Career Journey Pit-Stop
Y'all it's been a minute.
But I've got no time for pandemic musings today, I want to talk about tomorrow. I'm on the cusp of a pretty epic career change and it's got me thinking about journeys and destinations.
I'm a data guy and a KPI guy and folks like me aren't always the ones talking about woo woo stuff like journeys and destinations. But stick with me.
When I sat down to write a book about KPIs, I figured the most important thing was to get to the data. But the more I wrote and the more I thought about what I was writing, the more I realized what was most important. So the first chapter is all about missions. I start with some easily accessible missions, including Microsoft's from their website, and the American Red Cross's from their site. I wrote about how to break down those missions into something measurable.
What I think I've never dug into and what I'm faced with right now is: How do I write a personal career mission? How do I write something that, at it's core, describes what I want to give my time to?
I recently stepped away from my day job and am working right now to develop a coaching and consulting practice. My impulse, having had a job since I was somewhere in my mid-teens, is to take any and all work that comes my way. If I follow that impulse, I'm throwing metaphoric spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. In that version of my future, I'm reactive. Responding to the needs and requests that come my way.
Sounds exhausting.
So I sit at my desk at 10AM on a Tuesday realizing that I simultaneously have nothing to do and everything to do. And just like that I'm down in the data. I'm defining consulting packages and developing marking plans. I'm down in a project management software assigning tasks to myself and writing copy for a website launch.
This has gone on for about three weeks and it's remarkably (and not surprisingly) UN-inspiring.
I realized this morning that I was doing the thing I have advised so many others not to do. I was running down the track without spending a minute on the destination. I still don't (as of this writing) know where my destination is, but before I get any farther down the details, I will. Here are the questions I'm working on, and maybe these work for you:
What do I want to be true at the end of this year that isn't true now?
What work do I resonate with so strongly that I lose myself in it?
What work can I do that the world needs?
Those are start and I'll keep you posted. What are the questions that get you to your destination?
