I have been advising you to take control of your career for over 12 years here on Career Opportunities. I continue to believe that it is of the utmost importance that you manage your career instead of letting it manage you. Today, I am extending that advice beyond your work and your career. Starting today you must also take direct responsibility for your own education.
Through budget cuts and legislation, our American system of higher education is being priced beyond reach or destroyed entirely. While I will rue the day it occurs, there may come a time when many of you, or more likely, your children, will find it difficult, if not impossible, to gain a college degree. In such a world, you may need to look to other, perhaps older, methods to gain the education you need to succeed.
Over the last several months my son and I have been increasingly active in archery at our local range with our local SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) group. We enjoy being outdoors and the camaraderie of archery, as well as challenging ourselves to improve our skills over time. During our hours at the range, comparisons between archery and your career have been coming to mind quite a bit. There is one analogy that I haven’t been able to shake so I felt it deserved presenting here.
When you are on the archery range your goal is typically to become better and better at your aim. The archery target presents a clear goal and clear feedback after each shot. If only our career was so forthcoming with feedback. Archery is a challenge of constant correction and adaptation. If you want to improve, you carefully evaluate each shot, what you did, and the results it produced. After some time you will find that your muscle memory will begin to kick in and it becomes easier and easier to hit the bulls eye consistently.
You may have noticed over the years that I don’t write about typical career-related topics here on Career Opportunities. Where other columns might focus on resumes or interview skills, I prefer to talk about how your career relates to you, your needs and your goals. Too often I think we forget the a career is a very personal thing. It isn’t some academic process that happens to someone else. It happens to you. You have to live with your career, day after day, so shouldn’t you be building the career you deserve?
When we talk about careers we tend to focus on the external factors. How can I perfectly answer that tough interview question? How can I mold myself into someone this company will want to hire? How will our boss feel about this action? Will the company have issues with that? To my eye, we spend entirely too much time trying to satisfy external forces and factors and too little looking out for ourselves. The true success of your career is how much you gain from it, not how much others gain from you. Sure there should be a balance, but in most career situations we err on the side of pleasing our employer instead of pleasing ourselves.
There is no, one, creativity tool that works for every situation, place or time so it is useful to have a few sites, apps, and books that you can turn to when you need to create and capture your great ideas. This article provides a number of ways to keep your creativity flowing and also turn these ideas into something big! — Douglas
Ideation is the creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas, where an idea is understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete, or abstract. Ideation comprises all stages of a thought cycle, from innovation, to development, to actualization.
These tools will help you capture you thought better, Organize your brainstorming into successful sections.
A live recording of my presentation, “Production, Promotion and being Proactive in your Career”, at Tuesdays with Transitioners on February 15, 2011. (1 hour, 23 minutes)
Your career isn’t just something you set on autopilot and forget. Sure, you might be engaged in a great job at the moment and enjoying your work, but even then you need to be constantly monitoring and adjusting your career. Times change and along with them the economy, the stability of your company and your own wants, needs and desires. Be happy, sure, but don’t let it lull you into a false sense of security. You need to keep building your career, even when you seem on the right path.
![Production, Promotion and Being Proactive in your Career from the Career Opportunities Podcast [Audio/Video]](http://welchwrite.com/career/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/twitht-dew1.jpeg)
