Below are some prompts and exercises to help you find a mentor.
Review
What do you actually want to learn? Get as specific as possible. A skill? An industry? How to navigate a particular challenge? How to make better decisions?
What kind of experience would you want your mentor to have? What have they done that you want to learn from?
Think about the best teacher, boss, coach, or guide you've ever had. What did they do that made you trust them? What qualities would you want to find in a mentor?
Where do you feel most inexperienced or uncertain? What would you feel more confident navigating if you had someone in your corner?
What kind of relationship are you actually looking for? Someone you can ask occasional questions? Someone who challenges your thinking? Someone who checks in regularly? Someone whose career you can learn from?
Practice
Ask for 30: think of someone whose experience could help you with something you're currently navigating. Ask them for 30 minutes of their time. Come prepared with three questions you genuinely want answered.
Remote Mentor: choose someone you admire but could never realistically ask to mentor you. Find interviews, talks, books, podcasts, essays, or anything else they've shared. Build your own mini mentorship session from their ideas and take notes as if you were sitting across from them.
Mentor Speed Dating: think of five people you already know (friends, former colleagues, acquaintances, family members) and identify one thing you could learn to do better from each of them. Perhaps your mentor doesn’t lie within one person, maybe it’s within several people with different kinds of wisdom.