How-to: Survive Your Career

As I work on some documents and programming for my not-for-profit, She's a Boss, these thoughts came to me and, without much editing, I thought I'd share.

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College is a time in your career where you are setting the foundation from which you build your success. When building a stable house, in order to set a good foundation you have to know the landscape that you’re building on. When building a career, it’s no different. The career landscape is the economics and environment that you are building your career in. 

Economics of a career (out of your control): unemployment rates, job availability, racism, nepotism, natural talents, innate desire 

Environment of a career (within your control): hard skills, soft skills, your network, people you work with, your personal support system (i.e. family and friends), life responsibilities, industry related tools and equipment, etc. 

That’s a lot to juggle as it is; now throw in the fact that as time goes on, the landscape changes. This makes success (however you define it), a moving target; now you have to juggle AND walk at the same time! And sometimes...even your target changes! TRY THIS: Pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. Not too hard. Now switch hands! My point? It’s not easy!

So given all these factors, how do you create a solid foundation? And in a reality where time is (let’s face it), short. How do you ensure that you are using your time to its fullest capacity? Or in other words, how do you stay on track so you are not WASTING time? 

Coming from the perspective of a woman who has spent her career examining careers, launching careers, and nursing careers...I have 3 solutions.

How to Build a Solid Foundation and Survive Your Career:

Create an environment that harmonizes with your life so that when you wanna grow, you have resources you can activate for that. When you need to slow down or step back, you have resources you can activate for that. Whatever you need to do, what you need to do it is not too far away.

Diversify your channels of opportunity so you don’t have to make decisions out of scarcity. When you have to make decisions out of scarcity, you tend to make bad decisions...or at least make worse decisions than you’d have had to make had you had another option.

Start 1 and 2 before you need to. Now this requires foresight. Where do you wanna be 1-year from now, 5-years from now, 10-years from now? What do you need to get there? Who do you need to be? Who do you need to know? Set goals and plan ahead. That’s how you stay ahead. 

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but...proper planning prevents poor performance. More to come?