If you view your career as something that only needs attention when you’re about to be pushed into a job search by circumstances beyond your control, you’re indulging in fuzzy career thinking. More than likely, that will lead to poor career results. It’s basically true that you can’t get more out of something than you’re able–and willing–to put into it. Career progress definitely falls into that category.
5 Tips to Avoid Fuzzy Career Thinking
- Realize that nothing stays the same forever. You might feel secure in your present job at this time, but although you hope that situation will continue indefinitely, you shouldn’t count on it.
- Keep an optimistic outlook because it tends to have a positive impact on your job performance. At the same time, don’t go overboard with it and let optimism cloud your good judgment.
- Check in periodically with people whose insights and opinions you respect, to get their sense of what’s going on (outside or inside your present company). They might see something you’re missing and should be aware of.
- Maintain a concise log of things you’ve been asked by your boss to do and have done successfully, as well as contributions you’ve made without being asked that proved to be valuable. Not only will this help you stay focused and alert, but also it will provide useful backup if/when you need to make a career move.
- Remember the old axiom about not putting all your eggs in one basket. Your current job–even your current career area–might not be the only possibility for you, either now or at some point in the future. Take a look now and then at other possibilities that might be worth exploring.
Something for You to Think About
“People get trapped into thinking about just one way of doing things,” a quotation from Erik Weihenmayer.
Erik was born with a degenerative eye disorder that left him blind by the time he was 13, but he was determined to overcome this devastating situation and lead a fulfilling and exciting life. The results are shared in his memoir: Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man’s Journey to Climb Farther than the Eye Can See: My Story. I think Erik must be a very unfuzzy thinker in terms of envisioning goals and pursuing them, but the fact that he has an open-minded approach to life is probably also what enabled him to consider possibilities that seemed impossible to other people–and achieve them.
P.S. This week, life and a busy workload got in the way of doing posts when I had planned, so you’re seeing them two days in a row. Don’t expect that to happen very often!
