How to Determine What's Next In Your Career: In 4 Steps
Erica Mattison
Executive Coach | Career Advisor | Team-Building & Professional Development Workshop Facilitator | Author: "Clarifying What Matters: Creating Direction for Your Career"
"I don't know what to do next in my career."
Sound familiar?
As a career professional, I continually hear variations of this predicament. Here are some insights from my work, supporting hundreds of clients to get unstuck and move forward to create rewarding new chapters.
Recognizing the Interplay Between Your Professional Life & Personal Life
Your professional and personal lives are intertwined. As an executive coach and career advisor, I help my clients step back and consider how their careers and lives fit together.
As opposed to work-life balance, like a see-saw or a scale, where one side goes down when the other goes up, I encourage a re-frame of work-life harmony. How can your professional life and personal life enrich one another?
When you get clear on what you want for your career and you take proactive steps to invite that vision to become your reality, the positive ripple effect on your personal life can be profound.
As you create a career that works for you, you build the confidence to take proactive steps in other areas of your life. I've seen this time and time again with my clients. They want to start a family, buy a house, move to another state, adopt a dog, improve their health, or build satisfying relationships. As they take steps to improve their professional life, they feel more empowered to do the same in their personal life.
The Value of Creating Professional & Personal Direction
Why is feeling a lack of direction a problem? People typically like to feel like they have a plan, a direction -- in contrast to aimlessly floating around without goals.
We feel good when we have a goal to work toward. Goals help us focus our resources (time, energy, money). They help us prioritize.
Plans and goals help us feel in control, and humans tend to like that.
Having a sense of direction can also help us make sense of our lives, and that's important for a feeling of purpose and fulfillment.
How to Advance Your Personal & Professional Priorities Without Overcommitting
Let's suppose you have ideas about what you want for your life, but you feel like they're not practical to achieve. Because you think they aren't feasible, you don't bother to take steps or even identify the necessary steps.
Sound familiar?
Maybe you're concerned that if you pursue what you want, you won't be able to stay good to your word for commitments you've made in the past. For instance, that Little League team you've been coaching or that board you've served on for several years.
Or maybe you think if you add one more thing to your plate, your life will fall apart because the exhaustion and stress will push you to your breaking point.
Follow these steps to advance your priorities without overcommitting:
1. Choose one focus area
Choose one type for your focus area for the next 6 months. For instance:
Choose a major area and within it, 1-2 sub-areas.
After 6 months, re-evaluate and continue with what you selected or move on to another area or sub-area.
Focusing on one area does not mean abandoning the other areas. It simply means you are going to be intentional about prioritizing the area you select. You will still be able to lead a balanced life even when you have a focus area for the next 6 months.
If you struggle to decide on a focus area, you may find it valuable to work with a coach who can help you develop a decision-making framework.
Pro-Tip: When you focus on improving one of these areas of your life, other areas are also likely to improve!
Guiding Question:
Answer this for yourself:
If I make positive changes in this area of my life -- (fill in the blank), how I feel and show up in other areas of my life will also improve.
2. Decide how to approach your focus area
Making progress on your focus area will involve an investment. For instance, you may wish to take a course, hire a mentor or coach, join a peer group, or create your own learning program.
Guiding Questions
How best do I learn and work? (using spreadsheets, having visuals, talking things through in a non-judgmental space, etc.)
How much structure can I self-generate?
What kind of schedule and pace will work best for me?
How important is it to me to have a thought partner?
How much time am I prepared to invest consistently?
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How much money am I prepared to invest to learn and grow within my focus area?
3. Create the capacity to focus on your priority
Get out your calendar and block off time that you will dedicate to your priority.
Be realistic about how many hours are in a day and how many hours you need for essentials like sleep. If you find that there aren't enough hours in the day to enable you to advance your priority, something will have to give.
You've likely heard of the fear of missing out ("FOMO"), but what about the joy of missing out ("JOMO")? When you decide to go all in with a particular priority, it's necessary to accept that other commitments may be impacted.
Guiding Question
What in my life that does not advance my focus area can be delegated, delayed, or altogether skipped?
4. Communicate your intention
By approaching your focus area intentionally, you can avoid overcommitting. Communicate what you are focused on and create realistic expectations. You can feel good about yourself when you know you're living with integrity.
Having a cheering section is valuable. To create your cheering section, share with people you know what you're working on. You never know how they might show up for you.
Guiding Questions
Who may understand and support that I'm choosing to focus on growing in a certain area?
How can their support help me achieve progress?
How can my learning and growth be helpful to others?
How Prioritizing Can Help You Create a Rewarding Career
When I was working full-time as a sustainability coordinator and attending law school at night, the goal of completing my law degree helped me decide how to use my time and energy.
It meant making some changes to how I allocated my resources. While I was in law school, I reduced my community involvement. I stepped off of boards I had served on and declined to take on new leadership opportunities.
By creating bandwidth, I was not only able to do the necessary school work to graduate, but also to generate several meaningful experiences along the way.
Each of these experiences helped me to learn, grow, and be of service.
Once I completed law school and passed the Massachusetts Bar Exam, I was able to shift my attention to my work. I landed my dream job as the Legislative Director at the Environmental League of Massachusetts.
Later, I shifted my focus to the community service aspect of my career, serving as a volunteer leader to advance causes that are important to me. For instance, I chaired the board of the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition (MassBike), a statewide nonprofit working to make bicycling more safe and accessible.
Having led MassBike through major transitions during the COVID-19 pandemic, I stepped away from my role as chair so I could shift my attention to other aspects of my career. After serving as the Director of Strategic Communications for Boston University while leading my coaching practice on the side for years, I decided to go all in with my coaching practice. I recognized that this would mean reducing my community involvement so I could create the necessary space and time to growing my business.
During my first two years of self-employment I was able to:
Guiding Questions
What are 3 skills you developed in one area of your life (for instance, a volunteer role) that you can apply to another area of your life (for instance, a job)?
What are 3 topics you're curious to learn more about?
Who are 3 people for each topic who might serve as inspiration? (Either people you know or people you are aware of)
Recap
Pursuing a focus area for one aspect of your life can have a positive ripple effect for the rest of your life.
Guiding Questions
What area will you choose?
Who will support you?
How will you show up for yourself?
For more resources to help you create a rewarding career, visit ericamattison.com
Reach out if you're seeking a career partner.
Ardent Career Development Specialist, Innovator, Educator, Manager, Organizer, Optimizer, Relationship Builder & People Helper
4 个月You take an what could be an overwhelming endeavor - making a career shift - and break it down into manageable chunks that recognize that people have lives to juggle and embrace while contemplating next steps. Great tips.
Sr HR Business Partner ? Talent Development ? Inclusion Champion ? Avid baker & voracious reader
5 个月Helpful article - thanks Erica Mattison. The question about what to delay/delegate/skip resonates for me. People so often continue to add & add & add things to their plate w/o examining what to release.