The Best Career Advice for 2022

We spend a stupid amount of time at work.

May as well make your time there enjoyable doing things you love to do. It’s not some fantasy. It’s possible and my career is?proof.

This week a friend said something that stayed with me.

“I’ve only got two years until retirement. There’s no point in changing careers, even though I hate my job. It’s too late.?Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”

His comment made me sad.?If you’re at the end of your career, why not take some big risks and finish on a high??You don’t get to?relive?your career as there’s no provable evidence of an afterlife.

The worst career advice is to do nothing if you’re bored or?frustrated.

Here are some tiny bits of career advice to make the next twelve months of your career the best ever.

Learn a new skill

Careers are built on skills.?If you’re stuck on a?plateau?or feel like your career is going nowhere, look for a new skill.

When my career hit?rock bottom, while working a dead-end job in a call center,?I went to Toastmasters to learn public speaking. It changed everything. I met new people who gave me job offers.

I learned how to shake the nerves and get in front of an audience of strangers and communicate one idea. The skill bled into my writing. Most of all, as a?rambler, I learned to get to the freaking point.

Throw yourself headfirst into a new skill.?Teachable dot com is your friend.

Divorce bad bosses

I’ve worked for some?blood-sucking jackals?that show no mercy.

It’s easy to fall for the lie that you have to stay.?Fear of the unknown is scary.?The truth is there are good bosses out there. I worked for a?modern-day Buddha. They were the best years of my career.

It was a risk though.

When he showed up we all looked him up in the company directory. He had this killer instinct in his eyes. We got scared. So scared we started thinking about what other jobs we could get.

The vampire eyes became meerkat eyes when we had our first coffee with him.?He was kind, understanding, and didn’t talk about himself much. He just wanted to know all about us.?Our answers made him smile. He couldn’t get enough of our stories. He made us feel like the star of the show.

Now he’s gone on to big things. He’s on his way to becoming like the Google co-founder Larry Page in the new world of Web 3.0. When I tell him this he laughs. Those of us who know him well, know it’s a guarantee.

Good bosses are out there. They’ll skyrocket your career.

Go out there and find them. Ask around.?Interview bosses when you apply for jobs.?Put together a series of crowdsourced questions that help you find?your?Buddha boss.

Work on a side hustle after hours

Many people get scared of the phrase?side hustle.

They mistake?working after hours?for burnout.?But when you love the work you choose to do when you get home from a job, it doesn’t feel like work at all.?That’s how I felt working in finance every day and coming home at night to write.?Writing helped me recover from the day, not wear me out.

A side hustle is an experiment where you back yourself and start it for the love of work, not money.?Choosing work based on how much it pays gives a bias?towards?your developed skills.

But new skills take years to monetize. That’s why changing the work you do to a new set of skills and trying to pay your bills at the same time is a bad idea. The chance you’ll pull it off is unlikely.

Working after hours on a side hustle for $0 focuses effort on your skill stack. Skill stacks build empires later down the line.

Help your colleagues level up

Too many careers are built on?selfishness.

Capitalism accidentally teaches us that our career is a competition and our colleagues in the office are our rivals.

Wrong.

The people that experience long-term career success are unselfish. As Tony Robbins?says, they find a way to do more for others than anyone else does.

It’s true in my career for sure.?When I got stuck and hit a plateau, I started running training sessions for the new employees that would join.?Good leaders noticed and eventually offered me higher positions because of it.

When your colleagues succeed, you succeed.?It’s counter-intuitive.

Update your LinkedIn profile

Recruiters, business owners, and hiring managers don’t hire resumes. They hire people. LinkedIn has the potential to show much more of your human side than a lifeless A4 copy of a printed resume ever will.

Time is limited so the chance to meet someone face-to-face who can elevate your career is unlikely.

Think about it. What’s the first thing you do in a business context when you hear a person’s name you don’t know? You search them on LinkedIn.

Here’s what tells your story:

• The photo you use.?Choose a?humble?facial expression. Update it yearly so it reflects what you really look like.?Out of date photos make you a liar.
• The headline?that says what you do.?Make it creative — not some esoteric nonsense like, I change lives with timber.
• The summary of your career.?This is where you inspire the person looking at your profile with non-generic, non-bullsh*t, weapons of mass destruction.?I like to add personality and unexpected insights. That simply means I make it personal.?Because so many people forget that business IS personal, not professional.
• The descriptions?below each job on your profile are where you get to further talk about how you help humanity. Many people leave these blank. Don’t. The more humanity you can show on your profile, the more likely hidden opportunities will reveal themselves in your LinkedIn message inbox.

You may have filled out your?Linkedin profile?before.

The trouble is it gets old. Update your profile asap. In the process, you’ll rewrite the narrative of your career. That will help you think the work you do.

Share your thoughts on social media

Social media is scary. Many HR experts will tell you not to.

I disagree.

Social media is fine for your career if you stay away from controversial topics, like vaccines and politics.?Sharing your stories on platforms such as LinkedIn acts as a magnet. People you help or inspire will find their way into your inbox. This is what you want.

People give you opportunities, not job ads that waste your time.

Share things you find helpful on LinkedIn. Turn on the opportunity magnet. Attract your tribe.

Change jobs if you’re too comfortable

Stagnation ruins many careers.

You know the feeling. The one where you wake up for work each day and something feels like it’s missing. Except you can’t work out what. That’s likely a sign you’re too comfortable.

A career is an adventure. It’s over in the blink of an eye.

Few people tell you that you can change jobs as many times as you change underwear.

Job hopping helps keep you in a state of growth. Plus, our lives are made up of multiple careers.?We don’t have one anymore. This paradigm shift still hasn’t got planted inside many people’s minds. It needs to.

If something feels off at work, I double dare you to go on LinkedIn and start looking for new jobs and reaching out to decision-makers.

Invest your salary in assets to buy your time back

Going to work for money to pay bills is the worst reason.

Take part of your?salary?and invest it in proper financial assets. It won’t change your career overnight. But slowly, it will generate money that helps you buy back your time.

More time helps you be more thoughtful about the work you do.

Summing up

Get out there and get amongst it!

One life. Multiple careers to live.

A mountain of opportunities is all centralized for you on LinkedIn.?To complain with the huge opportunities available is lame.?Apply one idea I’ve just mentioned. You’ll transform your career in a year when you do.