The Proximity Principle summary

Pursuing your dream job is like climbing a mountain – you need to be brave. After all, nothing looks quite as daunting as that towering peak when you’re standing at the base looking up. Lots of people, however, never even take the first step. 

Why? Put it down to limiting beliefs. These come in two forms – pride, and fear of failure. 

The proximity principle has two elements – people and places. Put them together and you get an equation: right people + right places = opportunities. That last word is key. What you’re looking for isn’t a handout but a chance. 

Why’s that so important? Well, the people who’ll help you realize your dream are out there right now – but they’re working for themselves, not you. In fact, they’re not even thinking about you – they’re busy living their own lives and focusing on their own jobs. That means you need to get their attention. And how you do that determines the likelihood of success. 

The great American poet T.S. Eliot once said that “talent imitates; genius steals.” What he was getting at is that the most gifted people in any field rarely develop in isolation; their craft is a grab-bag of skills and techniques they’ve copied, borrowed and filched from established masters. 

So here’s a question for you to think on: Who are the best people to imitate in your industry? Whoever they are, it’s likely they fall into a single category – professionals. 

Ask any experienced climber and they’ll tell you that scaling a mountain can’t be rushed. Before you even set foot on Mount Everest, you need to set up a camp in the foothills and acclimate. Skipping that step is guaranteed to cause altitude sickness, meaning that when you begin the ascent, you’ll feel dizzy and struggle to keep your focus. 

That’s also true when it comes to getting your dream job. Just ask the author. When he started broadcasting, he often longed for a shortcut. No wonder; no one actually wants to intern on a cold Friday night, reporting on a high school game to an audience of 26! Looking back, however, Coleman could see that those evenings prepared him for what lay ahead. If you can’t handle a bit of discomfort early on, you’ll never be ready for bigger challenges further down the line. 

Landing any job, let alone your dream gig, can be a tricky and time-consuming business. Chances are you’ve experienced what it’s like to send out hundreds of carefully prepared résumés and fail to get a single bite. If you know the right person, however, it’s as easy as pie. When it comes to the job market, connections matter. 

So who is the “right” person? Well, it’s not whom you know that counts, but whom they know. That’s the conclusion of a 1973 article by Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter. According to Granovetter, most of the job opportunities that come our way aren’t from family members and close friends – our so-called inner social circle – but from people we don’t personally know in our outer social circle.