How long will we spend at work and how many hours will we spend working?
Well, according to a little bit of research that a friend of mine sent me – it showed 1/3 of our life will be working. Or put another way, 90,000 hours.
As a leadership and career coach one of the most common areas my clients work with me on is ‘what are my career options’.
If you are going to spend 90,000 hours doing something you hate then life is going to be a bit challenging. But getting into a career, a position, an environment where you are doing good work will surly be the place that most of us want to play in!
A quick question as I welcome you into our Career Blog today.
Are you ‘happy’ in your current job?
When I ask ‘happy’ I don’t mean that each and every single day you are jumping up and down with joy, we all know and appreciate that some days work is great and some days work is not so good. Take a general review of your current work and ask yourself the same question again.
Making choices in our life is generally hard for many of us, with choices comes thoughts, with thoughts comes confusion and with confusion comes the inability to act accordingly. Building, changing, adapting your career path can be extremely daunting, scary and even a question many don’t ever ask themselves. Add to this the Financial commitments, family commitments, life commitments its sometimes important to just take a step back from these and look to review yourself.
I liken these choices or options to an annual WOF (for those of you outside New Zealand reading this) a WOF is making sure your car meets current safety standards. No different to your career I feel, every year we get older, wiser and add new skills to our armer but is it actually helping us to achieve what we want to achieve?
When situations change, work patterns are altered or we lose our job how do we get back on the horse quickly. Who can help us and more importantly is the work we are looking to do actually needed? Over the past few months I have been coaching (45) professionals who have unfortunately been made redundant.
This work has been about, creating an up-to date CV, getting their LinkedIn profiles started or even up dated, preparing them for interviews as well as looking to put a rough plan in place have all been requirements.
It keeps me thinking that this work should not be done just when you have been made redundant or situations have changed, that the smart ones around us will look at this important work each and every year.
Many clients work with me every year to refresh these important aspects of their professional careers and also look to include relevant learnings/courses/programs etc into the mix. Ultimately these individuals will continue to progress their chosen careers and make sure the work they are doing or looking to take on is actually progressing themselves forwards.
Its times like these that the wonderful excitement and passion of my clients comes through – the focus and intent is gold and when we re-connect hearing about how things are progressing is such a good place to be.
Don’t wait to kick start this work – take it slowly but get started.
I recently worked with a client here in NZ who had been offered an internal promotion, this happened, just before Covid19 hit and she was feeling a little bit worried about the expectations that were going to be placed on her, so we put in plan some habits that would elevate those for her and allow her to shine. We looked at what was causing the thoughts and how things might look with different lenses on. We ended up on one key approach that felt genuine to her and speaking with her this week the sense of calmness was loud and clear – she felt very much in control and proud of the work she is now doing. A great outcome for a client who wanted to be in control of her career.
If you are looking to advance your career or kick start it following a change of circumstance then do get in touch with me book an appointment, I’d love to help you in your leadership and career.
Thank you for taking the time to read today’s career blog, for other blogs across leadership and careers you can visit our Blog library here. Each week since 2016 I have been writing on topics that will hopefully be of help to you and keep you progressing.
Look after yourself and each other,
Nick
Master Certified Executive Coach
Roud Career Coaching
+64 21 375 630
