?? Stop and Smell the Flowers

Stop and Smell the Flowers:

The Power of Reflection and Realignment for Strategic Growth

Our inability to slow down often means we don’t get to register, absorb, and process what we experience and what we can potentially learn from it. This cuts down our learning cycle, leading us to run into the same situations without knowing how to correctly navigate them.

A stranger handed me this badge (see photograph above) as I was walking back from a small, curated event in NY several weeks ago. The event aimed to facilitate a discourse on careers and career breaks. While it’s cute, it’s also thought-provoking.

Stopping to smell the flowers is more commonly associated with catharsis, holidays, rest, and breaks at a personal level. However, it can be beneficial both professionally and personally. Here’s how it applies:

a. Career Track: Charting a Cohesive Path

Do you know your career track? With many new emerging fields and economies, coupled with inflation, there’s been an increased interest in side hustles and alternative earning avenues. Many people around me have started delving into consultations and gigs outside of their jobs. But are those gigs aligned with their larger goals? Is there cohesiveness in all the activities they are undertaking?

There was a phase during my consultancy time when I would take on almost everything that came my way. While some of that work served me well and adds up even now, other projects were taking me away from my core career objectives and adding stress without substantial benefits. The pressure of being everywhere can add up, but it taught me to prioritize alignment over immediate gains.

More often than not, time is spent and experience is built, but if it is ad hoc and does not build you or your career in a specific direction, then it’s not serving anything but a short-term goal. Rather, taking reflective breaks to plot out what you want and where you are headed can significantly increase our chances of a strong second career. Smartly and strategically done, this allows for a portfolio of careers—multiple streams with connections that can be used to jump to something bigger.

b. Learning and Unlearning: Embracing Change

The most common phrase of our times, “learning and unlearning,” is essential for growth. But what does it mean in the long haul? In our fast-paced world, the ability to learn new skills and unlearn outdated ones is crucial. This process requires reflection and a willingness to adapt.

I have switched careers and sectors multiple times. More than that, I keep delving into new areas of work at a deeper level. Diversifying is an important part of learning and growing, but each switch, while exciting, has also been daunting—revealing many known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

Keeping track of what I am learning, lacking, aiming for, and straying away from is a useful exercise. It stops me from becoming complacent and too comfortable. What has been most rewarding is seeing that the jobs I took on also grew with me. This is a sign that with the fast-changing world, industries are also evolving.

Embracing change isn’t just about adapting; it’s about actively engaging with new knowledge and practices to drive meaningful growth and impact.

c. Portfolio Career: Diversification with Purpose

The concept of a portfolio career involves having multiple work streams and professional pursuits that complement each other. This approach does provide financial stability but also allows for greater personal and professional fulfillment. There's more opportunities for learning, more relevance, creative stimuli and it builds your readiness for future and the added complexities of the challenges to today.

By consciouslu curating our career activities, we can ensure they align with our overarching goals, making our professional life more resilient and adaptable to change. And more importantly, even if indirectly, this coherence among various activities leads to a greater overall impact and a more robust career trajectory. Pausing to reflect helps maintain strong connections and direction.

The Power of Zooming Out: Unpack, Plan, and Plot

Smart reflection is more than taking a pause. Try 'Zooming out'. Zooming out means taking a step back to gain a broader perspective. Pan out and away to see the big picture and how and where you fit in it. Here are some quick ways to practice to unpack and plot the course:

1. Set Aside Dedicated Time: Allocate specific times for reflection. This could be a few hours each week or a full day each month.
2. Find a Quiet Space: Choose a location where you won’t be disturbed, allowing you to think clearly.
3. Use Tools and Frameworks: Utilize tools like mind maps, Hedge Hog principle, SWOT analysis, and goal-setting frameworks to structure your thoughts.
4. Reflect on Past Experiences: Review your past projects, achievements, and failures to identify patterns and lessons learned.
5. Identify Long-Term Goals: Clarify long-term objectives and measure alignment with current activities.
6. Create a Plan: Develop a step-by-step plan to achieve your goals, including milestones and deadlines.
7. Keep Track: Regularly revisit progress to assess and adapt as needed.
8. Celebrate Small Wins: Celebrate small achievements along the way for a boost of motivation and to reinforce commitment to the goals.

Stopping to smell the flowers help experience clarity, informed decision making, hopefully less stress and anxiety, more productivity and more space for creativity and passion projects.

A good question to start off is: Have you learned new mechanisms for managing yourself and the world around you in a way that is required now versus in the past?

What strategies have you used to align your career with your goals? Share in the comments!

#CareerGrowth #StrategicPlanning #LearningAndUnlearning #CareerBreaks #PortfolioCareer

Note: This piece is part of a series of blogs I wrote some time ago and will be publishing over the coming weeks.