Do Your Interesting

How many times have people told you the best thing to do is make your job something you love?

Easy right, just go out, get hired into a role that speaks to you professionally and personally, love life and be happy.

Reality? Not anywhere near that easy.

That dream is out there an exists, however it is probably one of the hardest things to define, find and then actually make happen. I am not sharing that to discourage you, far from it, if you follow my writing here and on social you know that I constantly encourage people to push themselves to do the things they want to do.

The point of the post is to support you until that happens. We all need to work, maybe you don't have everything completely figured out yet, so what do you do until you do? Or maybe you will never be one of those people that has one burning passion that you can turn into your life's work, and that's more than okay too.

If you don't have that passion, what do you do then? Follow your interests, follow your curiosity.

What are the things you are doing in your free time? What are the things that you do for yourself that no one has told you to do? What are you wanting to learn for yourself?

Take these things as inspiration for areas where you could work. I assure you that the impact it will have will be immediate.

When I went through my first career transition, I had no idea how dim I had become in my old role. That's not saying I wasn't still kicking ass at my job, when you know what you do, know the environment, the players, etc, it's easy to keep working your task list and "delivering results".

The problem was nothing about it was fulfilling for me. It was once execution after another, rinse and repeat. I was getting nothing out of it.

Transitioning to a new business in a different industry was wildly eye opening. I absolutely love learning and figuring things out. What I have come to understand about myself (and something I never knew in the past) was just how much energy and interest that gets generated in me when given the change to work on new problems.

Starting that new role was like a putting gasoline on a fire... my brain lit up, I wanted to know the details of everything. Working with new people, having a new team, all of it created all kinds of new interactions and was exposing me to all kinds of new thinking.

If you feel stuck, and you are not sure about the direction you want your career and life to go, start following your interests. Challenge yourself to be in a situation that keeps you curious, and see where that takes you.

It's the first step, and in time you will take another, and another after that.

Comments

This 1 Thing Increases Your Career Capital More Than Anything Else

The Art of Better Decision Making Have you felt scared to make a decision? Maybe you get preoccupied with making the 'wrong' decision? Did you know that 68% of people have admitted to not doing because they thought it would be harder than it actually is. Getting comfortable with making decisions is one of the biggest challenges new leaders face. You will be placed in situations where there isn't enough time to get all of the information. Or even harder, you will be placed in situations where you'll never get more information than what you have. The good news? Making better decisions is something that you can improve by being deliberate with your learning and how you choose to approach it. This is the approach I take to decision making. These have been test and is what I have used over my 15 year career to teach and develop teams. - Accept that you will make mistakes. There is rarely a perfect answer. Getting comfortable with ambiguity is a leadership muscle you need to

Your Next Five Moves

There are two streams of thought when you start reading a book and you don't feel like you are connecting with it. Some people will say to stop reading it and move onto something else, the theory is that there are so many things in the world that you will enjoy reading, that you shouldn't be wasting your time on things that you don't. Camp B will tell you to stick with it, get through it and see what happens. If I had to "pick a side" I probably fall more into team B than team A, even though I do feel that there will always be some books / material that you should just put down. What has me more B than A? Some of the books that have had the most impact on me were a STRUGGLE to get through. I challenge that this may because they are pushing your boundaries and putting something up against your current worldview / paradigms. True growth and learning comes from when you can challenge and dismantle your own ideas, and rebuilt them anew. My first real experience with

Decisions, Positions and Frames

Making decisions and getting consensus is the most common activity that every person goes through. Whether in your personal or professional life, we are all selling, all the time. Selling? I'm not selling anything! Actually, that's not really true. At the most fundamental level, selling is about the transfer of belief. You are trying to get a person or a group to see things the way you do. If they accept that, you make the "sale" (i.e. you have transferred your idea/belief) as another has chosen to accept it. Where things get hard is when people hold onto certain ideas, frames or positions around a circumstance. It's interesting how little people realize what they share related to their position without even knowing it. The information is there, as long as you are listening. Always be listening. When someone repeats a variable or constraint that is a difference, that has major impact. They themselves they may not realize that they are essentially confirming what

Search This Blog