The Top 3 Reasons Why You Should Regularly ‘Zoom Out’ On Your Career

Raise your hand if you’re trying to get ahead in your career. Now ask yourself the last time you stopped moving long enough to pause and reflect on your journey thus far and consider what it could look like in the future.

In our quest to make career progress, we focus on staying in motion. But being busy isn’t the same as being productive. Unfortunately, we often get so mired in the details of our day-to-day happenings we forget to pull back and check in.

Here are the top three reasons why you should “zoom out” on your career:

1. It ensures you have clarity and alignment on your goals.?

When you’re busy working, it can be easy to forget why you’re doing it all. Taking a moment to pause and ask yourself,?What do I want?,?forces you to identify your goals. If they’re consistent with where you started, you’ll have confirmation. And if you find that your goals have changed, that’s valuable information, too. You can dive deeper to ask yourself why your goals now differ and then course correct to get yourself back on track to stay focused.

But being clear on what you want isn’t enough; you also need?to align your goals with a plan to achieve them—and stay away from the things that can derail you. Zooming out offers you an opportunity to practice awareness and understand how you spend your days. It also helps you become more discerning and intentional with your time by asking yourself if what you’ve been doing supports your short- or long-term goals. If what you’re doing doesn’t, let it go to make way for other, more productive pursuits that do.

2. It allows you to see—and consider—all the possibilities.?

When you’re focused on a career goal, you’re likely looking to make progress the fastest way possible, but sometimes, that’s not a direct path. Opportunities often reside just outside our narrowly drawn boundaries and beyond our comfort zone, so if you take a moment to pull back, you might find that a nonlinear path provides a valuable depth and richness of experience. Even when you’re clear on your goals, zooming out allows you to see the whole picture, explore new challenges, and consider other opportunities you might otherwise miss.

3. It can help you see how much progress you’ve made.?

When we’re in the thick of it, we can sometimes feel like we’re spinning our wheels or not as far along as we’d like. It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae and forget to pause and reflect on your accomplishments. But remember: No matter how small, any step forward helps you move closer to your desired future. Until you step back and compare where you started to where you are now, you’ll never see or appreciate how far you’ve come. Get into the practice of tracking your progress and celebrating the small wins, which can help motivate you to stay the course.

By shifting your focus and regularly zooming out in your career, you’ll confirm you have clarity and alignment on your goals, see and consider opportunities you may have otherwise missed, and appreciate all the progress you’ve made.

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