If you could go back in time and talk to early-career you, what would you tell yourself? Quit racking up credit card debt? Get out of that bad relationship and focus on chasing your dreams? Dropbox CEO Drew Houston knows exactly what he would say. In an interview with the New York Times, he brought up his 2013 M.I.T. commencement speech, in which he revealed to the graduates that he would give his 22-year-old self a cheat sheet with three things drawn on it: a tennis ball, a circle and the number 30,000. Three simple things, each of which symbolize important concepts to the 33-year-old.
The tennis ball is about finding the thing you’re obsessed with. The most successful people and successful entrepreneurs I know are all obsessed with solving a problem that really matters to them. I use the tennis ball for that idea because of my dog, who gets this crazy, obsessed look on her face when you throw the ball for her.
The circle is really about the idea that you’re the average of your five closest friends, so make sure to put yourself in an environment that pulls the best out of you. And the last is the number 30,000. When I was 24, I came across this website that says most people live for about 30,000 days. So you have to make every day count.
Houston has been making his days count practically since toddlerhood. He got his start in programming when his dad showed him how to write lines of code in Basic on their PC Junior. “And that began this odyssey of learning how computers work.”
At first, he was all about computer games — enough so that he would modify the source code of the games to make them work how he wanted. “That’s how I got my first job, actually. I was a beta tester for this game, and I was frustrated because the developers weren’t moving fast enough. So I started poking around under the hood, and I found all these security problems.” He emailed the developers with his advice on fixing the problems, and was offered a job. He was fourteen years old, and they hired him anyway.
Now, Houston has made his way to the top. As Dropbox’s founder and CEO, he’s intentionally crafted the culture of the company so that it will continue to sustain excellence. And he makes sure to hire workers who are in love with their craft and obsessed with discovering what separates good from great.
…I’ll ask a lot about those things. Like who is the best in the world at what you do, and who are your influences? I’ll also ask, what have you learned in the last year? And if you were able to sit yourself down 10 years ago, what advice would you give your younger self? What are the most important lessons you’ve taken away?
They’re certainly questions to chew on — the sort that will give us all pause and force us to think deeper.
(H/T: BroBible)
