Happy New Year etc….now what’s happening with your career plan?

by Karen Adamedes

Happy New Year and hope you had a great time over the holidays resting, recharging, catching up with family and friends or whatever you needed for you.

You might have made some resolutions?

Broken them already? (Did someone say cheesecake?)

Or at least made a mental list of some things you would like to achieve during the year?

If that’s the case – great. You’ve got some goals to inspire you. If you haven’t you might want to consider these:

• If you’re not happy in your current job it might be time to look for a new one?
• If you want to move “up the ladder” you are probably wanting to indulge in a little networking and to add to your current knowledge, skills and experience?

And I’d suggest that even if you are two million percent happy in your current role – you still need to be working on your career.

We’re all only one corporate restructure, a new manager or one other change at work that can radically reduce that two million percent happy to “I’m better than this get me out of here”.

There’s a great quote from Will Rogers (a Hollywood actor, cowboy and social commentator from the 1930’s) [Sidebar: now that is any interesting combination. Whoever said you can only do one thing in your career?]:

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there”.

Whatever your circumstances I’d recommend that if you want something to be different or better by the end of the year (or just have a well developed Plan B in case of a career emergency) – the time to put some actions in place is – NOW.

Ideally we should all have a documented career plan – with an action list, time frames and reflections. But the reality is – who has the time and the discipline to do this? Disclaimer: Unfortunately not me.

I do know what my goals are (which helps!) and my plan is each month to set myself 3 – 5 actions that I can realistically achieve, write them down and do them! (That last one is the tricky bit!)

The writing them down is in the tasks on my phone, which will be no doubt be an annoying but necessary reminder that I need to do them. And the review process is likely to be when I am on a plane or sitting around an airport. In fact, I’ll probably need to use that ‘down’ time to complete my actions.

My action list for January

Let me share my January actions with you – as they might give you some inspiration.

1. Phone two of my mentors – just to reconnect. (Note: phone not text!)
2. Make a coffee date with a former colleague who I have not seen in a long time.
3. Blog (you’ll know if I keep to this one)
4. Spend 10 hours working on my next book (this feels a bit ambitious but let’s see how I go)
5. Write an application for an Executive education program I really want to do.

It seems a bit daunting now I have written them down – but at least if I get started I have a much greater chance of getting them done!

The trick is you’ve got to make working on your career work with how you work.

And make your actions relevant for you. That relate to what you really want to do.

So over to you.

Send me your list for January in the comments below or via the contact page if you’d like to share!

So long for now – I need to get cracking on that list!

 

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By Karen Adamedes on January 9, 2017   /   Career Skills   /   Leave a comment