How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey)
In this episode, executive coach and NoteJoy co-founder Ada Chen Reiki shares frameworks like Curiosity Loops for better decision-making and the "Explore and Exploit" model for intentional early career building. She also discusses defining personal values, when a coach is truly beneficial, and strategies for navigating career challenges.
Deep Dive Analysis
14 Topic Outline
Introduction to Ada Chen Rekhi and Podcast Topics
Understanding and Applying the Curiosity Loop Framework
Using Curiosity Loops in Personal Decision-Making
The Personal Values Exercise for Career and Life Alignment
Ada's 'Explore and Exploit' Framework for Career Growth
Deciding When to Leave a Job: Avoiding the 'Boiling Frog' Trap
Why Optimizing for Values is Better Than 'Logo Collecting'
Ada's Personal Trigger for Career Re-evaluation
When an Executive Coach is Truly Valuable (and When Not)
How to Effectively Find the Right Executive Coach
Navigating Challenges as a Woman in Silicon Valley Leadership
The 'Eating Your Vegetables' Strategy for Skill Development
Keys to Successfully Building a Company with Your Spouse
Lightning Round: Books, TV, Interview Questions, and Productivity
5 Key Concepts
Curiosity Loop
A structured method for gathering contextual advice on a decision by asking a specific, unbiased question to a curated group of people (subject matter experts and those who know you well), making the ask lightweight, and processing the feedback to inform your decision-making.
Explore and Exploit (Career)
A career strategy where early on, you 'explore' by trying various roles or industries with a hypothesis to learn what you like and what fits you. Once you find something rich and deep, you 'exploit' by going deeper into that area, optimizing for specific learnings and experiences rather than just titles or promotions.
Inner vs. Outer Scorecard
The 'outer scorecard' refers to how the world evaluates you based on external factors like wealth, status, or titles. The 'inner scorecard' represents what truly matters to you, such as how you spend your day, your personal growth, or your values. Aligning with your inner scorecard helps counter external pressures and the 'ego monster'.
Boiling the Frog (Metaphor)
This metaphor illustrates how people can become trapped in undesirable situations without realizing it. If negative changes occur gradually (like a frog in slowly boiling water), one might not notice the worsening conditions until it's too late, highlighting the importance of being aware of your environment and proactively making changes.
Eating Your Vegetables (Career Strategy)
This concept involves identifying tasks or skills you dislike because you're new or bad at them, rather than genuinely disliking them. The strategy is to deliberately expose yourself to these challenging areas 10-12 times to develop proficiency and potentially an affinity, powering through initial discomfort to acquire important skills.
10 Questions Answered
A curiosity loop is a structured way to get contextual advice by asking specific questions to a curated group of people. It's useful for making significant decisions, both professional and personal, especially when you feel indecisive or want to avoid bad, non-contextual advice.
Personal values act as an 'inner scorecard,' helping you evaluate decisions based on what truly matters to you (e.g., relationships, autonomy, adventure) rather than external pressures like status or wealth. This alignment can lead to greater happiness and fulfillment.
In early career, 'explore' by trying diverse roles and industries to discover your interests and strengths. Once you find a rich area, 'exploit' by deepening your expertise and seeking specific learning opportunities, even if it means foregoing traditional promotions or titles.
It's crucial to be aware of your environment and whether your situation is gradually worsening (the 'boiling frog' metaphor). Evaluate if you are still learning, growing, and deriving meaningful enjoyment from your work, or if fundamental aspects of the role are limiting you.
Coaches are most valuable in situations of hyper-growth requiring accelerated learning, such as for founders navigating chaos, or for sensitive, long-term projects like developing leadership skills or resolving interpersonal conflicts, where a safe space and rational guidance are essential.
It's recommended to talk to two or three different coaches to assess their 'vibe' and how well you connect with them, as personal connection and feeling safe are often more important than credentials. Consider coaches for specific, shorter-term goals rather than just long-term commitments.
Women often face implicit biases and may not receive direct feedback on how their presentation affects perception. To navigate this, it's important to proactively seek hard feedback (e.g., from a trusted coach) and adapt controllable elements to ensure they are perceived as the competent operators they are.
Adopt the 'eating your vegetables' strategy: identify things you dislike because you're new or bad at them, not genuinely. Deliberately expose yourself to these tasks 10-12 times, practicing intentionally to build faculty and potentially develop an affinity for them.
Success hinges on having complementary skill sets with clear decision-making rights, and crucially, the ability to engage in constructive conflict. This means attacking the problem, not each other, and maintaining a truth-seeking mindset to achieve smart outcomes for the business.
Identify the single most important thing you want to accomplish that day, ideally the night before. Then, at the earliest opportunity, commit to spending just five minutes on it. This small commitment often overcomes the mental hurdle, leading to more significant progress.
44 Actionable Insights
1. Align Work with Values
Actively navigate your career path to find a mix of success, meaningfulness, and alignment with your values. This proactive approach helps prevent feeling trapped and unhappy later in your career.
2. Define Personal Values
Conduct a 10-15 minute values exercise to identify your top 3-5 personal and professional values. This creates an internal scorecard for guiding your decision-making.
3. Prioritize Inner Scorecard
Focus on your personal values and what truly matters to you (your inner scorecard) over external validation like status or wealth (the outer scorecard). This helps ensure decisions align with your happiness and fulfillment.
4. Use Values as Scorecard
Regularly compare your decisions and life situations against your defined personal values. This practice ensures alignment with what truly matters to you, rather than being solely driven by external pressures.
5. Evolve Your Values
Recognize that your personal values are not static; revisit and update them as your life circumstances, priorities, and self-awareness evolve. Your values should adapt to suit your current self.
6. Use Curiosity Loops
For better decision-making, ask a structured question to 5-10 trusted people, making it easy for them to respond quickly. Then, process the input and thank them, as this gathers contextual advice and fights bad advice.
7. Ask Specific Questions
When seeking advice, formulate questions that are specific, solicit rationale, and avoid bias (e.g., don’t start with “here’s what I think”). This approach yields richer, more truthful data.
8. Curate Advice-Givers
When running a curiosity loop, include both subject matter experts and people who know you well. The latter can provide crucial insight on how advice applies to your specific situation.
9. Make Advice Requests Lightweight
Design your questions and requests for input to be quick and easy to answer (e.g., “pick your top two and tell me why”). This increases response rates and gets useful, constructive answers from busy people.
10. Close Loop & Thank
After receiving advice, process the information and crucially, thank the givers by sharing how their input affected your decision. This makes them feel good and reinforces the relationship.
11. Reserve Loops for Big Decisions
Use structured curiosity loops quarterly or for significant debates and moments of indecision, rather than for every small choice. This prevents overburdening your network.
12. Explain Why You Chose
When asking for input, explicitly state why you picked that specific person (e.g., “I trust you to be a sound source of truthful advice”). This makes them feel valued and more likely to respond.
13. Treat Advice as Input
Use feedback from curiosity loops to identify blind spots and challenge your assumptions, rather than blindly following recommendations. This ensures the integrity of your decision-making.
14. Embrace Explore and Exploit
In your early career, prioritize “exploration” with a clear thesis to gain diverse experiences and discover what truly fits you. Once a path is found, “exploit” it for deeper learning and mastery.
15. Formulate Career Thesis
When exploring career paths, define a clear hypothesis or thesis (e.g., “I want to try being a founder”) to guide your choices and learning objectives. This intentionality makes exploration more effective.
16. Optimize for Learning
Once you’ve explored and found a direction, enter “exploit” mode by intentionally seeking roles and projects that fill specific knowledge gaps. This prepares you for future goals, even if it means foregoing traditional promotions or titles.
17. Avoid “Boiling Frog” Inertia
Continuously monitor your career environment and personal satisfaction; don’t let small discomforts accumulate unnoticed, leading to a trapped or unhappy state. Be aware of the “temperature of the water” and its trend.
18. Prioritize Continuous Learning
Evaluate your current role by asking “What can I learn here and how am I growing and developing?” If learning stagnates, it’s a clear sign to proactively seek change or new opportunities that challenge you.
19. Proactively Seek Growth
If learning opportunities are limited in your current role, have a proactive conversation with leadership to secure desired projects. If that fails, view the extra time from job optimization as a chance to learn new skills or build relationships outside of work.
20. Don’t Over-Optimize Resume
Avoid the trap of continuously chasing impressive roles and logos solely to build an “awesome resume.” This can lead to neglecting personal enjoyment and alignment with your values, resulting in an unfulfilling career.
21. Don’t Assume You Need Coach
Before seeking a coach, critically evaluate if it’s the best solution for your problem; many people may not need one and could benefit more from alternatives. Consider mentors, courses, or building a community first.
22. Define Coaching Goals
Before hiring a coach, clearly define your goals (what you want to accomplish in six months) and consider if other resources like mentors, courses, or building a community could achieve those goals more effectively or affordably.
23. Use Curiosity Loops for Mentorship
If you need diverse opinions or specific topic expertise (mentorship), a coach is often less effective than running a curiosity loop to gather insights from multiple subject matter experts. Leverage your network for varied perspectives.
24. Choose Courses for Learning
For in-depth learning on a specific topic (e.g., growth), consider structured courses or programs that offer a broad overview and diverse insights from multiple experts. This provides a more robust learning experience than a single coach’s experience.
25. Build Supportive Community
For emotional challenges, prioritize building a long-lasting “tribe” or community of supportive people you can rely on. This provides sustained support beyond what a coach can offer.
26. Consider Coach for Hyper-Growth
A coach can be particularly valuable for individuals in hyper-growth situations (like founders) who need to learn rapidly, navigate chaos, and accelerate their development when time is of the essence. They offer a helpful shortcut to expertise.
27. Use Coaches for Sensitive Issues
Coaches are especially helpful for sensitive topics like interpersonal conflicts or long-term personal development projects. They provide a safe, rational space and frameworks for guidance.
28. Interview Multiple Coaches
When seeking a coach, talk to 2-3 different individuals to assess their “vibe,” style, and how well they align with your personal learning preferences. What works for a friend may not work for you.
29. Prioritize “Vibe” in Coach
When selecting a coach, prioritize the personal connection, sense of safety, and ability to deeply explore topics over impressive credentials or relevant experience. These amorphous qualities are often more crucial for effective coaching.
30. Consider Specialized Coaches
For specific, high-level skill development (e.g., pitch coaching, writing, public speaking), consider engaging specialized coaches on a short-term basis to achieve targeted goals. Don’t expect one coach to cover everything.
31. Give Hard, Constructive Feedback
If you are in a position of trust, provide direct, actionable feedback on sensitive topics (e.g., physical appearance, communication style) that might be hindering someone’s career. This can be transformative, especially if they are unlikely to hear it elsewhere.
32. Understand & Adapt Rules
If you feel disadvantaged by perceptions (e.g., age, gender, appearance), recognize you’re not powerless; study the “rules of the game,” help others, and adapt controllable elements to overcome biases and enhance perceived credibility.
33. Overcome Selfishness
Recognize that withholding difficult but helpful feedback due to personal discomfort or fear of reputational damage is selfish. Prioritize the other person’s growth and improvement by delivering it thoughtfully.
34. Practice “Eating Vegetables”
Identify skills or activities you dislike because you’re new or bad at them, and commit to practicing them 10-12 times. This helps overcome initial discomfort and develop competence or even an affinity.
35. Force Yourself to Network
If networking is uncomfortable, create a structured challenge (e.g., attend an event weekly, hand out 10 business cards, touch the back wall). This helps overcome initial awkwardness and build foundational relationships.
36. Try a “LinkedIn 30”
Commit to posting content on LinkedIn every day for 30 days to overcome the barrier of sharing, practice crystallizing thoughts, and learn what resonates with your audience. This builds consistency and insight.
37. Reframe Content Creation
When creating content (e.g., LinkedIn posts), focus on crystallizing your own thoughts or sharing useful insights, rather than chasing likes or followers. This makes the process more genuine and less cringeworthy.
38. Write for Audience of One
When creating content, imagine you are writing for a single trusted friend or colleague. This approach helps make your writing more genuine, authentic, and less focused on external validation.
39. Engage in Online Networking
Actively seek out interesting people online and find ways to connect with them, rather than relying on traditional methods like physical business cards. Modern networking leverages digital connections.
40. Complementary Skills for Co-founders
When co-founding (especially with a partner), ensure you have complementary skill sets and clearly defined decision-making rights. This avoids conflict and ensures efficient operation.
41. Master Constructive Conflict
Develop the ability to engage in constructive conflict, focusing on “attacking the problem” rather than each other. This navigates disagreements effectively and achieves smart business outcomes.
42. Practice Truth-Seeking Feedback
When giving feedback to co-founders, be truth-seeking and interpret intentions respectfully, focusing on achieving the best outcome for the business. Avoid taking or giving personal offense.
43. Prioritize Co-founder Relationships
If co-founding with a partner or close friend, establish explicit check-ins (e.g., 30/60/90-day plans) to assess the impact on your relationship. This ensures the relationship remains the top priority.
44. Start Important Task with Five Minutes
The night before, identify your single most important task for the next day, and commit to working on it for just five minutes at the earliest opportunity. This overcomes procrastination and builds momentum.
8 Key Quotes
It's a terrible outcome to wake up one day and be sort of late career and feel trapped because you have a certain lifestyle or a certain expectation of the people around you that you have to go work this job, but then you look at yourself in the mirror and you're not happy going in there.
Ada Chen Rekhi
The reminder that I would have for all of you is that it feels really good to help someone. It feels really good to be heard and give input.
Ada Chen Rekhi
Don't do what people tell you to do. Take it as an input. And, you know, look for the hard feedback. Look for things that you strongly disagree with or are surprises to you.
Ada Chen Rekhi
My hot take is that for the vast majority of people, they probably do not need a coach.
Ada Chen Rekhi
The difficulty of this game is that no one tells you the rules of the game.
Ada Chen Rekhi
We're not powerless, even though this game is rigged, right? We can study the game, we can help each other, and we can actually start to call out some of those rules and then find ways around them.
Ada Chen Rekhi
It's about how do you identify dislike for something because you're bad at it, or you're new to it, or you've never done it before, compared to genuine dislike where you've done it, and you really don't like it.
Ada Chen Rekhi
People can really tell when you're being genuine and authentic online.
Ada Chen Rekhi
4 Protocols
Curiosity Loop for Decision-Making
Ada Chen Rekhi- Ask a good question: make it specific, solicit rationale, and avoid bias.
- Curate who you ask: include subject matter experts and people who know you well.
- Ask the question in a lightweight way: make it easy for busy people to respond (e.g., pick top 2 from a list and explain why).
- Process the information: look for differences, surprises, and hard feedback.
- Thank them: close the loop by explaining how their input affected your decision.
Personal Values Exercise
Ada Chen Rekhi- Review a list of potential values and pick out all words that resonate with you.
- Filter these words down into groups of related values.
- Further filter and stack-rank the values into a concise list.
- Formulate 3-5 sentences describing your current important values in personal and professional life.
- Use this list as an 'internal scorecard' to evaluate decisions and life situations for alignment.
Networking 'Eating Your Vegetables' Rule
Ada Chen Rekhi- Identify a networking event to attend.
- Prepare 10 business cards (or a mental equivalent for modern networking).
- Introduce yourself to new people and hand out all 10 cards.
- Physically touch the back wall of the venue before leaving.
- Repeat this process consistently (e.g., once a week for several months) to build comfort and skill.
Overcoming Procrastination with the 'Five-Minute Rule'
Ada Chen Rekhi- The night before, identify the single most important task you want to get done the next day.
- At the earliest opportunity in your day, commit to working on that task for just five minutes.
- Start the task, allowing the initial five minutes to potentially turn into a longer, productive session.