Make 2017 Your Year for Success: 5 Questions to Kick Start Your New Year

Are you starting to put together your game plan for 2017? The transition from one year to the next is an opportunity to reflect on where you are in your career and plan for the future. Get a head start creating the roadmap to your 2017 success!

Start by considering your career dreams and goals and do your self-appraisal on how you have lived up or fallen short of achieving them this past year. If you were unable to achieve the goals you initially set out to accomplish, consider the following 5 questions to gain insight and help you find career satisfaction in the year ahead:

1. What is your definition of success?

Real success involves digging deep within to define it on your own terms, by your own standards, and by the things that hold true meaning to you. Success is personal. I like Maya Angelou’s definition: “success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

2. What are your 2016 accomplishments that you are most proud of?

This common job interview question can serve you well in evaluating your values, interests, and skills. Think about the skills that enabled your success, the challenges you overcame, and the knowledge you gained. Use these insights as you set your 2017 goals, prioritizing what you are passionate about. I had a boss who used to say that our past is the tutor of our present, always preparing us for future experiences. Or to quote Eisenhower: “accomplishments will prove to be a journey, not a destination.”

3. What things have you left undone?

We tend to ring in the New Year with optimism and hopes about the opportunity for a fresh start and new possibilities. Many of us make our New Year’s resolutions intending to accomplish specific goals and projects. Which of your 2016 goals have you not completed? Which have fallen off your radar? Take stock of the goals you struggled with in 2016 and re-evaluate what can be discarded, what needs to be back on your plate, and how to make it happen. I believe that just as it is important to master the art of getting things done, we need to master the art of letting things go. The point here is not to beat ourselves up for what’s undone but rather appreciate the opportunity to move forward to what’s next. In the word of Bruce Lee: “absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.”

4. What are you most excited about for 2017?

Are there any new things you’d like to try in 2017? Any new places you’d like to visit? Any new skills you want to learn, enhance, or master? Any career goal you’d like to achieve? If you find this question easy to answer and end up with a lot of exciting things on your wish list, set up time to brainstorm each item on the list and prioritize on your 2017 to-do list. However, if you find yourself drawing a blank, you may need to challenge yourself to find inspiration, passion, and motivation in your life. Inspiration is fickle. Each of us finds it in our unique way whether exercising, reading, meditating, watching inspiring movies or videos, etc. Thinking about your past experience might provide insights. This is an important step in planning your 2017 professional commitments. Remember: “your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart & soul to it.” ~ Buddha

5. What would you try if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Are there things you’ve dreamed about doing, but you’ve been too scared to try? Is fear holding you back? They say that fear kills more dreams than failure ever will. Instead of asking yourself “what if I fail?” reframe the question and imagine what it would feel like to spread your wings and fly. Maybe 2017 is the year to dare work on that secret yearning? Perhaps it’s what has been missing in your life? Every year I dare myself to try one new “thing.” I visualize what that “thing” looks like and work to make it happen. While success is sweet, the true benefit is the journey – what I learn about myself and the people I meet along the way. Give yourself the gift of going after what you want. “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always “no”. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.” ~ Nora Roberts.

“Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one.” ~ Brad Paisley

To get started you may want to try and describe 2016 in 3 words. Then write your 3 words for 2017.

If you, or anyone you care about, could use help in writing their 2017 play book, contact me at info@choicefulpath.com.

Work Rhythm: Optimize Your Productivity

Out of the mouth of clients….

“All the coffee beans in Brazil won’t make me a morning person.”

Studies have found that there are raring to-go early morning larks and night owls staying late into the wee hours of the night. And like body shape, these tendencies are predetermined by genetics. While environment and personal choices play a significant role, it is hard to change our behavioral predisposition.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleep-newzzz/200912/the-lark-vs-the-owl-don-t-mess-mother-nature

So if you find that you need a triple espresso washed down with a Red Bull to make it into the office every morning, you may need to identify your ideal work rhythm and make career choices accordingly. Consider your productivity cycle: what are your most productive hours during the day? When do you do your best focused work? Keep track to make the most of your workplace productivity. Plan your work day to match the tasks and projects you work on to your energy levels. Schedule the most complex work requiring great focus to the times in the day when you have most energy and are most productive.

Unfortunately, we don’t work in a vacuum. The work rhythms of bosses and co-workers affect our own. Moreover, studies have found that despite the great strides taken in recent years to offer flex-time, there is bias in favor of early birds who get an early start to their day. They are often perceived by managers as more dedicated and hard-working and are rated higher on performance reviews. Yes, rolling into the office after 9:00 every morning may be detrimental to your career even if you stay late and put in a full day’s work.

https://hbr.org/2014/05/with-flextime-bosses-prefer-early-birds-to-night-owls?_ga=1.214902231.1386391334.1400159343

Trying to fit a square peg into a round hole is not conducive to long-term job satisfaction. Working against your natural rhythm can get you by in the short term but will eventually burn you out. Ideally, you could try and find an employer willing to stagger employees’ start times to work with their natural biological rhythms. This should be an easy conversation with your boss explaining you’d like to come in later to align your work schedule to your personal productivity cycle. And promise you’d be in early when needed. Unfortunately, redesigning the workday to suit each person’s schedule may not be feasible. Your job may require you to participate in those crack-of-dawn conference calls or to attend early morning meetings. I myself as a manager requested my team to be in the office during regular business hours. The HR department is a customer service function with internal customers, and thus team members were expected to be available to serve employees during the company’s established business hours. If your employer enforces a rigid start time, or if your job function requires a start time earlier than your own natural internal clock, you may need to either re-evaluate your career choices, or develop coping strategies to come out on top.

Again, best career strategy is to pay attention to when you are most focused and productive and set your work schedule accordingly, but when duty calls in the early morning, try the following strategies:

1. Minimize commute time

When a late start or telecommute are not viable options, you may want to consider moving closer to work to reduce commuting time. If moving is not possible, try getting a job closer to home. While not easy, this will definitely pay off as far as reducing morning anxiety.

2. Upgrade your morning routine

Everyone has a different morning routine. Create a list of all your morning tasks; make it as detailed as possible with time needed for each one. Try and take care of as many tasks as you cam the night before: packing your work bag, laying out your clothes, and making your breakfast/lunch, etc. This will give you the much needed extra time in the morning. Whatever your morning routine is, to start off your day on the right foot, think about the things you are grateful for. This could change your whole day. Then take control of your morning routine completing each activity by the designated time. Find an accountability partner who would help you through your first couple of weeks of sticking with the schedule (someone who’d call you when you are likely to hit the snooze button.) You’d be surprised how quickly you adapt to your morning routine.

3. Plan your day ahead of time

Night owls tend to arrive at the office before their brains are fully awake. This is the worst time to try and figure out what to do first thing. Not all tasks require the same amount of brain power. Instead of wasting the morning hours in an unproductive haze, create a morning to-do list the day before, when you’re energized and focused. Make your list as detailed as possible and prioritize everything you have to do and everywhere you need to be. Find an app that would help you breeze through your morning.

Whether a lark or an owl, I hope you find work that feels fulfilling.

“Let us realize that: the privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, and the love of work is success.” ~ David O. McKay

Career Action Plan Part II – How to Create One

In my last post, I discussed why every working professional should have a career action plan. It serves as the roadmap guiding professional choices throughout the different career stages. Almost everyone has a dream or an aspiration they hope to achieve in their life. This is also true in the world of work. What is your dream job? A solid career action plan would help you define goals and develop attainable milestones to land your dream job, accelerate in your chosen field and find fulfillment in your career.

Career Action Planning is an ongoing process. Use the following 4 steps to manage your professional growth and career advancement. Make sure to revisit and adjust the plan throughout your career. 

Step 1: articulate your dreams & set your destination

Define your ideal future self. Clarity of direction would ensure all of your choices are sustainable and purpose-aligned.

Questions for consideration:

• What do you want?
• If you could do anything at all, what would be your ideal career?
• If you had a magic wand, what would you make happen in your career?
• Where would you like your career to be in 18 months/5 years/10 years?

To-do:

• Write down your primary career interest.
• Write down long-term professional goals, including desired positions.

Tip: Choose goals that really resonate for you and that would help motivate you into action. Best goals are stated in the positive, what you are aiming towards rather than what you are trying to move away from.

Step 2: assess where you are & recognize your starting point

Define your current self. Ask thought provoking questions to develop a deeper level of understanding and self-awareness to know who you are. Think of this step as looking at yourself in the mirror.

Questions for consideration:

• Who are you now?
• What do you stand for?
• What do you like/don’t like about yourself
• What are your strengths/weaknesses?
• What unusual skills do you have?
• What is keeping you from being fully yourself?

To-do:

• Write down where you are along your career path.
• Describe in up to 20 words what makes you uniquely you.
• Write down your qualifications, skills, experience, & interests.

Tip: Self-reflection is essential for understanding why we do the things we do to be able to change what we need in order to become who we want to be. That’s how we grow.

Step 3: Perform a gap analysis

Identify the gap between your current situation and the ideal future state you aspire to reach. Gap analysis doesn’t require any specific template. Use any method to list the differences between where things are now and where they need to be. Describe the gaps in detail: what is lacking and the things that need improvement. Propose interventions to close the gaps listing all the activities. Cluster them into different development categories.

To-do:

• Write down activities that contribute to your long-term goals/what you need to do more of.
• Write down the activities that do not contribute to your long-term goals and think of ways to minimize or stop doing them.
• Make a list of knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) any special qualifications, personal attributes, or experience you would need to develop.

Tip: proactively engage in professional development activities such as reading relevant professional literature, pursuing training, taking on special job assignments and projects, or finding a mentor.

Step 4:  Put it all together

Create your career action plan and put it in writing. This is where the work really happens. You’ve now outlined all the details of where you are going and what you need to do to get there. Define both the big picture and the in-between action steps that would take you to your ultimate career goal. Put all items in a logical order and prioritize the action items. Make your goals SMART.

Specific: spell it out. The more specific you are, the easier it would be to achieve your goal.
Measurable: define the results so that you know when you’ve achieved your goal.
Actionable: commit to actions within your control.
Realistic: set challenging yet attainable goals to position yourself for success.
Time-bound: establish milestones and a timeline.

Keep track of your progress and adjust the action items as needed.

Tips:

• Identify the short-term goals that contribute to long-term objectives.
• Identify barriers and challenges that must be overcome in order to reach your short-term goals.
• If a goal seems too big, break it down into smaller steps.
• Establish progress checkpoints.
• Evaluate the outcome of your actions to make sure they are moving you towards your ultimate goal.

Remember: To live is to dream. Life without dreams is like a garden without flowers. Dare to dream and dream big. Transforming your dreams into reality would make your work life more fulfilling. f you need help drafting or implementing a career action plan, team up with a career coach. This may be the best investment you could make in your career.

Email me at info@choicefulpath.com to schedule your 30-minute free career consultation to discuss your career strategy or career action plan.

Career Action Plan Part I – Why You Need One

Great careers don't happen by accident. Just as a strong strategic planning is critical to the success of every business, we need to take a strategic approach to managing our professional growth. Like rowing a boat upstream, if we stop moving forward, we fall back. A lot is being said about the negative effects of job burnout, but we need to also recognize the silent career killer. Complacency is dangerous to your career. Having a successful career is not about staying steadily employed in any job but rather advancing along a chosen career path. Growth requires concentrated effort. Change might be painful. But staying stuck can be a truly agonizing situation.

Let us not confuse a career action plan with the “check the box development plan exercise” when performance review time rolls around. A typical individual development plan (IDP) performance review document asks employees to list their strengths, outline their achievements, and create a development plan for the next review period; a document which rarely defines any immediate next steps, or long-term career objectives, and which is rarely looked at again. A career action plan asks you to own your continuous development over the course of your career.

An action plan can be considered a road map that will get you started in your chosen career from your first job through the many career advances to reaching your long-term career goals. A career action plan places you on the path to career success and ensures you continue to move along and hit the milestones at a steady pace. The process starts with focused attention on formulating a career vision, which is then translated into short-term and long-term career objectives. Once you define the destination off in the distance, you’d be able to make short-term decisions and define the immediate next steps within the context of the path ahead en route to your career vision. These need to be reevaluated every six months, or when major changes occur, to ensure making the right decisions at the right time. When you proactively pursue your goals and objectives, you are positioned to make wise decisions in your professional career.

Don’t leave your career to chance. Most employers are not going to invest in your career development unless you drive the process yourself. The days of tenure-based promotions are long gone. Without a clear career plan, you are at risk of taking the slow and painful route to career stagnation and the early demise of your professional hopes and dreams. Be in the habit of establishing and achieving clear goals in order to steer your career along the path to career success. Consistently choose tactics and strategies that boost your success and that keep you from getting stuck in a rut. Having a written career plan provides an easy way to manage progress and track achievements. However, as you gain experience and insights, make sure your plan is a live document to be updated with any changing circumstances or needs. Always remain open to new possibilities.

With the strong encouragement to take your career seriously; to take control over your success and your future, I hope you’d follow your heart and do things for the right reasons. Remember:

“We make a living by what we get. But we make a life by what we give.”  ~ Winston Churchill

Work should be more than a means to an end. Ideally, it could also be a way to make meaningful contributions to the world around us. Make sure your career action plan will be a useful tool to find purpose in your work. If you are able to do that, you will find yourself continuously inspired and motivated each day throughout your career.

 

Career Identity Crisis: Self Out of Office

A career identity crisis can hit anyone no matter what career stage they are in – new grads as well as executives who have been employed in stable jobs for several decades. For most working professionals, work takes up more time than any other activity. Success takes a tremendous amount of effort. We pour our heart and soul into our job to deliver remarkable work. And for most of us, work becomes a defining aspect of our identity. Everything we do, everything that is important to us becomes a part of our identity and makes us who we are. When asked “what do you do?” we are quick to proudly respond with our job title and the name of the company we work for.

Work is an extension of personality. It is achievement. It is one of the ways in which a person defines himself, measures his worth, and his humanity. ~ Peter Druker

There’s no denying our career identity and self-identity are intertwined. This is not a new concept. In the middle ages, as the population expanded, and there was a need for last names, many surnames referred to social status and occupation (Squire, Carpenter, Baker, Mason, etc.) Because sons often followed their father’s occupation, the surname passed from one generation to the next. Our career choices today certainly influence our social status and how we define ourselves. So when faced with any job changes, we may experience a career identity crisis. At such times, while it is normal to be nervous, it is important to recognize that we don’t have just one identity. Our multicultural identity has multiple aspects and layers. And although work may feel like something we are, we are certainly more than our job. If you are experiencing a career identity crisis, a good start is to reflect on and articulate what makes you great beyond the job title and company name on your business card. If you find it hard to define who you are and what your life would be like without your job, it may be an opportunity to refocus on your personal life: relationships, interests, and leisure time.

Gone are the days of lifetime employment and retirement gold watches. Organizations can no longer guarantee gainful employment to their hard working employees. And thus, making money and career opportunities have replaced old loyalties. It used to be the case that changing jobs every couple of years was perceived negatively; however, in some industries, it’s expected that employees will change jobs every 2 years. In fact, staying employed at the same company over a few years would probably cost you. On average, you would earn less. Loyalty is not dead; we just need to re-define what we are loyal to and who we are in our personal and professional life. Sometimes finding our life’s purpose and true calling is by the process of elimination: the more careers, jobs, and skills you try out, the sooner you find a career path that is authentic to who you are. And when you find it, you will experience personal and professional synergy and a way to live more fully incorporating your dreams and aspirations into the work that you do.

Techniques to uncover who you are without just work to define you:

1. Take a trip down memory lane: reconnect to who you are. Remember happy times in your life, things you enjoyed doing, past achievements and successes. Make notes about your past and what is meaningful to you.
2. Shake-up your social life: reconnect with old friends and make new ones. Expand your circle of friends outside of work. Nourish and nurture your personal relationships.
3. Get busy living: aspire to have at least 3 things you do outside of work. What do you love to do? Do you cook? Do you enjoy music? Do you dance? Commit to pursuing 3 things you are interested in, or that you wanted to do when you were younger.
4. Take time out: live a little. Go on vacation to gain new experiences. Find your sense of fun and adventure. Create happy memories.

To live a dynamic and fulfilled life, we need to find a way to merge our personal and professional selves, to do work we are passionate about and spend time doing the things we love.

“The real point of being alive is to evolve into the whole person you were intended to be….”

~Oprah Winfrey