Yesterday’s post on questions that you should ask yourself throughout your career reminded me of the importance of being intentional with your career. I wrote one of my first blogs on my own realization that I didn’t do a good job of planning my career. I have no regrets about the great jobs that I had, what I learned and the wonderful people that I met…all of those things brought me to where I am today. However, now that I know myself better, I would approach things differently. I read this article recently by Mike Steib on how to plan your career. These are some of the things that I would definitely reflect on if I was starting over again:
- Think about the type of impact that you want to have
- Do you want to help other people?
- Create something that doesn’t exist yet?
- Bring people together to solve a problem that seems impossible to fix?
- Think of what your dream job could be
- You can do so many things, but what would make you happy and excited to get out of bed every day?
- How can you take what inspires you and turn that into a dream job?
- What are your strengths and things that you have passion for…could you use those to create a dream job?
Think about the type of impact that you want to have
- Make a plan based on your role models
- Who are the people who have the ideal job that you want to do? Can you do some research on them?
- How did they start their careers? What steps did they take to get where they ended up?
- How can you take those learnings and plan your own next steps?
I love the research angle of understanding other people’s story and how they got there. Remember you don’t have to follow their path though. Not everyone follows the same career path even if they do end up in the same place. It has to be a path that works for you. This is an exercise in thinking bigger and reflecting on where you want to go. Don’t put any limitations on yourself. Just think about what is possible and then put things in motion to go make it happen.