achieved, the organization will pay attention to what you have paid in the process; if there is no result, no matter how much effort you put in, it will be in vain.

Therefore, the emotional management and autonomous learning we discussed earlier are all aimed at building the ability to solve problems.

The key to problem solving is to clearly define the problem.

Defining the problem clearly is often the hardest. For many questions, as long as you understand "what the problem is", the answer will automatically emerge - the answer is often in the question.

Most of us in the workplace are members of an organization, a screw in the machine, and rarely have the opportunity to think about "what is the problem", and most of the time they are passively completing "tasks given by others". As for It is often unclear what problem the task is used to solve and what the problem is. Day after day, over time, I gradually become unable to analyze problems, do not know how to solve problems, only know how to wait, rely, and want, lose the ability to leave an organization, and lose the ability to adapt to the new environment.

So, even if we are just a small role in our work, we have to think about what problem you are solving and what is the meaning of what you are doing. We must seize every opportunity to hone our ability to define, analyze, and solve problems. Only in this way can you become a person with "instant combat power", and if you have "instant combat power", even if you are faced with unfamiliar problems in an unfamiliar environment, you can quickly grasp the key points and open up the situation. .

Here are 4 key questions to ask yourself when clarifying questions:

what is the problem
how to solve the problem
whose problem is
Who is responsible for solving the problem

There are many frameworks to learn about problem solving, such as:

5W2H
empty umbrella
McKinsey's seven-step approach to problem solving
SWOT matrix
Fermi inference
PDCA
six thinking hats

Skilled use of these frameworks can greatly improve your problem-solving thinking and ability.

1.4 Values

The so-called values refer to what you think is important, what you want, what you don't want, and how you make decisions.

A person's behavioral values are his most fundamental ability. Values determine in which direction you do it and on what principles you do it. Without values, you will be like duckweed, wandering around, it is difficult to make long-term choices, it is difficult to continue to learn, it is difficult to develop effective problem-solving skills, and it is difficult to accumulate socially perceived resource.

Professionals who are keen on technology think that technical achievements are more important and solving problems by themselves is more important. He hopes that he has a top advantage in a certain area. He will keep doing it, keep reviewing, and keep improving until he becomes an expert.

Technical practitioners who want to be managers believe that leadership is very important, and workplace power and position are very important. He often changes his focus after three or five years, giving up in-depth accumulation in technology, and instead seeks management positions. opportunity.

These two different choices are determined by different values.

Therefore, we must slowly figure out these fundamental issues:

what i want
Which people and things are most important to me
what kind of person do i want to be

Once you understand these, you will find the meaning and value of life, you will be able to clarify your goals in work, family, society, self, etc., and you can build a multi-centered life. Once you have a polycentric life, the collapse of one goal does not lead to the collapse of the whole person.

Value orientation is clear and goals are clear, which can guide you to actively manage your emotions, learn independently, and quickly build up the ability to solve problems, so that you can smoothly overcome all kinds of crises in your life!

2. Energy

Only by staying energetic can you continue to improve and continue to increase your income.

Energy is life!

Come on, think about it, what can you do to get more energy?

Make a note of these measures and follow them strictly!

3. Influence

Our influence here refers to how many people know you and recognize you .

Influence is your strong insurance through a crisis.

The influence construction of workplace people can evolve along the paths of organizations, circles, industries, and cross-borders:

Become an influential person in your organization first
Then become an influential person in a circle of the same attribute (such as the same city and industry community)
Then become an influential person in the industry
Finally, move your influence to other areas

By reaching step 1, you have the possibility to achieve freedom at the job level (you choose job opportunities, not being forced to look for jobs, which is freedom of work). Because your colleagues all know that you have two brushes, your customers and your company's competitors will gradually know that, and naturally, various job opportunities will come.

If you can reach step 2, then you have used a greater power of choice, and freedom of work is bound to come true.

At the third step, you will go out of the company, the city, enter the industry, and be known to more people. Naturally, more possibilities will gradually open up in front of you.

Step 4, you can do whatever you want without breaking the rules.

So, how to build influence?

We discuss both from within the organization and from outside the organization.

3.1 Influence building within the organization

To build influence within your organization, keep four key points in mind:

profession
Make a success
share
pay

Briefly.

(1) How to become professional

See the book Deliberate Practice on how to become a professional.

If you are a developer, please refer to my GitChat master class - a programmer's guide to leapfrog growth .

(2) Make a grade

The so-called achievement is not how you feel, but:

goal achieved
Obtain affirmation from relevant stakeholders

For example, if you deliver a ticket booking website similar to 12306, it is not that you have achieved results after the deployment is completed, but it must run smoothly for a period of time, and can withstand the super-large concurrent access during the peak period of Spring Festival ticket purchases, and obtained the relevant railway departments. And the affirmation of the passengers, this is the achievement.

You make achievements, you will be seen by others, and you will gain influence because of it.

(3) Share

The so-called sharing is to take the initiative to pass on the knowledge, skills and experience you have learned to others and help others.

Sharing can let others know you, recognize you, and help you build influence.

Many people will worry that their hard-earned experience has taught others, and they will eventually lose their relative competitiveness.

From personal experience, this worry is superfluous! Because of two things:

To share, you must first sort out, integrate, and systematize your knowledge and experience. This process will allow you to open up the connection between knowledge, bring you more gains, and improve your ability again.
During and after the sharing process, others will give you feedback, provide you with opinions from different perspectives and standpoints, let you see things you couldn't see before, which in turn will promote your further research, and your level will be improved again.

(4) pay

Giving here means: you are willing to spend time and energy on others, and help others when they are in need .

There are many small partners who treat colleagues who ask them for advice, either secretly, coldly, or cynically, for fear that others will delay their own affairs, and they are unwilling to spend a little energy on others.

This can seriously damage your influence. Because the building process of influence is a process of service and interaction. You serve others with your professional skills, and others will recognize you.

3.2 Influence outside the organization

To build influence outside your organization, in addition to the 4 points necessary to build influence within your organization, you have to find ways to amplify your personal influence. Common ways are these:

Replacement of resources and relationships
Communication with the industry community
Professional community sharing
We media brand
Publish related books
hold open classes

All of these channels and ways of amplifying personal influence have traces of their practices - mining the personal development history of industry celebrities or reading the biographies of industry celebrities. But the key is whether you will do it wholeheartedly!

4. One sentence summary

Thousands of words can actually be summed up in one sentence: when you are young, you can discover your own learning style, manage your emotions, cultivate your energy, continue to cultivate your problem-solving ability, and look for opportunities to build personal influence, so you can face it calmly. The so-called mid-life crisis in the workplace has even turned a crisis into an opportunity.

5. Book Recommendations

This article mentions several books and lists them for purchase and reading by interested friends:

"Why My Emotions Are Always Swayed by Others" (Albert Ellis)
"Drying method" (Kazuo Inamori)
Leap: The Technique to Become a Master (Classical)
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Steven Covey)
"Are your lights on? (Gerald Weinberg)
"Professionalism" (Omae Ken I)
"Immediate power" (Kenichi Ohmae)
How Do You Measure Your Life (Clayton Christensen)
" Programmer's Growth Lesson " (An Xiaohui)

The mid-life crisis in the workplace may be just that you put too much water and do not accept the reality