On Career

Think about it: out of the 24 hours at your disposal each day, most of your waking hours are spend at doing what?

For someone who (feels like he) just started his carrier at the first (real) job after the graduation, I sure am not a person to be giving carrier advice. Nevertheless, considering I went through quite a few eventful situations during the interesting – to say the least – path that led to this particular departure point, inevitably, I learned few things on the topic. Most of these lessons, could not be better summarised nor presented than by Garr Reynolds cute presentation on Daniel Pink’s The Adventures of Johnny Bunko:

1. There is no plan
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses
3. It’s not about you
4. Persistence trumps talent
5. Make excellent mistakes
6. Leave an imprint

Career Advice '08

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Few more points to add on to it:

• Flexible Strategy

Whereas, goals/plans do not work for me - at all (for now); I tried, and I tried harder - still, somewhere along prolonged, and at times painful lessons, I "...found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable" (Dwight D. Eisenhower).

More important than planning are values that like a lighthouse provide guidance pointing towards your target (overall objective) when decisions are to be made. And to be moving in your desired direction in the most efficient manner, it's good to have a strategy. Ideally, the strategy employed would be evaluated and modified as necessary after each step.

It was one of the conversation on job-search with Raoul when he shared with me importance of being strategic yet flexible about it. At the time I wanted to go straight through the wall; head first, naturally.

• When to jump the ship

Equally important is to recognise the signs indicating that it is a time to make a next career move; in this case, it's more like a leap than a mare step. If the fire inside is not burning as brightly as it should, if there is no more hunger, curiosity, contribution, progress, recognition, satisfaction... it’s time to move on. And when the time comes ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. This article, elaborates eight alarming signs to lookout for:

1. Your role has become marginalised
2. You've stopped growing
3. You're missing from the big picture
4. You're being excluded
5. Your level of influence is waning
6. You no longer enjoy the work
7. Continuous improvement isn't part of the mantra
8. Greener pastures truly are greener

It was the tostmaters's session where I learned about the psychology study which found that happiness at work requires one to be satisfied with at least two out of the three aspects:

1. what you do
2. who you work with
3. your pay

Well, I had 2/3 when I left teaching at NP. The first one outweighed the sum of last two.


And if your 'lighthouse' demands serious corporate ladder climbing, then consider that it's easier to climb in a zig-zag pattern than straight up.

• Not/Every/thing matters

Regardless of which steps end up being chosen, it really doesn't matter how one feels of an outcome afterwards. As in reality - when a little bit wider (link to dir po svemiru) scope of things is considered than seen from a current vantage point - the level of control one has is insignificant. And moreover, one is completely clueless to what kind of circumstances and accompanying feelings a step taken will lead to next. Though, WHEN shit happens, laugh it off and keep rolling with - hopefully - a new lesson learned.

On this note: one of the criteria that has mostly been there for me when making a next step was to put my self in a position with more choices, the logic was that more choices one has the more free one is; and freedom is very important in my kingdom as without it there's no happiness. Loved Daniel Gilbert's presentation which completly thows this thinking upside down.

• Embrace Insanity

Last, but definitely not the least, make sure that the journey is crazily enjoyable. Fitting bottom line is Murray’s advice for the ages: “Keep your sense of humour”.

hvFun...!

Credit for reference:
Patrice for PresentationZen,
Alvin for ComputerWorld,
Chao for TED
Lighthouse analogy: The Monk who sold his Ferrari, Robin Sharma

Credit for the title inspiration: Prophet, by Khail Gibran