Marissa Mayer, Google’s first female engineer and now the company’s high-profile Vice President of Location and Local Services, is one of the most powerful women in the world (according to Fortune and just about every other publication out there). Ever wondered what her secrets to success are? After hearing her speak last week, we got a few insights.
Read on for Mayer’s take on making the tough decisions, preventing burnout, and making time for what really matters.
Marissa Mayer got into every college she applied to, had 14 job offers when she left Stanford with a Master’s in Computer Science, and chose to work at Google in 1999.
“Don’t your friends hate you?” Josh Tyrangiel, editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, asked Mayer last week at a talk for 92Y’s Campaign for the American Conversation series.
Mayer laughed and said, “I think a lot of people could do it, but a lot of people don’t do it.”
Not everyone applies to 10 colleges. Not everyone looks for jobs they might not want. But Mayer always did. She stressed the importance of always having options in life and evaluating every single one of them.
Perhaps the most poignant thing she left the audience with was the idea of perspective—whether it’s evaluating 10 colleges, 14 job offers, or whether to leave work early for a prior engagement.
She described an agonizing eight-hour discussion with a Stanford friend when making her decision to go to Google. He said something to the effect of, “Marissa, you’re thinking about this all wrong. You’re putting so much pressure on yourself to choose the right one. I see a lot of good choices, one of which you’ll choose, and give everything to.”
Maybe there’s no such thing as a right answer or the right choice in life for hard working, high achieving people. But there are choices, and we make them because we need to give our all to something in the world.
I was lucky enough to get the last question of the night, submitted anonymously on an index card. It’s a favorite of mine: “What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?”
The shorter version of her answer was: “Find your rhythm.”
Find what matters to you and make time for it.
“You can’t have everything you want, but you can have everything that matters to you,” she said.
Mayer said she believes there’s no such thing as burnout—that you can work really hard for the rest of your life as long as you know what matters most to you and you make sure you get that.
What causes burnout, she said, is the build-up of resentment at having to give up what really matters. Is it dinner with friends on Tuesday nights? A movie with your husband on the weekends? Whatever it is, make sure you get it, because otherwise you’ll spend the rest of the week resenting what you didn’t get to have—what work deprived you of—and you’ll be less productive.
Mayer noted this idea is a key management tool, too: Make sure your employees have room to keep their rhythm—it’ll make them happier and much more successful. If Joe needs to pick up his kids every day at 6 PM, don’t make him late. She described the moment a child sees a parent walk in late to a dance recital, and heads nodded in the audience. Don’t be the cause of that.
Mayer’s wonderful storytelling also surfaced this gem: A self-professed nerd, she attended a science camp one summer where they heard from various speakers and professors, one of whom she was particularly blown away by. She said she and the rest of the campers walked around all day talking about how impressive this Professor Zunes was, when one of the counselors approached them and said they were thinking about it all wrong: “It’s not what Zunes knows, it’s how Zunes thinks.”
Now, decades later, the same can be said for Mayer.
This article has been republished with permission from Good Purpose.
Callie Schweitzer is the Deputy Publisher of Talking Points Memo. She joined TPM after graduating from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in May 2011. Before joining TPM, Schweitzer worked as the Editor-in-Chief of Neon Tommy, Annenberg’s 24/7 online news site, which is the most trafficked online-only university publication in America. Follow her on Twitter at @cschweitz.
I aspire to be like you Marissa. I have also had similar experiences where I have always wanted options but unfortunately, they were limited.
I now am an entrepreuneur where I hope to rise to the challenge of generating my own income and aspire to the challenges which I set for myself.
I congratulate you on your achievements and wish that you too aspire to your greatest limitations.
She is full of herself. Why isn't she the CEO of Google if she is so great? Probably because she is not competent enough to run any business. She hasn't proven herself successful at any part of Google other than sticking around and fabricating a persona as some intellectual genius. She may be smart, but she's no better than average and has been coddled at Google and really hasn't proven herself in the "real world". Every time a glowing article like this appears her own stories about her so-called "success" become even more embellished. Unfortunately, there are too many eager journalists out there willing to promote and continue her myth.
I happened to be in the audience for this talk and loved her advice at the end (which I promptly relayed to co-workers and friends). Finding your "rhythm" is a survival tactic at this point for many of us who love to work and have the people-pleasing gene.
Hoping she'll pen a book one day on management style.
