I just wrapped up what may be the first biography I’ve ever
read for fun – I usually stick to literature and travel anthologies – on the
life of Gertrude Bell, the lady traveler and TE Lawrence counterpart who helped
form British policy during WWI and shape modern Iraq. It wasn’t perfect; the
author mostly communicated Gertrude’s assessments on the Middle East of that
era without a particularly critical eye or much historical analysis about how
the stage was set for Iraq’s future conflicts.
But I see why people read biographies now. It was
fascinating to read about her exploits and to glean some lessons for future
exploits of my own. So below, my top career advice from that most daring of Victorian
lady adventurers.
1. Most of what Gertrude chose to do (with the exception of
some misadventures) was genuinely fun for her. Whether she was on an
archaeological dig or traveling through the desert, her letters home consistently
say that she’s having the time of her life, that it’s all quite a lark. She
didn’t travel because she wanted awesome pictures for her blog – though she did
clearly enjoy the attention it earned her at parties. Nor did she take herself
too seriously – when she becomes the first female staff officer in the history
of British military intelligence, she considers it quite “comic.”
Lesson: What’s fun need not correspond to what’s prestigious,
just to challenging work that you get a kick out of on one level or another. There’s
no point in seeking after achievements that don’t genuinely make you happy
along the way.
2. The most valuable knowledge comes from people. Gertrude
was able to supply relevant knowledge to the British government—and to
contribute to mapping the tribes and debating whether to orchestrate an Arab revolt
in the Cairo office—because of the relationships she had developed with various
tribal sheikhs during her travels. And she had the ear of the British
government in the first place because she had friends and society connections in
the foreign ministry. She was well-read and well-educated—she read Hebrew for a
fun break while studying Arabic —but her real knowledge came from her
relationships.
Lesson: Ironically enough, this WWI-era story reinforced to
me the importance of networking. This is something I’m definitely still working
on. Book-learning suits me, and like most type-A folks, I hated group projects
in school, but the working world is kind of like one giant group project.
3. She had doubts. In retrospect, her life looks perfectly designed,
her mountaineering in Europe equipping her with skills to caravan through the
desert, which equipped her with the knowledge to help shape British strategy in
the Middle East during and after the war. During a risky trip to Hayyil, where
she was held captive by the Rashid family, Gertrude frequently fretted that it
was all an expensive and exhausting waste of time – but it was on that trip
that she gained some of her most valuable insights into the region.
Lesson: You can be uncertain about what you’re doing with
your career and your life, and it can still turn out awesome. You don’t have to
know exactly where you want to end up as long as you’re moving in the direction
of what fascinates you.
