There’s a lot of bad career advice out there coming from basically poor performers who mostly got fired and decided to open up a TikTok and start giving out free career advice. It’s easy to tell these folks; just quickly pull up their LinkedIn, and you’ll notice a common thread; they haven’t really worked that long to begin with, so slow your roll on your career advice. Also, most of them struggled to work at any one company for more than a year or two. They’ll say this is just modern work, but in reality, it takes that long for most companies to weed out poor performers.

I’m not saying all of their advice is terrible. A lot of it is fine. If you want “fine,” cool, enjoy fine.

You might be thinking, but Tim, you learn so much by failing!

No, you don’t. You learn how to fail more. And that doesn’t make you successful. Don’t buy into the hustle hype about failure. The best performers in every aspect of life didn’t fail more; they succeeded more. They found ways, even super small ways, to succeed. Which led to higher confidence, skill, etc., and allowed them to keep succeeding.

I found this the other day, and I think it’s amazing advice:

The most successful workers of the future will be more like the above.

More creative. More empathetic. More execution. More f*cking everything.

Tim Sackett’s Good Career Advice

• Spend part of every week doing professional networking while you’re working. 90% of people only network when they are looking for a job, and it feels like it.

• Tell as many people as you can that you want the job. Too many people hide the fact that they’re looking for or needing a job. “I don’t want people to know I’m out of work; it’s embarrassing.” Yeah, you need to get over that sh*t. That’s feelings. That’s not reality.

• Show up earlier than most and stay later than most. If you have to pick one, stay later than most. Executives notice who’s working “extra.” Meaning, who’s working later.

• Don’t hang with employees who complain. They aren’t smarter or better than other employees; they’re just complaining. Even if you also want to complain, don’t. Complainers don’t have great promotion records in their careers.

• Be as positive as you can, as much as you can. Everyone likes to be around positive people. People who like their life. Like their work. Be positive to others. Challenge yourself to send a note professionally within your company saying something positive to a co-worker, peer, even an executive, at least once per week.

“You like that!” – Kirk Cousins

The best career advice anyone can give you sounds like something your Dad/Mom will say to you (assuming your Dad/Mom was a good, hard-working Dad/Mom kind of person). Show up, all the time, work hard, be nice, be helpful, make yourself as valuable as you can in any position you work.

This isn’t rocket science. Just do your f*cking job.