This article is a chapter from my book The Life Actionbook: Tools and Actions for Personal Development. The entire book will eventually be available on this website for free in web format, but if you prefer to read it in ebook or physical formats, you can find The Life Actionbook on Amazon.com (affiliate link).
Career Evaluation
How do you know if you’re where you want to be in your career? Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. While working for yourself has its benefits, many people don’t want to call all the shots. In many ways, it’s easier to let other people find clients and decide what work needs to be done. If you’re a career person, how do you know you’re moving in the right direction?
Question 1: Do you look forward to each day at your job?
Your answer:
- I dread going to work: 0 points.
- I like my job, but feel that something is missing: 1 point.
- I love my job: 2 points.
Question 2: Are you paid enough?
Your answer:
- No: 0 points.
- Yes, but not enough to save a lot of money: 1 point.
- Yes: 2 points.
Question 3: Where do you want to be in ten years? Will your current career path take you there?
Your answer:
- No: 0 points.
- Yes, but I won’t reach my ten-year goal in ten years on my current path: 1 point.
- Yes: 2 points.
If you’re planning on spending your next ten, twenty, or forty years working a career, you better enjoy it. Life is too short to spend it dreading each day of your job. Everyone has talents that they can contribute to society through hard work. If you’re not in the right career, work towards switching to one that’s better suited to you. If you are in the right job, you need to make sure you’re on a path that can keep you happy in the long term.
Add up all your points and see how you fared.
- 0-2 points: Read this article now.
- 3-4 points: Bookmark and come back to this article later.
- 5-6 points: Skip this article, you’re good.
Importance of Career
A career is more than just your job. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as your “course or progress through life.” It is the sum of all your learning, work, and achievements.
The career you choose is one of the most important decisions of your life. Before you can choose the perfect career, you have to find meaning in your life. But paradoxically, you often will not find your life’s calling until you have walked down a few different paths.
The only way to find meaning and a satisfying career is by taking action. I can’t tell you what the purpose of your life is because it is highly personal. But I can tell you that it’s not idleness.
How do you know when you’ve found the right career for you? It’s when you can’t wait to get back to work. It’s when you wake up in the morning energized because you’re excited to see what’s in store for you that day. If you haven’t reached that point yet, move on. You need to build up to your dream career. Take one step at a time. As long as you’re stepping in the right direction, you’re making progress. Every step in your career path will come with its challenges. No step will be easy. Just keep moving.
Continue until you’ve found the career that matches your calling. Then keep moving.
When choosing a job, there are many factors you should consider. List each position you are considering and write down each of the factors. There are three types of factors you should consider: objective, subjective, and interpersonal. Objective factors include salary, benefits, location, and career advancement opportunities. Subjective factors include the social status of the job, the reputation of the organization, and your enthusiasm for the job. Interpersonal factors include professionalism of the people in the organization and how well you get along with your leaders and coworkers.
Career Action #1: If you are unsure of the career path to pursue, try taking some career assessment tests. Some tests you can take include the Strong Interest Inventory, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Careerscope, and Traitify.
Generations ago, careers were more straightforward. You went to the best schools you could. Then, using your school transcripts, you went to work for the most respected company you could get hired into. Once you got into a company, you would do everything your bosses told you to do. That would ensure you kept moving up in your organization until you retired at age 65. That was the definition of “career” back then.
Now things are more complicated. The Internet flattened the playing field. There is no longer one clear path that you should take. Fewer people know their destination. As a result, many people wander between different jobs and different careers, not knowing what their ultimate goal is. Instead of competing with ten neighbors for five local jobs, now you’re competing with a billion other people for half a billion jobs.
To have a successful career today, you need to sharpen your toolset. It’s no longer okay to blindly follow a path that others have chosen for you.
Enthusiasm for Work and Life
Mindset is everything. Take two people with opposing outlooks on life and put them in the same job. The person with the positive attitude will learn and thrive. The negative person will act hostile towards the job. Negative people close their minds and refuse to grow. The simplest strategy for climbing the career ladder is to stay positive no matter what negativity surrounds you. People will notice your positivity. They will enjoy working with you. And, as a result, they will want to keep you around.
Will Bowen, the author of A Complaint Free World, claims that 78% of workers in the United States waste an average of 4.5 hours a week listening to coworkers complain. What can you do with an extra 4.5 hours a week? People complain about problems to remove themselves from responsibility. Complaining doesn’t solve any problems. It’s just a roundabout way of asking others to solve them for you. Bowen advocates wearing a bracelet. Whenever you catch yourself complaining, switch the bracelet to the other hand. Over time, you will gain an awareness of complaining. You will complain less and take more responsibility.
Career Action #2: Wear a “no complaints” bracelet. You can learn more or order bracelets at Will Bowen’s website.
The best people at a company are the people who know the most about it. If you want to advance at your job, you’d best learn its history. Read about your company. Talk to people about it. Buy and use your company’s products if it’s practical. Learn about your job and become your company’s ultimate fanboy or fangirl. Live and breathe it. People will notice. When it comes time to promote someone, they will think of you. Because you are the personification of your company. What better person is there to lead it?
Career Action #3: Learn everything you can about your job and your company.
Networking
The lifeblood of any company is its people. A company without people is just a system. A system is stagnant and rigid. As soon as something changes in the world, the system breaks. It takes people to keep a company running.
If you want to succeed in an organization, you need to get to know the people within it. After all, it will be people who promote you, not some faceless system protocol. Be active within your organization. Attend company events. Go to conferences. Take every opportunity to spend time with your coworkers and bosses. The relationships you build will be invaluable to the future of your career. According to a 2016 survey, 85% of jobs are filled through networking.
The key to successful networking is interpersonal skills. It’s a nebulous term that many companies list as a requirement in their job descriptions. What does it mean? A person with strong interpersonal skills works well with others and communicates well.
Career Action #4: Develop your interpersonal skills. Every time you interact with someone, practice the following skills:
- Try to stay positive and smile as much as you can when interacting with others.
- Listen carefully to others when they talk. Don’t speak until others are finished. Notice their choice of words and inflections.
- Pay attention to nonverbal cues such as eye contact, gestures, and the direction their feet are pointing.
- Try to understand why others feel the way they do. Think about their incentives and motives.
- Recognize the achievements of others and thank them for their work. Gratitude goes a long way towards building rapport.
- Don’t assume or presume things. Confirm everything in your communication. Don’t gossip. Consider every idea. Settle disputes.
- Use humor as your secret weapon for breaking communication barriers.
American author and motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Take special care when you choose the people you spend time with. Spend more time with people you respect and admire. Learn everything you can from them.
Career Action #5: Who are the five people you admire most? Try to spend time with them as much as possible. If you don’t know them personally, follow their work closely. Visit their websites, listen to their podcasts, and read their books. Make your chosen five your mentors.
Master Your Craft
The idea of a career is that you spend your working years progressing towards some ultimate goal. The goal might be a financial target, a particular lifestyle, or a specific position within the company. To reach the goal, you must achieve several milestones. It involves solving problems and constant learning and improvement.
To be successful in a career, you need to master your craft. Learn as much as you can and apply what you learned in your job. If you stop learning, you will likely stagnate in your career.
Career Action #6: Spend an hour to write down your long-term goals. Here are a few questions to get you thinking:
- You just had a billion dollars wired into your bank account. What will you do this week? What will your life look like five years from now?
- You were just hit by a bus and killed instantly. What will people say about you at your funeral? Is there anything you wish you had done with your life? What’s holding you back from doing it today?
- What’s on your bucket list? What do you want to do before you “kick the bucket” and die? What is the first step towards doing each item on your list? What can you do today to get closer to realizing your dreams?
Once you know what your long-term goals are, make a plan for getting there. What skills do you need to learn? What milestones do you need to reach? I find it helpful to set learning goals and milestones each year. Set an ambitious yearlong goal for career growth today. Work towards it a little each day.
Side Hustle
The average millionaire has seven streams of income. Most people only think about one stream of income: their day job. Your day job will pay your bills. However, it won’t make you wealthy. If you want to go beyond your salary, you will need a side hustle. A side hustle is something you do outside of your day job to make money that supplements your salary. Doing this allows you to keep your regular career while also creating more streams of income.
To create side hustles and multiple streams of income, you need to develop an entrepreneurial mentality. Get in the habit of always keeping your eyes open to opportunities for making money. It takes practice, but once you get the hang of it, you will begin to see more and more opportunities.
Career Action #7: Make a habit of always being on the lookout for opportunities. Here are a few types of opportunities to keep an eye out for:
- Trends: You see something on the market that has great potential, but not everybody knows about it yet. You can find a way to invest in the trend to profit from it.
- Arbitrage: You see a product on the market and that you can buy for a low price and resell for a high price.
- Pain points: there is a problem or frustration, and no product on the market fixes it. You can come up with a solution to the pain point and sell it.
- Repackaging: You see a product on the market that is not marketed well. You can repackage and rebrand it to sell with better marketing techniques.
- Unpacking: if there is a product available only in large quantities, you can buy it and resell smaller portions of it.
Hacks
Almost by definition, careers are long-term events. While I don’t suggest cutting corners at the expense of integrity, there are some hacks you can use to speed up your career.
Career Action #8: Pivot. Every year or so, devote a few hours to examining where you are in your career and whether it aligns with your goals. Time is too precious to waste. If something is not advancing your career, ask yourself how you will change the way you’re doing things. Make a big career goal for the year. Break it up into smaller monthly milestones. Break those monthly milestones down further into daily goals. Make progress towards your big goal every day. Be relentless.
Career Action #9: Get organized. Clean your desk and work area. Remove anything you don’t need for completing your job and put it out of sight. Organize your work materials for greatest efficiency. If you need to call someone every fifteen minutes, it doesn’t make sense to keep your phone across the room from your desk. Make work as effortless as possible.
Career Action #10: Buy new office supplies. Sometimes having brand new supplies can get you excited enough to start the work you’ve been putting off.
Career Action #11: Get to work early. Arriving at work early every day will build your reputation as someone who is always on top of things. It also creates the perception that you work harder than other employees. Another advantage to arriving to work early is that there are often fewer distractions so you can get more work done.
Career Action #12: Look the part. Dress and act like the position you want to be. If you’re going to become CEO of your company someday, you better start dressing like the CEO now. People don’t magically change the way they dress as they move up the corporate ladder. If the CEO wears a suit to work every day, you can bet she wore a suit to work every day even as an entry-level worker. At the very least, try dressing a step classier than your coworkers. It doesn’t stop at clothing either. You also need to act like the position you want. Develop good communication skills. Have proper posture. Act with confidence. Act successful.
Career Action #13: Make your boss look good. Your boss can make or break your future at your company. If you make your boss look bad, they are likely to break your future. But if you make them look good, they will make it. Don’t worry about taking credit for yourself. Just worry about making your boss happy. Their success will trickle down to you. Always over-deliver.
Career Action #14: Ask for a promotion. Most of the time, it doesn’t hurt to ask. Don’t wait for your boss to promote you. It is in your boss’ best interest to keep you at a lower level for as long as possible. Once you’ve built a reputation for over-delivering, go ahead and ask for a promotion. You don’t get what you don’t ask for.
Supplements
The best supplements for your career are the ones that increase your overall health, cognition, and focus. Your career represents your entire working life, which will likely span fifty or more years. Your focus should be long-term.
Because career and time management are closely linked, the supplements listed in the article on time management will also help you at your job. Most of them are short-term solutions. To avoid repeating information, this section will focus on supplements that may increase your longevity. If you want to have a successful career, you need to stay healthy throughout your working life. You want to live a long, productive life. Part of that is staying healthy as long as possible.
Career Action #15: Take vitamin D. Most people in modern society don’t get enough vitamin D. Your body produces vitamin D when it’s exposed to sunlight. Most people these days spend most of their time indoors. When they do go outdoors, they cover up with clothing, sunglasses, and sunblock. If this sounds like you, you’re probably also deficient in vitamin D. Most people will do well with 1,000 IU of vitamin D3 supplements each day. To be sure, you should get your blood tested.
Career Action #16: Take fish oil. Your brain tissue is composed mostly of omega-3 fatty acids. Taking an omega-3 supplement like fish oil can improve your brain health. But taking omega-3 fatty acids is not enough. You also need to reduce the amount of omega-6 fatty acids. Omega-6 fatty acids are the “bad” oils that make up most of the oils on store shelves. What matters is not the amount of fatty acids you consume, but the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. Try your best to decrease your omega-6 while increasing your omega-3.
Career Action #17: Take resveratrol. Resveratrol has been found to support a healthy heart. You can get it from red grape skins (and red wine), blueberries, and raspberries, among others.
Career Action #18: Get the right minerals. Certain minerals might increase your lifespan. Zinc helps maintain higher testosterone levels and supports your immune system. Magnesium aids a wide range of functions in your body from repairing cells to maintaining a healthy heart rhythm. Chromium is critical to the production of insulin in your body, which helps regulate your weight.
Career Action #19: Take curcumin. Turmeric is a mild yellow spice that has been used in Asian cuisine and traditional medicine for generations. It contains curcumin, which is thought to have potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.
Career Action #20: Take carnitine. L-Carnitine is an amino acid found in red meats. It promotes fat burning and provides cardiovascular support, giving you more energy and endurance.
Career Action #21: Take alpha lipoic acid (ALA). Your body naturally creates ALA to use in metabolic functions. It is believed to help your body use insulin to break down glucose and reduce nerve damage caused by diabetes.
Career Action #22: Take CoQ10. Coenzyme Q10 is another natural compound found in your body. It functions as an antioxidant and helps your cells produce energy.
Tools
It is difficult to create a list of purely “career” tools without overlapping with time management and personal finances. Career is such a broad topic that without a doubt I will miss some of the more niche and smaller tools in this list. So I will list here tools focused on learning, job searching, and management.
Career Action #23: Always be learning. If you don’t have time to read business books, you can take advantage of a book abstract service like getAbstract or Blinkist. These services create summaries of books with only the main points.
Career Action #24: Use networking tools. A strong professional network is the single greatest tool you can have to advance in your career. LinkedIn is a social media site for professionals. You can also boost your career on other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Once you’re on social media, join relevant groups or connect with other professionals in your field. JobHero helps you organize and follow up with your business contacts. MeetUp helps you find meetings with other people in your career niche.
Career Action #25: Create your personal brand. Employers often search the web for prospective or current employees. Sites like BrandYourself and Reputation X help you manage your online identity so you can present yourself to employers in the best possible light. Google Alerts lets you set up notifications that will email you whenever new information about you is posted online. If you are tech-savvy, you can also register a domain name and create an official personal website. A personal website is a great place to show off your work portfolio.
Career Action #26: Do company research. Glassdoor and Career Bliss provide tools for researching companies. The information is useful when finding companies and for preparing for interviews. Fairygodboss lets women rate their employers and discuss issues that matter to them. Salary.com and Payscale provide information on how much you can expect to make at different locations, companies, and career fields. ZoomInfo provides information about businesses and professionals.
Career Action #27: Prepare for your interviews. Big Interview and Phone Interview Kickstart are two tools that can help you in your interviews. You can also take part in mock interviews to polish your interviewing skills and spot mistakes, so you don’t make them in real interviews.
Career Action #28: Use resume tools. Your resume is often the first impression you make to a company recruiter. It is the first test for whether an employer should even consider hiring you. The resume templates in Microsoft Word or Google Docs provide a good starting point for making an attractive resume. There are also resume builder apps like ineedaresu.me, Enhancv, Sumry, cvmaker, or Creddle.
Resources
Almost every adult on Earth works in some way. Every working adult can benefit from career advice, so you can imagine how much career advice is available on the internet. I’ve compiled some of the most prominent, most popular career resources I could find.
Career Action #29: Read career blogs.
Career Action #30: Visit career websites.
Career Action #31: Take a self-assessment test. Ten excellent free career self-assessment tools on the Internet, by Catherine Conlan. It has a listing of free and pay personality tests.
Career Action #32: Here are a few books that will give you valuable career advice:
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, by Stephen R. Covey.
- What Color Is Your Parachute? 2017: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers, by Richard N. Bolles.
- How To Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.
- Unlimited Power: The New Science Of Personal Achievement, by Tony Robbins.
- Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg.
Career Action #33: Listen to career podcasts during your commute.
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