Career Opportunities passed another milestone last month, entering
its 10th year of publication. It is a bit hard to believe that I have
been writing this column for so long. Thanks to all the readers and
to the listeners of its companion podcast for your support and kind
words over the years.
The anniversary of this Career-Opportunities
column got me to thinking about the concept of longevity and how
it can effect your career.
Longevity, whether in the writing of a column
or the length of your current job is usually seen as something good.
It shows a commitment
and reliability that is often sought in employees. That said, there
can be some downsides to longevity, if you don’t monitor your
career and your accomplishments.
Longevity out of mere inertia is never good.
You might be stagnating in your career. If you haven’t changed
jobs or careers simply because it might be too much work and turmoil,
you might be limiting
yourself in some fundamental ways.
How do you know?
Regardless of whether
you have been at your job one year or ten, you need to insure that
each, month, each week, each day presents the opportunity for growth.
Once you have achieved the pinnacle of quality in your current job,
you need somewhere to grow. Even if you are great in your job, it can
become a trap. Without growth, your sense of accomplishment will suffer,
as will your sense of fulfillment with your job, as will the way others
perceive you and your work. This can lead to a dangerous downward spiral
where, unhappy with your work, you cease to do a great job.
With Career
Opportunities, I have a built-in mechanism to track my growth. I can
look back on the past 500+ columns and compare them to the work I am
producing today. I should see changes, even great changes, over the
10 years. If not, then something is wrong. Since I produce a podcast
each week from my past archive of columns, I regularly get re-introduced
to something I wrote 5, 6 or even 10 years ago. It is always interesting
to review the topics that were important at the time and also study
my own style of writing. If you don’t have some regular method
of reviewing your own work, you need to develop some -- today.
Time
Travel
Take a few minutes today to review your
past work, not just this week or this month, but think back over the
years. What were you
doing 5 years ago? How has the focus of your work changed? How have
the actual tasks of your daily work changed? Has it changed significantly
at all? If not, then this could be a warning sign. In order to insure
that your career thrives your work should be changing from day to day.
Certainly it should be getting better, but it should also be increasingly
different and hopefully more challenging from the day before.
Working
in high-tech, this job change is often forced upon you, if you are
working in the day-to-day operations of your company’s computers.
Hardware and software come and go. Upgrades proliferate and internal
systems mutate through a series of upgrades and replacements. While
this aspect might take care of itself, you need to focus on changes
in the type of work you are performing. Are you starting to do more
network design? Are you spending more time writing specifications for
software than the software itself? Is this what you want to do? What
would you rather being doing? Why aren’t you?
Jump
Growth in
your career is often a slow evolution from one phase to another, but
sometimes you face major upheaval in your career. While this is certainly
more stressful, it can bring dramatic improvements to your career and
your life. While you might be afraid of suddenly being elevated to
a new role with new expectations, I highly encourage you to do it anyway.
Too often, we turn down great career opportunities because we are afraid
that we might fail. The truth is, there will be times when you fail,
but the growth you achieve can be a great reward in any case.
While
longevity can be comforting, don’t stay in any job too long.
If your job starts to feel too comfortable or unchallenging, it is
a clear sign that you need to make a change. That doesn’t mean
you have to quit, merely that you have to begin requesting or taking
on more responsibility. A career is something you create over a lifetime.
As you grow older you need to seek out just as many challenges as you
did when you had your first job. If you don’t, you could be facing
years of mind-numbing sameness from day-to-day with little to show
for it at the end.
Comments, Questions, Reviews?
Career
Opportunities
