How to make better decisions and build a joyful career

Ada Chen Rekhi is an executive coach who works mainly with founders and co-founded Notejoy, after senior marketing and growth roles at LinkedIn and SurveyMonkey. The conversation covers how to make better career and life decisions through structured advice-gathering ("curiosity loops"), personal values exercises, explore-versus-exploit career thinking, when and how to hire a coach, navigating gender and appearance feedback in Silicon Valley, and the realities of co-founding with a partner.

01Key learnings

• Run a curiosity loop by asking a specific, unbiased question with a rationale request, sent lightweight to 5-10 people who are subject-matter experts or know you well.
• Avoid generic advice by making it contextual: weigh each recommendation against your own situation, skills, and experience rather than following it blindly.
• Use a personal values exercise to rank what matters to you, then test big decisions against that internal scorecard instead of external status signals like titles or logos.
• Think in explore and exploit modes early in your career, deliberately trying varied roles while forming hypotheses about what you enjoy.
• Watch whether your environment is getting worse gradually (the boiling frog); if you are not learning, proactively ask for stretch projects or change roles.
• Be skeptical that you need a coach; first consider communities, courses, or curiosity loops, and if you hire one, talk to two or three before committing.
• Practice uncomfortable skills deliberately, like the 'eat your vegetables' approach of repeated exposure, such as forcing yourself to network or post content until it gets easier.
• If co-founding with a partner, define clear decision rights by domain, separate personal conflict from business feedback, and set explicit check-ins on the relationship.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.