3 key skills for reaching career goals

I’m a sucker for notifications. If there’s a red dot on something, you’d better believe I’m tapping on it right away.

It got to the point where I started pretending to be a lady in Regency England attending to her correspondence, just so I’d stop endlessly making the rounds of my inbox, social channels and Slack. “The stagecoach only comes morning, noon, and close of day,” I’d tell myself. I could check for new messages, other than when I was directly pinged, only when I started my workday, at lunch, and before I logged off.

Amazingly, it worked. I didn’t miss anything urgent, and I couldn’t believe how much time I got back to actually do some work.

When it comes to making career changes, it’s tempting to approach it with the same frenetic energy of endlessly checking for new messages. We comb through job listings, fire off applications, and refresh our inboxes in the hope that an interview invite appears. And the more urgently we feel we need to make a change, the more energy we pour into it.

Without putting some intention into these actions, though, we risk wasting our precious time on the performance of activity, without actually getting any further toward our goals. At a certain point, it’s like pushing your paddle frantically through empty air — you’re doing a lot, but you’re not going to get very far.

Instead, it pays off to actually do the deep work required to move forward, guiding yourself paddle stroke by stroke toward the next bend in your Career River. Today we’ll look at how to focus your energy toward meaningful career progress.

Technique

Proper paddle technique helps conserve energy and prolong your endurance. Poor paddle technique will leave you aching and exhausted before you’ve even had a chance to enjoy yourself.

— 7 Key Skills for Advanced Open-Water Canoeing, Adventures in Good Company

By the time I show up for work most mornings, I’ve already run the gauntlet called “Get Your Three Kids Ready For The Day (And Try To Be On Time, Too!)”. We only have so much energy available on a given day for all of our responsibilities. It’s essential to make the most of that energy by focusing it strategically.

Most of the people I talk to in Career River chats have an idea of where they want to head professionally, even if they’re not clear on exactly how to get there. That’s why using the proper technique, to move forward without wearing yourself out, is crucial.

The “stop doing list,” as described by the American Press Institute, is an invaluable tool to look at where you’re currently putting your energy and decide where you might cut back, to free yourself up for what really matters. While this list is focused on newsroom decision-making, it can also apply (with some tweaks) to how we think about careers:

• Does it provide value — information, context, accountability — to your next career goal?
• Is there a way to change it to make it serve your next career goal?
• Does it contribute to your mission in another way?
• Does it contribute to your career strategy?
• Do you have the expertise to accomplish it, or the time and energy to re-develop the expertise?

If most of the answers are no, you can put it on your stop doing list. And then you can look for those incremental activities that could get you closer to where you’re trying to go.

Focus

Training for the worst-case scenario can help you feel more at ease when challenging scenarios present themselves and give you more confidence in the water.

Trips of this nature also require mental fortitude, not just physical stamina. You must be able to maintain focus, alertness, and environmental awareness for long, exhausting periods of time.

— 7 Key Skills for Advanced Open-Water Canoeing, Adventures in Good Company

Strategic, long-term, focused thinking can be a struggle. It’s much easier to go to our automatic responses (such as opening that social feed for the umpteenth time) than to buckle down to the challenging work.

In this study about how professionals keep up their motivation long-term, researchers interviewed professionals in fields where eventual success would take a long time, real progress was made slowly and there was a significant risk of failure. They found their sources of motivation offered a mix of short- and long-term features, including the possibilities this work would open up for future generations, how the work played a role in society and emphasizing a sense of forward motion.

To keep working toward their goal, these professionals also had to effectively control their actions and responses, including seeing failures as the building blocks for improving. Tell yourself a powerful story, imagine that brighter future, to keep your attention focused on the task at hand.

Momentum

Being aware of the risks is important, but don’t let them put you off. Using these skills, you can prepare yourself to paddle out and enjoy the adventure of a lifetime.

— 7 Key Skills for Advanced Open-Water Canoeing, Adventures in Good Company

The good news is, once you start seeing progress it often becomes easier to keep going. I’ve been told by a number of people who have made a shift in their careers that they’re more confident now that they could change course again if needed.

In their Harvard Business Review article “The Power of Small Wins,” researchers Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer say the single most important factor in boosting a worker’s emotions, perception and motivation “is making progress in meaningful work.” And it doesn’t have to be a huge milestone, either:

“When we think about progress, we often imagine how good it feels to achieve a long-term goal or experience a major breakthrough. These big wins are great—but they are relatively rare. The good news is that even small wins can boost inner work life tremendously. Many of the progress events our research participants reported represented only minor steps forward. Yet they often evoked outsize positive reactions.”

They go on to advise managers on how to nurture their teams’ sense of meaningful progress in their work. As the navigator of your career, you’re acting as your own manager. Be sure to recognize every small gain as the win it is to keep pushing forward.

Happy navigating,
Bridget