The single biggest lie we're told about our careers is that if you just work hard and find your passion, you will be successful. This is a comforting idea. It's also completely wrong. When I was five years old, I had a globe in my room that I would spin for hours. I always thought about the ancient humans who first explored it. I wondered about the fundamental choice that split our ancestors into two groups: the people who decided to stay in the familiar village, and the people who decided to see what was over the next hill or across the water, even at great risk. I wondered who the first person was to actually go all the way around the Earth. In middle school, I got my answer: Ferdinand Magellan. But it was only years later that I learned the full story. Magellan himself never made it. He died halfway through the journey in the Philippines. It was his crew, led by other navigators, who actually completed the first circumnavigation. This is exactly how we idealize success. We tell a simple story about a single, heroic individual, and we conveniently edit out the parts about the team, the patrons, and the people who came before who deserve the credit for the achievement. That drive to explore, to see just how far they can get, is the true heart of ambition. But the myth of the lone, self-made explorer is the single most dangerous narrative for an ambitious person. The lesson is clear: to truly accomplish great things, we need others. In this article we’ll dive into how to pair the concept of ambition with help from others to maximize your career growth. If you are enjoying this article, you might also enjoy the articles I had the most fun writing this year: 1. How to Learn from the FutureI am addicted to coaching. I have a Vietnamese tutor, a communication coach, a fitness coach, and a strategist for my YouTube content. My friends think I'm crazy, but my reasoning is simple. When you're young, you trade your time for money. When you're older, you desperately try to trade your money for time. Coaching is the closest thing we have to time travel. It is the most effective way to buy back your time—the hours, weeks, and years of painful trial and error you would otherwise spend learning from your own mistakes. This isn't just a feeling; it's a scientifically validated phenomenon. In 1984, educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom discovered what’s now known as the 2 Sigma Problem. He found that the average student who was tutored one-on-one performed two standard deviations better than students in a traditional classroom. As Bloom put it, "the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class." Think about that. One-on-one guidance can take an average performer and place them in the top 2% of their peers. Your career works the same way. Trying to get a high performance rating or promoted by just "attending the class"—doing your job, reading articles, and watching conference talks—is the slow, conventional path. Getting personalized guidance from someone who has already solved the problems you're facing is the fast track. It is your unfair advantage. Think of Magellan. We remember his ambition to circle the globe, but we forget that he failed. He died because he didn't have a guide who knew the specific dangers of the place he was exploring. What if he had someone to show him the way? How much faster and safer would his journey have been? Actionable Advice: Find Your Time Machine The first step is to find someone who is living in your future. Identify one person in your network who is currently in the exact role you want in the next 2-3 years. Your task is not to ask them to be your mentor. It's to formulate a single, specific question that would be easy for them to answer but would provide you with immense value. For example: "What is the one skill you use every day in your current role that you wish you had started developing earlier?" This small act of seeking targeted advice is your first step in learning from the future. A single, great question is often the start of a much deeper mentorship relationship. Speedrun To Promotion Is BackWhile mentorship is a great first step, for those who want to truly accelerate their journey, I am opening up my coaching program for the fall, Speedrun to Promotion, to a small number of new clients. This is your chance to work directly with me on a weekly basis in small groups and apply the 2 Sigma advantage to your career. If you are a tech individual contributor, like a software developer or scientist, targeting an "Exceeds" or higher performance rating, or a promotion to the next level as quickly as possible, there is nobody better positioned to help you on your journey. This is the most direct way to trade money for your most valuable asset: time. You can learn more and apply here. Stop learning from your own mistakes and learn from mine. I’d love to work with you personally to get you to the next level. 2. How to Ask for Help When You're StuckIf you're a software developer, you know the feeling of being truly stuck. I still remember my first time. I was a junior engineer in "dependency hell." In software, you often rely on code you didn't write, called libraries. Those libraries depend on other libraries, creating a complex web. If two libraries you need both depend on incompatible versions of a third library, you have to resolve the conflict. I had a gigantic set of these conflicts, and the deadline was slipping. I remember banging my head on my desk, close to tears. I had convinced myself the problem was too complex to even explain. With hundreds of libraries involved, it felt impossible. So I ruled out asking for help. But then I had a thought that changed my career: No problem is impossible. I just don't know the solution now. Someone else must. This simple shift gave me the fuel to keep looking. I found a tool to visualize the spider web of dependencies and tracked the issue down to a conflict between three specific libraries. I searched our internal wiki for those libraries and found an article written by someone who had solved the exact same problem. I followed their instructions, and it magically worked. I was ecstatic, until I saw who wrote the article. It was a senior engineer on my team. He sat right behind me. When I told him, he laughed and said, "Oh yeah, that was a nasty one. You should have just asked." No problem in your career is truly new. The feeling of being stuck on a technical task is the same feeling we get with our careers. We get stuck wanting to have more impact, to learn a new skill, or to find more fulfilling work, and we convince ourselves the path is unknowable. But someone, somewhere, has already solved your exact growth problem. Actionable Advice: The "Unstuck" Action Plan If you feel stuck in your career, you need to find the person who has the answer.
3. Furthering the Mission by Fueling OthersThe final stage of ambitious achievement is a powerful paradox. You go from seeking help to realizing that the best way to further your own ambition is to amplify the ambition of others. This is the shift from being a lone scout to leading a crew. As the African proverb tells us, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Ambitious leaders understand that their personal success is a lagging indicator of their team's success. Their primary role is not just to contribute, but to create an environment where others can do their best work. They are ambition catalysts. This doesn't have to be a big gesture. Small, daily actions count. It’s publicly praising a teammate's good idea in a meeting. It’s taking 15 minutes to mentor a junior engineer who is stuck on a dependency issue. It’s connecting two people from different teams who you know could help each other. When you shift your focus from "How can I succeed?" to "How can I help our mission succeed?", you start operating on a completely different level. You become an ambition force multiplier. Actionable Advice This week, your goal is to find one opportunity to amplify the ambition of a teammate. Identify one person on your team who is doing great work but not getting enough recognition. Your task is to find a natural way to publicly praise their contribution. This could be by giving them specific credit in a team meeting, sending a thank-you note in a public channel, or sending an email to their manager (and CC'ing them) highlighting their excellent work. Not only will it delight them, it just feels good to spread the love around. You Are Not AloneWe began this journey by dismantling the myth of the lone explorer. We remember Magellan's name, but we forget it was his crew who completed the mission. Ambitious achievement is never a solo endeavor, yet the path of an ambitious person feels lonely. You might be the only one on your team pushing for a higher standard or a bigger vision, but that feeling of being alone is an illusion. The moment you decide to ask for help, you will find it. The moment you decide to offer help, you will create a crew. Ambition is only a solitary journey if you let it be one. Even if you feel like a one-person show right now, know that you’re not truly alone. At the very least, you have me. I got you. Enjoyed this week's newsletter? Give it a ❤️ so I know to write similar ones in the future. Swarm-Coding With WarpLast week I challenged myself to build and ship a Chrome extension to the Chrome Web Store in a single day-not just a prototype, but a real, installable extension that people could actually use. Using Warp's multi-agent system, I orchestrated AI engineers like I used to at Amazon: one handled frontend, another backend, another tests, and yes, one even wrote decent documentation. After 18 months away from shipping code, I went from blank screen to published extension in under 24 hours.  Warp is free to try but for a limited time, my friends at Warp are offering their Warp Pro plan for only $1. Use code LIFEENG to redeem here: https://go.warp.dev/life-engineered A Life Engineered will always be a free publication, but if you’d like to support it, we’d be honored if you upgraded your subscription. Paid subscribers get the full experience, including access to the archives.
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