Don't commit to a rigid career plan. Instead, treat your career like a product. Run small-scale experiments or 'MVPs'—like a 20% project, a volunteer role, or a teaching gig—to test your interest and aptitude for new skills before making a full commitment, then iterate based on the results.

Stop suffering through work for a hypothetical future reward. Instead, choose projects you genuinely enjoy. This creates a powerful flywheel: enjoyment leads to constant practice, which builds expertise and ultimately delivers superior results. The work itself becomes the primary reward.

To rediscover the curiosity needed for work, practice it in low-stakes daily life. Take a different route to work, order a coffee you'd never choose, or read a different genre of book. Consciously observing how these novel experiences feel primes your brain to question assumptions and see new possibilities in your professional environment.

Instead of "burning the ships," treat potential career changes as experiments. By starting a new venture as a side hustle without financial pressure, you can explore your curiosity, confirm it's a good fit, and build a "safety net" of confidence and proof before making a full leap.

Brett Victor's "Inventing on Principle" concept suggests defining a core principle to guide your life's work rather than setting rigid goals. This allows for flexibility and unexpected opportunities from the periphery, which are often the most significant breakthroughs and lead to a more exciting journey.

Differentiate between learning essential for current goals (obligation-driven, like improving coaching skills) and learning that is purely exploratory (curiosity-driven, like manifestation). This distinction ensures growth feels balanced between necessary work and enjoyable play, preventing burnout.

Gain influence by curating a backlog of valuable "side quest" projects that address team pain points. Proactively offering these well-defined opportunities to other engineers helps them meet their career goals and establishes you as a key network hub and leader.

Unlike administrative tasks, creative work can't be 'white-knuckled' through brute force. It requires a receptive state of mind, best cultivated by changing your environment, ensuring you're well-rested, and allowing for unstructured time away from stressful tasks.

To avoid becoming an "ivory tower" manager, engineering leaders should use side projects as a playground for new technologies. This practice ensures they understand the limitations of new tools like AI and can provide credible, concrete, hands-on guidance to their teams.