If you don’t have a plan for yourself, you’ll be part of someone else’s.
It’s very easy to not follow your own career plan. It’s also very easy to follow a career plan that someone else has laid out for you. This is the result of us giving away our responsibility for planning our own career.
The responsibility of planning your career is yours and yours alone. It is not to be given away. It is the same way that you cannot have someone else do your own push ups. This is the difference between moving your career forward on purpose, versus simply allowing your career to drift where ever it may go.
To get the best results in your career is it important to plan it out in advance. If you’ve never done this before, it’s never too late to start now. When planning your career it’s important to consider where you would like it to be 5, 10, 15, and 25 years from now.
Creating goals for these time frames of your life will help to shape your actions today. Answering the following questions will help you along the path of creating a career plan that you can follow:
1. Where do you want to be in your career
- By your age + 5?
- By your age + 10?
- By your age + 15?
- By your age + 25?
2. Knowing where you want to go five years from now, what should your career goal be for next year?
3. What are the requirements for your one year goal?
4. What are your current skills and what skills do you need to develop to achieve that one year goal?
5. What steps must you take starting from today to achieve your one year goal?
