In partnership with
It’s Sunday, December 21, 2025, and in this week’s roundup, learn in 5 minutes or less:
Career Advice: The Rise of the AI Career Co-Pilot
Book Club Review: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It - Chris Voss
Money Moves: Quiet Leverage Over Loud Ambition
Think Wellness: Sustainability Is the New Status
Productivity Tips: Fewer Inputs, Better Output
Skill Spotlight: Judgment as a Differentiator
The Year-End Moves No One’s Watching
Markets don’t wait — and year-end waits even less.
In the final stretch, money rotates, funds window-dress, tax-loss selling meets bottom-fishing, and “Santa Rally” chatter turns into real tape. Most people notice after the move.
Elite Trade Club is your morning shortcut: a curated selection of the setups that still matter this year — the headlines that move stocks, catalysts on deck, and where smart money is positioning before New Year’s. One read. Five minutes. Actionable clarity.
If you want to start 2026 from a stronger spot, finish 2025 prepared. Join 200K+ traders who open our premarket briefing, place their plan, and let the open come to them.
By joining, you’ll receive Elite Trade Club emails and select partner insights. See Privacy Policy.
Career Advice
AI Isn’t the Threat, It’s the Career Co-Pilot You’ve Been Waiting For.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching careers unfold over time, it’s this:
most people don’t struggle because they lack ability. They struggle because they’re making important decisions without enough clarity.
That’s understandable. For a long time, careers were built on instinct, timing, and trial and error. You made a move, waited to see how it landed, then adjusted. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. That was simply how it was done.
What’s different now is that we don’t have to rely on guesswork in the same way.
Why Career Decisions Feel Heavy
When you don’t have visibility, every decision carries weight.
You wonder if you’re choosing the right role, the right skills, the right direction.
By the time feedback arrives, in the form of progress or frustration, the moment to choose differently has often passed. This isn’t a personal failing. It’s a structural one. The system was never designed to give you clarity upfront.
That’s why so many capable people feel stalled even when they’re moving.
A Change Worth Noticing
Quietly, the nature of career planning is shifting.
We now have ways of seeing patterns that were previously hidden:
How skills connect across roles
Which capabilities age well
Where small adjustments create long-term momentum
Which paths are closer than they appear
This doesn’t remove the need for judgment. It supports it.
Think of it the way experienced travelers use a map, not to be told where to go, but to avoid unnecessary detours.
What I Mean by a Career Co-Pilot
A co-pilot doesn’t take control of the journey.
They help you see the terrain more clearly.
They help you pause before committing effort in the wrong direction.
They surface options you might overlook when you’re too close to your own situation.
Good guidance doesn’t push. It clarifies.
Why This Matters at This Stage of Work
Careers are no longer linear. They rarely unfold in clean steps.
Roles change. Expectations shift. Skills that mattered five years ago may matter less now. This can be unsettling if you’re using old reference points to measure progress.
But it can also be an advantage if you understand where your strengths truly lie and how they translate.
Those who adapt well tend to move with awareness rather than urgency.
Something I Often Tell People
Progress doesn’t come from constant motion.
It comes from alignment.
The people who build lasting careers are not always the ones who move fastest or speak loudest. They are the ones who:
Understand themselves clearly
Choose their investments carefully
Make fewer, better decisions
Over time, that discipline compounds.
A Closing Thought
Technology isn’t here to replace you or rush you.
It’s here to give you perspective, something earlier generations had to develop slowly, often through costly missteps.
If you use it well, it doesn’t make your career louder.
It makes it steadier.
And steadiness, over time, is powerful.
Thank you,
Anokye - Cofounder, The CareerGuard
SUNDAY MOTIVATION
You’re not chasing a dream; you’re stepping into a destiny.
Book Club Review:
Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss
Why I picked this book:
Never Split the Difference is the most practical “career leverage” book I know. It turns negotiation from a vague confidence game into a repeatable skill—useful for salary, title, scope, remote flexibility, severance, and even day-to-day stakeholder alignment. Amazon
Why it matters for your career:
In a skills-first market, your outcomes are shaped not only by what you can do—but by how well you can advocate for the right role, the right scope, and the right compensation. Negotiation is how high performers avoid being under-leveled and underpaid.
Top Takeaways:
“Tactical empathy” wins deals: demonstrate you understand their constraints before you push yours
Mirroring + labeling unlocks real information: get the other side talking until the true blockers surface
Calibrated questions (“How/What”) create collaboration: “How would you like me to prioritize this?” beats confrontation
Make “No” safe: a well-placed “Is now a bad time…?” reduces defensiveness and increases honesty
Use an “accusation audit” early: name the likely objections (“You may think I’m pushing too hard…”) to disarm them
Money Moves
Quiet Leverage Over Loud Ambition
This week’s financial lesson is subtle but powerful: the most secure careers are being built through leverage, not visibility.
In today’s market, compensation growth is increasingly tied to scarce skills, measurable outcomes, and quiet credibility rather than constant self-promotion.
Those who understand their economic value, and can articulate it calmly, are moving ahead without urgency or noise.
There is also a renewed emphasis on optionality. Professionals are keeping liquidity in their finances and flexibility in their careers, choosing roles that preserve negotiating power over time.
Instead of chasing every opportunity, they are curating paths that allow for patience, strategic moves, and long-term upside.
Money, in this sense, is less about speed and more about positioning.
Review where your income truly comes from.
Not just your salary, but your leverage, skills, judgment, trust, and decision making authority.
Strengthen those quietly, and compensation tends to follow without force.
Think Wellness
Sustainability Is the New Status
There is a noticeable shift in how success is being defined.
High performers are no longer impressed by exhaustion; they are prioritizing sustainability.
Burnout is no longer worn as a badge, it’s recognized as a signal that something in the system needs refinement.
Wellness, now, is not indulgence; it is design.
Professionals are making deliberate choices to protect their energy: fewer meetings, clearer boundaries, slower mornings, and more intentional work rhythms.
These decisions aren’t dramatic, but they are deeply effective.
Over time, they create a steadiness that allows better thinking, calmer leadership, and more consistent output.
This week’s reminder is simple: a career that lasts requires a nervous system that can endure.
Treat your well-being as infrastructure.
Quiet care compounds.
Productivity Hacks
Fewer Inputs, Better Output
Productivity this week is less about tools and more about restraint.
The most effective professionals are simplifying, reducing inputs so their thinking can deepen.
They are protecting focus, choosing fewer priorities, and letting quality replace urgency.
This discipline creates a sense of control that no productivity hack can replicate.
Rather than filling calendars, they are shaping them. Meetings are more intentional. Work blocks are protected.
Transitions are respected.
This creates space for insight, not just execution, and insight is where real value lives.
The practice for the week: subtract before you add.
Remove one recurring distraction.
Create one uninterrupted block of time.
Let the calm do the work.
Skills Spotlight:
Judgment as a Differentiator
As tools become more powerful, judgment is quietly becoming the rarest skill in the room.
Many can generate output; fewer can discern what matters, what holds, and what should be questioned.
Employers are increasingly drawn to professionals who demonstrate discernment rather than speed alone.
This skill shows up in small ways: asking better questions, resisting premature conclusions, and knowing when not to act.
It is cultivated through reflection, experience, and a willingness to think beyond the obvious.
In complex environments, judgment is what earns trust.
This week’s focus: slow your thinking just enough to sharpen it.
Skill isn’t only about what you can do, it’s about knowing when, why, and how much.
Quiet judgment carries lasting weight.
Build Your digital CV
CareerGuard is live — build your digital CV today!
Our platform is now ready for job seekers 🎉
You can create your CareerGuard SkillSnap — a digital CV that showcases your real technical and soft skills, examples of your work, and your potential, all in one place.
It’s free to set up, easy to share, and helps you stand out from AI-written CVs by showing who you really are.
Got questions/need support? We are a startup so just email us 😀 - [email protected]
