How to grow your influence by thinking in public

Narrative aircover

can be loosely defined as how you describe yourself, how you define you & the work you do. When you meet someone at a party and the question 'what do you do?' comes up, the answer you give is that narrative aircover

what I like about this term, especially in the context of us freelancers, is it's not something that's set in stone, it's a process of constant self discovery. And that's a point that Tom drove home really well in the podcast.
your internal compass
how you identify yourself.
as a freelancer, progress is much more compounded & discreet than it would be as an employee, there's no titles, sudden pay changes that come with different jobs etc. so you have to be mindful about your steps. easier noticed in hindsight he says.
your narrative aircover is 80% truth, and 20% aspirational. that 20% is what you're trying to become, it's that slow compound & discreet change.
what was my last client like, what do I want the next client to be like - you have to keep an eye on the direction you're trying to take.

Quotes

Not everything has to be a business, (for it )to be useful to you.

you're having to build that path of growth for yourself.

Executives don't look for people who have all the answers, they go out looking for people who think like them. - Tom on inquiry vs insight

inquiry vs insight

where inquiry is coming from a place of asking questions, & insight, well, self-explanatory
Tom Critchlow on insight vs inquiry.
A great example of inquiry vs insight I've just found, is the article Building an antilibrary: the power of unread books, where Anne-Laure says:

Instead of a celebration of everything you know, an antilibrary is an ode to everything you want to explore.

People don’t walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it’s the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did.

random notes

Get yourself an RSS reader & subscribe to those blogs man.
They also spoke about performance reviews in corps (in the context of Google, as two of them are ex employees), and how they're so focused only on what you did, which is uni-dimensional in a sense, because they don't address what you're trying to grow into.
- As a freelancer, as you do those reviews by yourself, you've got the option to look at that side of the coin.
  
  what did I do yesterday, what am I trying to do tomorrow. that's the mantra