Do You Have a Career Plan?

It’s amazing to think that many of us feel like we’re drifting through life. This is often the case when we think about the way in which we approach our jobs.

The reality is that we spend many hours working. It can often feel like we see our work colleagues for more time each day than we actually get to see our families! So it seems sensible to think that we should consider our working lives to be important.

It’s always disappointing to hear people talking about their jobs as though they are rather mundane. There can be no doubt that it should be possible to enjoy the world of work. It’s all about having the right job and the right role within an organisation.

Plotting your career path

If things aren’t going as well as you might like, then it may be time to put a new strategy in place. Right now, you may feel that you don’t really have a strategy at all. This can lead to the feeling of drift that you may be experiencing. Fortunately, this is a problem that you can deal with.

To begin with, you may want to think about your ideal role. If you had a free choice, then what would you decide to do? Don’t worry if it seems that you have selected something that appears to be unrealistic. You need to be honest with yourself about the type of job that you would like to be doing. Are you in that role right now?

It’s likely that you’re doing something different. You may have taken a job because you felt like you had few other options, or because it paid well. Life is often about making compromises and you may not feel that you have made too many of these.

It’s now time to think about how you can get into a role that you will actually enjoy. What will it require? It may be that you need to gain more skills or more experience of certain activities. You’ll find that it is possible to plot a clear path from your current position to where you want to be.

Meeting your objectives

It’s now time to start thinking about the first step on that path. In particular, you’ll need to consider whether your current job provides the right starting point. You may decide that it’s necessary to find another job. There may be good reasons why you should be looking to change career altogether.

There should be no pretence that such decisions will be easy to make. You’ll often find that you are faced with some really difficult decisions. What is clear, however, is that it’s often necessary to make some fairly dramatic moves in order to reach your goals.

Think about what you can achieve. Think about what you’re aiming for. You can do what you want in life. You can build a better career.

About Author

Keith Barrett writes about a range of business and career issues. He understands that workplace mediation can be used to deal with some problems within a working environment.