2026-09-13
X: I read Cate Hall's book. Y: I am more miserable as a result
Disclaimer
- personal
- target audience - strictly myself
Main
- The problem is that her advice is good actually.
- However, I am someone who has already analysed my decisions 10 times over. "You can just find a shortcut if you think harder" is catnip to someone like me. It causes me to analyse the same decisions another 5 times, so it becomes 15 times.
- Her advice:
- Half her examples of shortcuts are ultimately lowkey social engineering. Just create a fake website. Just get an endorsement from someone with credentials.
- Ruthlessly prioritise getting feedback, especially on emotional blockers, your personal insecurities, etc
- Accept more rejection. Get used to it, if you are in remotely salesy role. (If you are ambitious enough, you are necessarily in a sales role too.)
- Be ready to throw away your past work and past identity, and play the game from scratch if required.
- Commit hard. You don't know how hard things will be in advance, don't necessarily assume they're hard as that saps motivation.
- I already know most of this?
- I could get better at accepting feedback. I could get better at dealing with rejection. I could move faster. But mostly I know most of this, atleast in theory, not practice.
- Anyway ya I am more miserable now, just sharing. It is not obvious her advice has changed a single major life decision for me.
- I don't know. I feel like her advice is more aimed at someone doing networking, whereas I seem to deliberately avoid networking in favour of building technical competence. Like, if a startup has a technical founder and networking/sales founder, her book is probably more useful for the latter person is my guess.
Main 2
- Your baseline itself is misery, you don't get to fully blame it on her book lol
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