Most people of all ages regard their career as a job, not a career. They pay too much attention to the next step, not the whole path, and lack foresight.
What really matters in the workplace is that when you are 40 or 50, you have better choices. So don't jump around aimlessly or stay in a meaningless position, but plan well.
Five things to do:
1. Learn workplace mathematics and establish a correct long-term thinking mode.
2. Take stock of the list of workplaces and sort out your most useful skills, experiences and relationships. As part of this list, you need to evaluate the current stage of your career and describe the career ecosystem. The career ecosystem consists of factors that are critical to your career success, including your contacts, expert groups, colleagues and supporters.
Set career goals and draw an annual career value evaluation report according to the following four golden questions: In the next year, is your biggest pursuit to learn new things, gain influence, experience fun, or reap rewards?
3. Take the "100 hour test" and complete a "personal time file" to know your current time investment. Do you spend enough time doing what makes you most successful and happy?
4. When trying to create a new career road or choose from multiple options, please use the career road navigator.
5. Always update your career. In the conclusion, we discussed five worrying long-term problems, which you can often use to challenge yourself.
How can we avoid being replaced by machines?
Where and how can I find a job?
How shall I allocate my time in the future?
Will I spend all my money?
How can work make me happier?
Importance of workplace fuel
Many people underestimate the length of their careers and run out of fuel. To push yourself through this long journey, you need a lot of workplace fuel.
A truly successful sustainable career is driven by fuel in the workplace. A smart career strategy should be to accumulate workplace fuels in your career, update them constantly, and use them wisely.
There are three main sources of this fuel: transferable skills, meaningful experiences and lasting relationships.
Fuel 1: portable skills
Transferable skills are all kinds of basic abilities you acquire and possess in your career. They are not only technical knowledge and industry terminology to help you complete your immediate work, but also the ability and foundation you can rely on when you change from one job to another, from one company to another, or even from one industry to another.
Problem-solving ability: When you are faced with a challenge and a blank sheet of paper, do you have one or two reliable methods to solve the problem?
Persuasive communication skills: It is a basic skill to present your opinions clearly and concisely, no matter whether you are communicating with customers, colleagues, friends or strangers.
Ability to complete tasks: Only those who can be brave and continue to output can truly stand out.
"Talent attraction": attract the best people and make them willing to work for you.
Ability to help and ask for help: successful givers give more than they get, and the chances of entering the most outstanding and happy ranks will be much greater than others.
Emotional quotient (EQ): EQ is your ability to understand and connect with other people's emotional states.
In addition to these six skills, the author also lists his favorite transferable skills, namely eye contact and shaking hands with others, searching for information and how to breathe (meditation).
No.2 fuel: a meaningful experience
The combination of meaningful experiences can not only make you a compound talent, but also make you steady in your career. New experiences will make you leave your comfort zone and build new professional skills.
Don't let your professional experience stay in a single way, be open. I have tried more than 30 different positions myself, and I can work in many different positions. These experiences enable me to face all kinds of complicated situations.
No.3 fuel: a lasting relationship
I suggest that everyone in your personal circle, such as superiors, customers, business partners and talents around you, can't fall behind.
Sociologist Charles Handy put forward a good hypothetical exercise: Imagine that when you are 40 years old, you will leave your job forever and start your own company. What would you do? This is a good exercise to test your autonomy.
Career needs to be built through clever investment in time. A sustainable fuel supply in the workplace requires patience and perseverance. Some people can become experts or "masters" who are proficient in a certain field, not only because of their talent, but also because of thousands of hours of study, experience and practice. How you spend time in your work and life has a far-reaching impact on your success and happiness.
Establish correct workplace thinking
1. Career length: subtract your current age from 62. The result is the number of years before your early retirement.
2. Time required to master a skill: How many hours does it take to achieve "mastery" in a certain aspect?
3. Percentage of personal wealth you can earn after 40 years old: What percentage of personal wealth can you earn after 40 years old? Most people's estimate is 60%. Young people tend to estimate a relatively small number, such as 40%. The real answer is actually 85%~90%. A person's personal wealth often reaches its peak around the age of 65, and their personal wealth at the age of 40 is only 10%~ 15% of that figure. The accumulation of personal wealth mostly happens after the age of 40.
4. Social currency: How many social network friends do you have? Not the more the better.
5. Number of supporters in the workplace: find 3-5 people who can really be called mentors.
Four major gold issues
Basically, you have to set goals for the next year every year and look back on the past year. The following four questions will help you finish this job.
Am I learning and growing? Do I have an impact on some people, my current company and even the whole society? Did I experience the fun? Did I get proper remuneration and create economic value?
At the end of the year, take a day to reflect on your efforts, progress and achievements in the past 12 months.
Next, for each question, rate yourself in the range of 10. When evaluating your academic performance, you can consider what new transferable skills, meaningful experiences and lasting relationships you have added. When evaluating influence, think about how much benefits your work has brought to customers, colleagues, the company and the whole society. Fun is a personal assessment. For you, work paradise or uncanny valley? As for rewards, remember not only to look at the basic salary, but also to measure the complete income, including basic salary, benefits, allowances, holidays, flexible working hours, reimbursement or subsidies, and possibly any changes in your accumulated ownership or shares.
Find your own sweet spot
Answer three questions:
What is your career ideal, or at least assume a goal you might want to achieve. What kind of workplace fuel do you have at present? What kind of workplace fuel is needed to realize this ultimate ideal?
You must be clear about your ideals, skills and choices, and be completely sure that your inferences and assumptions about the status quo are correct; In addition to the position, you also need to consider the work content and learning curve; Be prepared to bear pressure and take risks. In this process, it is normal to feel afraid. Then you can make a decision.
1 Three stages of career
The duration of a career is amazing, at least 45 years, and it is likely to be further extended in the future. It consists of three main stages, which last about 15 years respectively. These three stages are closely related. What you do in one stage may not only create opportunities for the next stage, but also bring bad consequences.
The first stage is a strong start.
The only goal is to lay a good foundation for the next two stages. Your learning curve is more important than your position and title. At this stage, we should lay a good career foundation and establish good early habits.
When you find your own long board and enthusiasm, it is time to establish good work habits. Spend enough time as early as possible to develop your skills, experience and interpersonal relationships.
Career strategy 1: an early form of using school time to reserve workplace fuel.
Transferable skills, meaningful experiences and interpersonal networks.
Step into the workplace strategy 2: make a job-seeking battle plan.
Step into the workplace strategy 3: actively participate in campus recruitment.
Step into the workplace strategy 4: Efficient online application.
Step into the workplace strategy five: make good use of your own relationship. Such as mentors, alumni, friends, parents, other family members, neighbors, etc. You can use them to help you understand the industries and positions you can choose.
Career strategy 6: Do some homework before meeting your contacts. The article of the other day may be helpful.
Step into the workplace strategy 7: be mentally prepared, the first job is hard to find.
Step into the workplace strategy 8: keep exploring.
At this stage, we should establish our own personal brand, become an expert in a certain field, learn efficient communication skills, leave a reliable impression in our work and life, seek more feedback and create greater value for ourselves.
In the second stage, anchor the sweet area and focus on the long board.
The primary goal of this stage is to find your own sweet spot, that is, the intersection of what you are good at, what you love and what the world needs. At this time, you should show yourself, make yourself stand out, and strive to walk on the most rewarding career path. You should focus on your long board and ignore your short board.
Master any skill through deliberate practice and become a top or first-class expert in a certain field.
Try to free your eyes from the small circle, constantly jump out of your comfort zone, and learn to make good choices at critical moments.
To expand influence and change from an executor to a leader, we must stand at a high enough height and overlook the overall situation with a strategic eye.
Advice from new managers 1: always pay attention to your appearance, attitude and behavior.
Advice to the new manager: express your vision concisely and repeatedly.
The new manager's suggestion 3: Choose the team members as soon as possible.
New manager's suggestion 4: Every meaningful business problem is best solved in a smaller team.
Advice to the new manager: act like a credible answer.
The new manager's suggestion 6: You don't need to know everything, but ask more people.
When your career is stagnant, you should learn to change your pace or change the battlefield.
You need to check your progress regularly, and the four professional values (learning, influence, fun and reward) are a good starting point.
The third stage is dedicated to achieving sustained influence.
Find a new and sustainable career path, which can last until the age of 60 or even 70. In the third stage, you have to complete three key tasks: complete succession planning, maintain relevance and light a new career fire for yourself.
Suggestion 1: Experiment and accept the challenge voluntarily.
Work hard in valuable positions, make more new attempts and try different roles and industries. That is, from "actor" to "consultant".
The important thing is not to manage your career, but to manage your learning curve. You should steep your learning curve, face up to difficulties bravely and take the initiative to accept challenges.
Recommendation 2: Start a business and open up new fields.
Recommendation 3: Manage the learning curve and keep it relevant.
Make plans to pass the torch of professional ability and proficiency to the next generation.
Recognize your strengths and hobbies objectively and clearly, keep your willingness to study and experiment until you find a new ideal, redefine your expectations, and become a member of the "positive wisdom economy".
1 Dealing with the conflict between work and life
The conflict between career and parenthood is inevitable, but it is not an option. You can try to find an employer who loves your family.
Set strict boundaries in work and life. I lacked this bottom line in my early work, which almost led to the collapse of my family. Fortunately, I realized this problem and switched to freelancing.
Manage your time and energy, especially energy management, and pay great attention to sleep, diet and exercise, so as to manage stress and live a good life.
When choosing a job, do more interesting things, don't live purely for business, it will make life boring.
How to deal with the workplace crisis
Everyone will encounter a crisis in the workplace and may be laid off or fired. Or miss a raise and promotion, and stagnate. The key is how to deal with it.
1, the first step should be to understand the problem clearly and objectively. Find out what the problem is.
2. Sometimes, the workplace crisis may be due to others' misunderstanding of your skills, goals or performance. You should try to prove your worth.
3. How to solve practical problems. It's time to face up to this problem. Recognizing the level of normal skills and performance, and then working in this direction, it is inevitable.
4. Anticipate and avoid dangers in the workplace. Always pay attention to the performance changes of companies, industries and individuals to avoid sudden attacks.
5. Learn to recover quickly from adversity
Find out your own values and engage in the career you are willing to devote yourself to.
Look for three things: what are you good at, what do you love and what does the world need? "
Improve the three elements and enjoy the happy work.
If we are destined to work harder and longer, to keep looking for income, and even to compete with machines, is there any happiness in our future work?
The answer is yes.
First, we should find out what can make us happy.
The core premise of happiness is that our happiness can be determined by three main factors: 50% of a person's happiness is determined by genes, 10% is determined by living environment, and the remaining 40% is determined by voluntary and positive behavior.
1. Our genetic fixed value. Lyubomirsky wrote: "The fixed value of happiness is similar to weight. Some people are born slim and can easily maintain their weight even if they don't deliberately lose weight. On the contrary, some people need to redouble their efforts to control their weight at the expected value. With a little slack, weighing scale's pointer will rebound immediately. "
Therefore, those with lower fixed happiness values must work harder to achieve and maintain their own happiness, while those with higher fixed happiness values are more likely to feel happy under similar conditions.
2. Living environment. Our living environment, including income, may not have as great an impact as we thought. Once material wealth and comfort reach a certain threshold, it seems that our living environment will not have much impact on happiness. In fact, some studies believe that very rich people are more anxious than ordinary people.
3. Active behavior. The remaining 40% happiness depends on our actions, that is, the voluntary and positive actions we take. This is the core of lyubomirsky's theory: although we can't change the fixed value of genes and the change of living environment will not have a lasting impact on happiness, we can improve and maintain happiness through positive behavior.
Lyubomirsky pointed out: "The secret of happiness naturally lies in this 40%. If we carefully observe happy people, we will find that they are not waiting to be satisfied. They will actively let good things happen; They pursue new knowledge, seek new achievements and control their thoughts and feelings. **
In short, if we take the initiative and work hard, it will have a great impact on our sense of happiness, far beyond the fixed values and living environment of super happiness. If an unhappy person wants to experience interest, enthusiasm, satisfaction, calmness and fun, he can promote these good things by learning the habits of happy people. "
"Happiness has a method" roughly describes 12 "strategies to improve happiness based on evidence and supported by scientific research". These include:
-Express gratitude;
-Fostering an optimistic attitude;
-Avoid overthinking and social comparison;
-do more good deeds;
-Maintain interpersonal relationships;
-Strategies for development cooperation;
-Learn to forgive;
-Increase the traffic experience;
-enjoy the fun of life;
-strive to achieve the goal;
-Believing in religion and seeking spiritual sustenance;
-Take care of yourself.
The author chooses three strategies and applies them to his work and career.
1. Increase the traffic experience.
In Flow: Psychology of Best Experience, the author describes flow as: "A person's skills are sufficient to meet the immediate challenges. At this time, people's energy is so concentrated that there is no extra attention to think about irrelevant things or worry about other problems. When this person's self-awareness disappears, the feeling of time will be distorted. " A person who is in a state of "flow" behaves as "acting in a seamless, unconscious and skilled way, and producing a feeling of flow in his behavior".
Experts believe that flow is a beneficial state and should be actively pursued. "In the research, we found that every popular behavior ... has such a * * * similarity: it brings a sense of exploration and a creativity to turn people into new reality. It will push this person's performance to a new height and bring his consciousness to a state that he never dreamed of before. " Lyubomirsky agrees: "In order to keep the flow, we must constantly test ourselves in more challenging activities ... We must expand our skills or find new opportunities to use them. This feeling is great, because it means that we are constantly striving, growing, learning and becoming stronger, more professional and more diverse. " (33)
2. Strive to achieve the goal.
Scientists claim that making clear plans really makes people happier. This is of great significance to how to plan your career. It is better to take action than to entertain foolish ideas. Firmly control everything you can influence. Spend at least one whole day every year thinking and formulating career strategies, evaluating the workplace, trying some assumptions, setting goals, constantly building and updating your workplace fuel, and monitoring your progress. You should always be in the exploration mode, waiting for the opportunity to appear, preparing for the exciting and uncertain future and enjoying the long journey.
3. express gratitude.
In the workplace, we all need gratitude. As bosses, we must also thank those who cooperate with us and work for us, because they have given us their talents, energy, enthusiasm and skills.