You can protect your name, your reputation, your prestige. Or you can build it.

Rarely you can do both at the same time.

Protecting is about public relations, networking, promising, giving speeches. It is a reactive game. It is about ensuring that what you do determines who you are, how others see you. It is trying to control the outcome, that you can’t really control.

Building is about doing. It is a proactive game. It is about ensuring that who you are determines what you do, day after day. It is fully mastering the input, that you can always control.

Choose carefully.