Last week I had a really energizing phone conversation with one of my Career Clarity Campers, someone who has  jumped into the activities with both feet and is swimming joyfully in the experience.  One of the things I've told the Campers to do is to pay attention to their work experiences, to identify what inspires and energizes them and then to look at how they can bring more of that to their work.   Essentially this is asking people to work with more intention, rather than letting work happen to them.  This Camper has embraced the idea wholeheartedly, spending the first 30-40 minutes of his day thinking about what he wants to have happen, given the calls, appointments and goals he has for the day. For example, he's identified having more meaningful conversations as being an important value for him, so each day, he looks at how he can listen more carefully, dig deeper in discussions and provide really meaningful follow-up to people.  He also uses this  morning time to hone in on what's really important for him to get from his day. He's looking for "what's REALLY important?" and finding that frequently it's nurturing connections, building relationships and spending his time on helping people make a real difference.  He tells me that starting his day this way is energizing and inspiring and that the good results he's seeing are encouraging him to continue the practice even when that little voice inside him says he's should be jumping into email or some other more "productive" activity.  What's interesting to me is hearing how working with greater intentionality is creating greater intensity for him. He told me that he's "reconnecting with the pleasure of his work," even having entire days where his work felt more like leisure and fun, rather than something he's getting paid to do.  The tasks of his job have not changed. What is changing is HOW he does his work and, more importantly, how much of his true self he is bringing to that work. The more he focuses on what he wants from the experiences he's having and the more he approaches his work with an idea of creating a different experience, the more engaged and inspired he's feeling.   Essentially, the more intention and creation he brings to his daily work, the better it's feeling to him.  I've found for myself that working more intentionally and focusing each day on what I want to create in my work has great payoffs. Even on those days where I'm having to respond to what other people want from me, I try to bring my intentions for what I want to create to those interactions. It makes a difference.  So how intentionally are you working? How does working with intention change your experience of your work? 

Thanks to Hildy Gottleib over at Creating the Future, I found Hank Green's video on the Webb Telescope. Not that I care terribly much about the Webb Telescope. But I do care about the first minute of Hank's video, which you should watch first if you haven't seen it before. Here's what Hank says:  "There are two ways to make the world a better place. You can decrease the suck, and you can increase the awesome… And I do not want to live in a world where we only focus on suck and never think about awesome." I do not want to live in this world either. Every day I spend focused on fixing the suck is a day I end up wanting back. Rarely do I look around at the end of that time and think, "Damn. I'm glad I spent my day fixing the suck." Mostly I just want to curl up with a glass of wine and mindless TV, possibly take a bath to cleanse myself of the stench of the suck.  Unfortunately, for many of us, our jobs are nothing but endless cycles of fixing the suck. This may explain a lot about why we are so depressed and dispirited by our work. All we are doing is thinking about what sucks, why it sucks, who's responsible for how much it sucks, how it's never going to stop sucking, how all we are talking about is how much things suck, etc. Frankly, it sucks.  And here's the thing. I'm not even sure that we are truly able to decrease the suck by focusing on that.  The suck is like quicksand or a black hole. It just pulls you in and drains from your mind all memories or ideas of the awesome. When you are thinking about the suck, the awesome no longer exists. You end up spending your time moving between less and more sucky. I actually believe that the only way to decrease the suck is by increasing the awesome.  The awesome is inspiring. It shows you what can happen, rather than what can't. The more you work for the awesome, the better you feel. AND the better your work becomes. Striving for the awesome is building something. It's creation.  I spend a lot of time working with people who are feeling stuck or want something different for their careers. Often their unhappiness can be traced back to exactly how much time they are spending with the suck. Their goal is to find the awesome again.  So here's a simple career tip I'm trying to live by--if you want to change the world and feel better about what you're doing, increase the awesome. 

With my Career Clarity Camp, we're entering the home stretch and starting to integrate the lessons we've learned. One of the things we're working on this week is looking at the emotions we feel about the work we've been doing, which got me thinking about the power of emotions at work.  Emotions at Work One thing I've learned about work is that being "professional" often (usually?) means being unemotional. On a regular basis we are asked to check our emotions at the door, especially any negative emotions we may have like sadness, fear, anxiety, confusion, etc. But positive emotions, like joy, aren't often welcome at work either.  I think it's because emotions have a way of getting messy and "out of control." They are also distractions from just getting things done.   The other issue with emotions at work is that so often we are rushing to DO things that it's hard to notice what we are feeling in the first place. We are just dealing with the the next thing on our "To Do" lists and it's hard to stop for even a few seconds to reflect on what we may be feeling.   All of this blocking of emotions, though, takes a toll. Emotions aren't really amenable to blocking. They just go underground until they explode in some way we would prefer they hadn't. Or they coil up inside us, clogging our creativity and our connection to ourselves. This blockage, in turn, leads to boredom and apathy.  Working with Our Emotions It's unfortunate that we spend so much time keeping emotions out of our work because they can be some of the most valuable clues we have to work with. Noticing where I feel energized or inspired or where I feel frustrated or anxious can tell me a lot about what I want more of and what I want less of at work. My emotions show me where there are problems or issues I need to deal with--work relationships that aren't' working or tasks that need to be looked at more closely.  One thing I've encouraged the Career Clarity Campers to do is to make time in their days to pay attention to the emotions they're feeling as they go about their work. I've suggested that they stop once per hour or even 3-4 times a day to check in and ask themselves: What have I been doing? What activities have you been engaged in?  How do I feel about it? Note particularly the things you do that leave you feeling energized and interested. These may be things you want more of.  Who am I doing it with? See if there's something about the people you are working with or the conversations you are having that feels energizing to you. Or are you doing things alone? What does that tell you?   They then write down these experiences and their reactions and look for trends and themes over time.  Tuning in to your emotions this way can be a great 30-day experiment.  Paying attention in particular to the things that are inspiring or energizing so you can bring more of it into your work is also one of the best ways to increase the awesome. I've found, too, that when I focus on the emotions I'm feeling in a work day, I do a better job of connecting with people and with building richer relationships. I notice when an interaction feels particularly positive and I can acknowledge that with the person I'm talking to. This always creates an even deeper bond. I can also see where emotions like boredom or frustration are telling me that I need to revisit how I'm handling something. This often leads to more fruitful conversations on how I can revise what I'm doing.  Our emotions should not be left at the door when we go to work each day. Not only does that not work anyway, but our emotional lives are rich sources of learning and connection. They are our authentic selves communicating with us about our experiences and relationships. We need them to do our best work and to have conversations that matter.  So what role do your emotions play in your work life? Do you bring them with you to work or do you check them at the door?  ______________________________________________________________________ Sign up for my newsletter!  Each week you get additional career content, questions and links. 

Through a friend, I discovered the In Good Company blog and this excellent post on 5 tough questions entrepreneurs should be asking themselves. Reading through the questions, I thought they could easily be adapted to anyone, whether they work for themselves or for someone else, so here they are. Just replace "business" with "job" if you're working for someone else.   1: If you could wave a magic wand to instantly fix three things in your business, what would they be? (be honest, don’t just say "get more clients"…what do you KNOW is broken)* What prevents you from fixing these things on your own? 2: What three things would you stop doing for the business if you didn’t have to?* Why don’t you? What would make doing them better? 3: What are you doing only because you feel like you "should"?* What would happen if you didn’t? 4: What important thing do you never seem to have "time for"?* Why? What makes it hard to prioritize? 5: What have you given up for your business or to be an entrepreneur?* Are you OK with that sacrifice? How does answering these questions create movement for you? What new questions open up for you?  ______________________________________________________________________ I have another career visioning session coming up on February 21. It's a great opportunity for you to get a clearer picture of your career in just a few hours. More information and the sign-up form are here. 

Last week I wrote about increasing the awesome vs. decreasing the suck and how I think that the only way to decrease what sucks is by focusing on what's awesome. Since then I've been thinking a lot about how to increase the awesome in my work life--what is it that we can do to bring the awesome?  Here are three tips I came up with from noticing my own practice. . .  1. Tune into the emotions of Awesome.  The surest route to the Awesome, I'm finding, is to tune into my emotions. Whenever I feel curious, inspired, energized, hopeful, engaged, connected, and/or like I'm having fun, I know I'm accessing the Awesome. When I feel unmotivated, frustrated, irritated or apathetic, I'm most definitely living in the Suck.  Each day I'm trying to begin with attuning myself to the feelings I want to have during my work day, reminding myself about the feelings of the Awesome. I also set the intention of trying to notice my Awesome emotions throughout my day, acknowledging them to myself and others. It's been especially interesting to acknowledge a shift in energy to other people. They immediately know what I'm talking about and become even more energized, tuning into their own emotions of the Awesome and wanting more of that. I'm trying to be more purposeful in in doing this, as I find that this acknowledgement increases my chances of having Awesome converations (see below).  2. Ask Awesome Questions In the past 6 months, I've become increasingly interested in the power of questions to move me and the people I work with toward the Awesome. I'm firmly convinced that the questions we ask are at least as important as the answers. And I've found that asking Awesome questions actually is part of what increases our connection to and feelings of the Awesome.  Some of the questions that have been working for me: Why do I care about this situation? This reconnects me to purpose which connects me to Awesome.  What possibilities and learning do I see? Seeing challenges and problems leads me to the Suck. When I look at possibilities and learning, I find the Awesome. What do I want more of? When I tune into the emotions of the Awesome, I also notice what I'm doing at the time. Who am I with? What is happening? If possible, I will try to tune into the moment when the energy shifts from the Suck to the Awesome. Then I try to figure out how I can get more of whatever it was that created the Awesome. How can I inject it going forward?  If success was completely guaranteed, what bold steps would I take? This may be the surest route to the Awesome. Usually I find that what is keeping me in the Suck isn't that I don't know what to do. It's that I'm afraid to do it. Or at least to try. So asking this question leads me to take the bold steps. . . most of the time.  I've also been trying to find the "big questions" underneath the smaller ones. What is the REAL quest that I am on? I look for the forest, not the trees and often this leads me back to the Awesome.  3. Have Awesome Conversations Although the Awesome can sometimes be a solitary pursuit, most of the time it is not. Even if I'm going to do the work alone, having the right conversations can help me better articulate my vision of the Awesome. They can also help me connect to people and resources that help make the Awesome happen.  This year is my year of conversation and I'm finding that the more I seek out and lean into creating Awesome conversations, the better I feel and the better my work is.  To me, the hallmark of an Awesome conversation is that it generates Awesome emotions. If I'm feeling the energy of inspiration, hope, and possibility, then I know I'm having a conversation that will lead to the Awesome. If I'm feeling like I want to stab my own eye out, I know I'm mired in a conversation that supports the Suck.  Awesome conversations mean that I'm talking about what really matters. I'm engaging with the Awesome questions and I'm noticing and acknowledging the awesome emotions. Most importantly, I'm acting as a host, creating a space for the Awesomeness to occur, being open to what happens and giving up my pre-conceived ideas of how things should go.  I have found that some people are more amenable to the Awesome conversation than others. While I believe that everyone wants to have Awesome conversations, I'm not as skillful as I'd like to be in drawing people into those if they aren't at least halfway there. That's actually one of the areas I want to work on--how to help people who are really stuck in the Suck to find and access the Awesome.    So these are my 3 tips for increasing the Awesome. What are you doing to increase the Awesome at work? 

Although we don't discuss it much, one of the most powerful influences on our personal and professional development is our peer groups. The people with whom we engage in regular conversations and interactions shape the questions that we ask, the problems that we see, how we approach our work and our sense of identity as professionals. One thing I've been paying more attention to in the past year is the quality of my peer circles and the impact that my professional colleagues have on me. I started noticing that some people were really energizing and inspiring to be around, while other people tended to pull me down into the suck. Some people exposed me to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new questions and a focus on the awesome, while others seemed to see only the same old problems and no real solutions.  Since I started paying attention to my professional peer networks, I've started becoming more intentional about my connections. I've begun limiting the amount of time I spend engaging with people who can only focus on what sucks and have been actively seeking to expand my connections to people who want to work on creating what's awesome. This has had a profoundly positive influence on my work and my thinking. What I've realized, though, is that if we are not consciously thinking about what is going on with our peer networks, it's very easy to be pulled into a negative orbit. This is especially problematic if we are in a negative workplace and the majority of our professional interactions are with our co-workers. It becomes mission critical for us to find and connect with people who have a more positive perspective--those who want to work on building the awesome.  For me, connecting with positive peers has been a two-step process. First is noticing the influence that different people have on me. I pay attention to how I feel when I interact with them. Do I leave an interaction feeling excited and energized and ready to follow-up on something we've discussed? That's a person I want to connect to more.  The second thing I've been doing is looking for new people who share the qualities of those people who are currently in my network that have proven to be positive influences. Typically this means people who are curious, creative, focused on positive questions rather than on "problems," and who want to make a real difference. If I see people like this in a LinkedIn Group or some other on-line network, I try to make a special effort to reach out to them. I'm also intentionally looking for these connections in face-to-face interactions and purposely seeking them out to connect. I even tell them WHY I want to connect--because I see and value these qualities, which automatically improves the connection.  Throughout all of this, I've also tried to be more aware of how I am connecting to other people--am I being the change I'm looking for in my world? This shift has forced me to look at the ways in which I'm negative, problem-focused, uninspiring, etc. I have had to look at how I can shift my own habits of interaction to be a positive peer, rather than a negative one.  This process of forming positive peer networks and looking at my own actions as a peer has been one of the more important professional development practices I've engaged in this year.  How are you forming the connections that are going to be most supportive for you? And how are you looking at your own behavior in this process?  ______________________________________________________________________ Feeling stuck? I'm running another 7-Day Getting Unstuck session starting February 27. Details and sign-up information are here.  

I was emailing with a graduate of my Getting Unstuck course about her ongoing progress since the class ended and we were discussing the issue of living our dreams. What came up is the tension between staying on our own path of exploration and discovery and getting involved in helping others realize their dreams. This is a tension I see all the time, especially with people who are "helper" types, constantly on the look-out for ways to nurture and support the people around them. This is what happens. As we work to implement our vision for our careers, we inevitably meet and connect with people who are working on their own career dreams. Sometimes in those connections, we will find people whose dreams intersect with our own; they are pursuing a path that is similar to ours or they need our help to create their dreams.  For people who like to support and help others, this is often a difficult moment. They see someone who could use their help and they are drawn to "fix" things or to own more of the other person's career dream than is healthy or necessary. They begin focusing on ways to help their fellow traveler and they lose focus on what they want to explore and make happen in their own lives.  If helping another person realize their career dreams also makes your dreams come true, then by all means, go for it. You have found a situation where you can help each other travel on the same path.  Often this is not the case though. Helping someone on their path is merely a distraction from us following our own. Sometimes it is even a convenient excuse for not creating our career vision--we are so busy being helping and nurturing other people, how could we possibly have time for our own dreams?  One thing I think we need to examine as part of ongoing professional development is the extent to which we may be expending energy and creativity on behalf of other people in our lives. How much of how we are living our lives is in support of someone else's goals, rather than a healthy expression of our own? This includes putting all of our energy into the goals of the company or organization where we work, rather than into our own development.  This is not to say that we should be selfish, looking out only for ourselves. But we need to seek balance, making sure that we are not sacrificing what we want in order to support everyone else.  The next time you're feeling stuck or unhappy in your career, take a look at how you may be supporting other people's dreams at the expense of your own. Try to find a way to get more balance and to take back your own vision. It can work wonders, I've found.   ______________________________________________________________________ Are you looking for a way to get support and more accountability in achieving your career goals? I'm running a bi-weekly Virtual Career Clarity Circle starting on February 27 that may be just what you need. Details and sign-up information are here. 

"If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking."                           -Buddhist Proverb Conventional career wisdom advises that we should spend time knowing exactly where want to go and then take steps to get there. This wisdom assumes that there is some clear destination (a job) with a clear path of preparation that will take us to that destination. Our goal, then, is to figure out which destination feels best to us and then to follow the path toward that destination. This wisdom is outdated though. It doesn't work for the majority of people and it doesn't work for the world we now live in.  When jobs were fixed quantities and career paths were clearly defined, then figuring out what you wanted to be when you grew up and preparing for that job made sense. But we now live in a world where careers are increasingly fluid and jobs are becoming more amorphous, as much about "other duties as assigned" as the other tasks that appear in a job description. Work is moving fast and we can't anticipate where the next opportunities will be. The paths are becoming less and less clear and the destinations can vanish almost as soon as we arrive at them. I know tons of people who prepared for specific jobs, only to find that then they were finished with their preparation, the jobs were gone. It's like preparing for a trip, traveling to your dream city and then finding that you're blocked at the entrance and can't get in. Or that the city has vanished altogether.  I've also found that focusing too rigidily on a particular career destination--a specific job--can be paralyzing for many people. They become fixated on picking the "right" path and doing all the "right" things to follow that path. They take endless career assessments and beat themselves up over their inability to decide where they want to go. They become less able to imagine other possibilities because their minds go round and round on the same well-worn grooves of what they might do. The problem is, they have made themselves so fearful of making the "wrong" move, they don't move at all! They remain frozen in place, trying ot make up their minds about where they should go. But real career growth only occurs when we start taking steps towards what we want. We need the experiences to tell us what does and doesn't work for us. Each of these experiences helps us make micro-adjustments in the path we are on. We move or we stand still. Those are our two choices.  Direction-Based Career Planning We need a new notion of career planning, one that focuses on direction more than destination. "Direction-based career planning" means:  We know our gifts and the skills we want to use and we work on developing those skills. We build on our strengths, not necessarily with any particular job in mind. Developing ourselves in the direction of what we love and what we're good at is the essence of "direction-based planning."  We are alert to opportunities where we can use our skills in different contexts. We are creative and flexible and open. We create our own jobs.  We do not wait for a destination to reveal itself to us before we move forward. This is a sure road to paralysis. Instead, we take daily steps in the direction we want to go. We give ourselves what we want more of, knowing that this is moving us toward the work that we want to do, even when the destination itself is unclear.  We "fail forward," being willing to experiment and try things out, recognizing that it's the experiences themselves and what we learn from them that will propel us forward. Even if things don't work out in that particular moment, it's OK because it's all taking us in the general direction we want to go.   Although I think destination can be a good thing for some jobs and some people, I think that for many of us, direction is the best way for us to move forward. We need to let go of having a fixed destination before we can start the journey. We need to just figure out the basic direction we want to go in and start walking. . .  ____________________________________________________________________ Feeling stuck? I'm running another 7-Day Getting Unstuck session starting February 27. Details and sign-up information are here.  

Throughout my working life, I've encountered people who made me think, "Kill me if I ever start acting and thinking that way." Generally these are people who are bitter and angry about their work, or who are so disengaged as to be practically dead. While I most notice those people who are aggressive about their career unhappiness, there are plenty of other people who simply disappear, I guess hoping to escape notice as their souls slowly shrivel up.  At times, I've felt myself start to go down that road of deep unhappiness and pessimism. I see mostly problems, not possibilities and I focus on the suck, not the awesome. When my snark quotient goes way up and I find myself complaining constantly, I know that an attitude change is in order.  As I continue on my journey to be more mindful and to engage in positive professional development, I find myself wanting to be more of a career inspiration, rather than a cautionary tale. I don't want people to walk away from interactions with me and think, "Please don't let me turn out that way. . . "  In that vein, these 18 Ways to Inspire Everyone Around You gave me some good food for thought. Some of my favorites: Be authentic and true to yourself. Express your enthusiasm. Care about people.  Make people feel good about themselves.  Articulate what everyone else is thinking.  Share lessons from your successes and failures. Help people heal--instead of judging people by their past, stand by them and help repair their future.  These aren't always easy for me to do, but I'm committed to the idea of being the inspiration I want to see in the world.  How do you inspire others? What has inspired you?  ______________________________________________________________________ Are you looking for a way to get support and more accountability in achieving your career goals? I'm running a bi-weekly Virtual Career Clarity Circle starting on February 27 that may be just what you need. Details and sign-up information are here. 

Last night I did an Image Center session with a friend who is going through my Getting Unstuck course. I had her do two images--one that shows where she is now and one that shows where she'd like to be.  Here's the image for where she is now: And here's the image for where she wants to be: It wasn't hard to figure out why she feels stuck. She has too much going on! That first image is just an explosion, radiating out from the explosion of fireworks in the middle. She's being pulled in 50 different directions and has a hard time putting focus into just a few of the most important places.  Working with my friend reminded me that being stuck comes in two different varieties and that it can be helpful to know which is your personal brand of "stuckness."  Diagnosing Your "Stuck" In my experience, there are two distinct types of "stuck"--the stuckness of the over-thinker and the stuckness of the over-doer.  Are You An Over-Thinker? The first type of stuck is the muddy slog of inertia that is the domain of the over-thinker. Often (but not always) these are the introverts who are naturally drawn to thinking before acting. When these people are stuck, it's because they are so busy worrying about making the "right" move, they make no moves at all. They are the perfectionists and the worriers, the people who need to do just one more piece of research or talk to just one more person before they feel comfortable making their next move. But somehow they never actually move. They are stuck in the reflection part of the Act/Reflect cycle.  Or Are You an Over-Doer?  The other version of "stuck" is where my friend is at. It's the obsessive do-er's type of stuck. These are often the more extroverted types who thrive on activity and being in the outer world.  In this brand of stuckness, I find people who are constantly moving, taking no time to reflect on what they are doing or why. Action is what counts and they have a hard time creating the space for reflection so that their actions are more intentional and in alignment with what they want. These people are stuck in the action part of Act/Reflect.  When you're stuck, it's helpful to try to figure out which camp you fall into because treating your stuckness will depend on whether you're an over-thinker or  an over-doer. Your stuckness is really an imbalance in the Act/Reflect cycle.  Treating Your "Stuck"  While both over-thinkers and over-doers can benefit from doing some de-cluttering, moving out of stuck is essentially a different process for each type. The over-thinkers need more action and the over-doers need more reflection.  Over-Thinkers If you're an over-thinker, then the way to get out of "stuck" is by bringing more action into your life. Over-thinkers need to make a commitment to just doing things, rather than thinking about doing something. And that action cannot be doing one more bit of research or asking one more person what you should do. It has to be action that is in alignment with your vision of where you want to go and that is designed to actually move you in that direction. You need to experiment with different identities and trust the mess that comes with action. You have to let go of the need to do things perfectly and just embrace doing anything at all.  Over-Doers Over-doers have a different task. You need to create space for yourself for more reflection so you can be more intentional about what you are doing and why you are doing it. You may need to start saying "no" more often and streamlining your life to make room for more thinking. Try incorporating some reflection rituals  to create a reflection habit. Your task is to put some real intention and focus behind your actions, rather than being caught in an endless loop of mindless activity that doesn't really go anywhere. Embrace your power to do, but put some mindfulness behind it.    Being "stuck" is really about imbalance--choosing either reflection or action at the expense of the other part of the cycle. To get unstuck,  you have to restore balance to the cycle of Act/Reflect. Knowing your own tendencies towards one or the other can help you quickly figure out how to get moving when you find yourself stuck in one place.   The next time you feel stuck, consider whether your stuckness is a result of over-thinking or over-doing and then look at what you can do to restore the balance.  ____________________________________________________________________ If you need help getting unstuck, you might want to try one of my Career Clarity Image Center session packages. We can explore what's keeping you stuck, where you want to go and how you can get there.   

As I dive ever deeper into the rabbit hole of what I call Positive Professional Development, I keep thinking about how to harness what's positive in our lives, rather than spending so much time with the negative. How do you increase the awesome?  Today I was reading this blog post on hopeful trends for 2012 and it got me thinking about how to build a career on hopeful trends--what would it look like if we did that?  A few ideas that came to mind. . .  Start (or Join) a Worker Co-Op--Worker co-ops are companies owned by their employees and we're seeing a rise in their numbers.  According to this article, "some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions." Engage in Social Enterprise--"A social enterprise is an organization or venture that achieves its primary social or environmental mission using business methods. The social needs addressed by social enterprises and the business models they use are as diverse as human ingenuity. Social enterprises build a more just, sustainable world by applying market-based strategies to today's social problems." Think Local/Sustainable--This PBS documentary popped up in my Netflix recommendations the other night and it's a fantastic description of the kind of economy we could be building that focuses on creating vibrant local/sustainable communities. It transforms your sense of what's possible and how work coud fit into that. (As a side note, it also has great info on time-banking, which is a way for us to share our talents in a sort of barter arrangement. I love time-banking values, too. ) I know there must be more, but these are the three that come to mind for me.   What other hopeful trends can we look to for building our careers? 

Last week I wrote about how to diagnose and treat your career stuck. This morning I was catching up on my Google Reader and came across this article on 10 Psychnological Keys to Job Satisfaction that I think offers some additional information for our use.   First, here are the 10 keys: Little hassles Perception of fair pay Achievment Feedback Complexity and Variety Control Organizational Support Work/Home overflow Job "Honeymoons and Hangovers" How easily satisfied are you? To use them, I would suggest taking a look at your current career situation and getting a better understanding of how one or more of these factors may be playing into your job satisfaction. This can give you specific information to focus on in devising experiments to get yourself out of the stuck rut.  For example, in looking at your situation, you may find that you're dealing with a combination of minimal variety, a sense that you aren't really achieving anything that matters and a lack of control over your work and/or your work environment. Armed with this knowledge, you can start to look for experiments you might be able to run that will help you move in a more positive direction. This is where I think that the Total Leadership model can be very helpful.  Getting specific can also help you focus your experiments in the places likely to give you the most "bang for your buck." You can be more purposeful and intentional in your actions. This can go a long way toward getting rid of the stuck. 

This morning I ran across an excellent post by Penelope Trunk on New Ways to Find a New Job. She began with what I think is probably the most important piece of career advice I could ever give you: When you see someone who has a career you want, it’s a safe bet that they spent the majority of their career clearly defining themselves and then differentiating themselves from all the other people who defined themselves the same way. Self-knowledge is a huge career tool, but most people find it onerous and try to skip it. The problem with skipping over self-knowledge is that people hit a career ceiling, not because someone put it on top of them - we put it on top of ourselves by not knowing who we are. A few points here. . . .  First, most people see developing knowledge of themselves, their strengths, etc. as a difficult job that they'd rather avoid. Sometimes they want to avoid it because they just don't want to know the answers. But more often they see it as somehow "frivolous," less important than the tasks at hand. Knowing yourself is seen as so much navel-gazing when there's more important work to be done.  But as Penelope points out, when you skip the self-knowledge step, you run into all of these self-imposed limits. You try to do work for which you are not well-suited, to fit your round self into that square hole. Or you are completely unaware of the beliefs you have about yourself and your capacities, so you continually undershoot and let opportunities pass you by because you're afraid to own your awesomeness.   When I begin career counseling with people, I always start with the self-knowledge piece and find that most of the time, this is where people resist me the most. They want to start talking about what jobs interest them or what the market is looking for. They don't want to go inside and do the difficult work of figuring out what they have to offer and where their passions are.  The other piece that is important in what Penelope says is the idea that we have to differentiate ourselves from the thousands of other people who do what we do. We are all unique snowflakes, but the problem is we don't take the time to really look at the ways in which we are unique. We keep focusing on our snowflake qualities and all other people see is that we're snow, like everyone else.  It's only through doing the ongoing and arduous work of looking at who we REALLY are that we are able to appreciate, refine and put out into the world those qualities that make each of us different. We have to keep asking ourselves, "what is unique about how I do what I do? How can I build on that?"  Self-knowledge is a critical component of career and professional development, but it's something that most of us shy away from doing. Then we are disappointed when we do not progress in our careers as we'd like to.  If we want to find success, we have to be willing to take a good hard look at ourselves on a regular basis. Self-knowledge is the key to finding the right work and to making ourselves uniquely suited to do that work.  Are you ready to buckle down and know yourself? 

A blog post this morning by Walter McKenzie got me thinking about career behavior--more specifically do we approach people with a "what's in it for me?" mentality or do we look beyond transactions? Here's Walter's take on an experience he had recently: In terminal one at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, right across from Chili’s, is a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory shop, where they have a standing offer that you can buy three caramel apples and get a fourth one free. The apples are fresh and dipped daily and are a tempting treat, but for many solo travelers it’s not possible to grab four caramel apples and run easily. One traveler  ahead of me in line bought one caramel apple and ran off to his gate to catch his flight. Another bought the four caramel apples and offered three to the next three of us in line she didn’t even know, just so she could get hers free. We gladly took her up on her offer, and as she went on her way with our "thank yous" hanging in the air the traveler who had been standing right behind me commented what silliness it was for her to pay triple the price for the one apple she received. I walked off processing his cynical comment. Mathematically he was right, of course. As transactions go, she had paid for three but she was only enjoying one. In her mind, though, she had gotten a free caramel apple and showed a kindness to three fellow travelers in the process. I guess if you really wanted to be mathematically faithful to the buy-three-get-one-free offer, you could have sold the three extra apples to recoup your purchase price. But who has time in a busy airport to try selling freshly made snacks in the middle of the terminal? No, you are most likely going to buy one or buy four for the price of three and not worry about the cost whether you plan on keeping them all for yourself or giving some away. But the distinction is an important one. If you were a player in this scene, would you be stuck on the transaction, or would you be comfortable thinking beyond the transaction and sharing an unexpected kindness with three strangers? Your answer has implications beyond your pocketbook. As someone who works for herself, I have to ask every day "Is this activity bringing value?" If it's not, then I need to re-think it because I can't afford to engage in a lot of useless work. But the question becomes, "what is a valuable activity?" Is it something that I receive payment for or some other direct benefit? That's a transactional approach--I will do something because I see an immediate benefit or direct payoff. A lot of people operate that way, but I can't.  I believe in paying things forward and in sharing as much as I can.That's why if I have work that I think would benefit a larger audience, I put it online here or on my portfolio. It's why I'm active in LinkedIn groups and other places because I like keeping the information and resources flowing.   I've had people ask me in workshops if I worry about people "stealing" my work. Not at all. I believe that creativity is something that we should share with other people--it's energy that needs to keep moving and if we try to hold it to ourselves, then we will stifle our own ability to keep creating. I also believe that we each have gifts to give and that one of our goals as humans should be to find and share those gifts with other people. Whether I get something in return is immaterial. The nature of a gift is that there are no strings attached.  A few months ago, I wrote about the economic monoculture we are currently living in and how it pushes us to see human interactions through an economic, transactional prism. Everything we do is evaluated based on its "economic rationality," including it's ability to give us some direct benefit. I find this to be a soulless, sad way to live. Not that I can't get caught up in this thinking, but when I do, it's a quick trip into cynicism and unhappiness.  For me, what I do can't be about transactions. It's more about who and how I want to be in the world. Do I want to embody an ethos of "what's in it for me"?  Or do I want to be someone more generous and relational, someone who values other people simply for who they are not for what they can do for me?  I'm not sure where this post is taking me. Consider it a sort of meditation on the way I want to live my life. I aspire to be someone who goes beyond transactions, especially in my work.  I want to be the sort of person who gladly buys four caramel apples and gives three away in line to strangers in an airport, happy in the knowledge that I have put a gift out into the world and kept that spirit of generosity and creativity moving. 

Long hours. . .  are often more about proving something to ourselves than actually getting stuff done. --Jessica Stillman, Why Working More than 40 Hours a Week is Useless Over the past few years, I've come to realize that I have about 8-9 hours of work in me per day. That's it. Occasionally, if I'm really engrossed in a project, I can push for more, but usually I pay for that later with needing 4-5 hour work days that don't require a lot of mental energy.  There was a time when I felt like this was problematic. After all, I work for myself and true entrepreneurs are all about the 60 hour work weeks. Anything less suggests that you aren't that committed to your work. So I would dutifully sit at my desk for 10-12 hour stretches of time, feeling like anything less was "not being serious" about what I do. But here's the problem I observed--no matter how long I actually sat at my desk, I still didn't really do work past about 8 hours. The rest of my "work time" was largely swallowed up by mindless web surfing that always began as a "5-minute break" and ended two hours later with me wondering where the time had gone. It could also be chewed up in social conversations and shuffling of papers as I tried to figure out where I needed to go next.  What I came to realize is that working a 55+ week was really a myth. I wasn't doing it. I was just thinking that I was because it was important to my identity that I be seen as "hardworking," which I defined by the number of hours I sat at my desk. Somehow this made me feel important to always be able to report to people I was "busy," and "stressed" and "overworked."  In working with people on their career and professional development, I've seen that this issue of time--or more accurately our perception that we don't have enough of it --is one of the greatest barriers to growth and development. We have bought into the idea that our worth is measured by how many hours a day or a week we are "working," and because this notion is so important to us, we cling tightly to the fact that we are "too busy," without even looking at whether or not this is really true. Laura Vanderkam in a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal reminds us that how we spend our time is a choice and that saying we are "too busy" removes from us the burden of making those choices. When we are "too busy," we can act as though our time is something out of our control, rather than something we can choose to spend in different ways. Aside from asking us to look at how we are REALLY spending our time (a very worthwhile activity), she makes the case for us to change our language around time so that we better understand the choces we are making: Instead of saying "I don't have time" try saying "it's not a priority," and see how that feels. Often, that's a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don't want to. But other things are harder. Try it: "I'm not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it's not a priority." "I don't go to the doctor because my health is not a priority." If these phrases don't sit well, that's the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don't like how we're spending an hour, we can choose differently. To this list I would add, "I'm not going to spend time on figuring out what I want do to next because that's not a priority." Or "I'm not going to take an hour a day for my own growth and development because that's not a priority. Watching television is a bigger priority to me." When we say that we don't have time for our own growth and development, what we are really saying is that it's not a priority. We are choosing to spend time on other activities that somehow seem more important. That's OK, but we should be intentional about that, reminding ourselves that we are choosing one activity over another.  For me, what I've realized is that growth and development, time for personal projects and time with my family and friends are important to me--important enough for me to give up the ego stroke I used to get from perceiving myself as "hardworking," because I sat at my desk for 12 hours a day. It feels better to me to say that other things are on my priority list too. Some days I back slide. The culture of work as measured in hours is a hard one to resist. But most of the time I'm clear. And it feels a lot better than it did before.  So what are your priorities? How are you choosing to spend your time? 

Rosetta Thurman has long been one of my favorite bloggers--I've been reading her blog since she began in 2007. Today she has a 5-year anniversary post (Congrats, Rosetta!) that really resonated for me. It's about taking responsibility for what you love and what happens when you do: What I really want to say is that when you take responsibility for what you love and begin to show up with your unique gifts and talents, magic happens. People start to support you and help you in your quest to do meaningful work. You begin to see new possibilities for changing the world in your own way - whether that’s through writing or teaching or making art or feeding the homeless or taking care of babies or preserving the environment or making sure that we all have affordable healthcare. Here's what gets me about Rosetta's post. It's about taking responsibility for our passions and gifts. Do you hear that? Taking responsibility.  I've written before about the impact that our career stories and frames have on our thinking. For many of us, our passions and gifts are either completely unacknowledged (at worst) or we see them as being "impractical" and somehow less important. As a result, we will pay little attention to those gifts. We don't call attention to them or nurture them. If they somehow get in the way of the "real work," we will actively do what we can to shut them down. There's no room for them so we need to push them aside.  How would our thinking and approach to our gifts change if we saw ourselves as having a responsibility to bring them into the world, to nurture and grow them? What if I felt irresponsible when I pushed my gifts aside or did work that didn't make the most of what I bring to the world? What if my REAL responsibility wasn't to fit in to what everyone else wants from me, but to, instead, be clear about my own gifts and do what I could to nurture and express them? What a different world THAT might be. . .   Try an experiment. Ask yourself how your thinking about yourself shifts when you see yourself as taking responsible for your passions and gifts, really owning them. How would it change how you see yourself? What would you do differently? 

Long-time readers of this blog know that I am a fervent advocate of the "Act/Reflect" cycle of career and professional development. And I know that failure to deal with both sides of this equation is one of your surest routes to stuck.  Yesterday I stumbled across this article on the Harvard Business Review Blog on what to do when you don't know what to do. Boy, did it resonate! Career change is all about dealing with career uncertainty. We know we want something different, but we aren't sure what is going to happen if we pursue it. The future is a scary thing and standing still feels safer than moving if we aren't sure what will happen next.  Here's one thing I know for sure about standing still though. You don't actually get anywhere when you do that. If life is a journey (and I think it is), then standing still is the best way for you to miss what your life has to offer. At the end, all you'll be able to say is that you stood your ground.  So back to that HBR article, which points to a method for moving forward that will sound familiar if you've been playing along here on The Bamboo Project:  1. Start with desire. You find/think of something you want. You don't need a lot of passion, you only need sufficient desire to get started. ("I really want to start a restaurant, but I haven't a clue if I will ever be able to open one.") 2. Take a smart step as quickly as you can toward your goal. What's a smart step? It's one where you act quickly with the means at hand. What you know, who you know, and anything else that's available. ("I know a great chef, and if I beg all my family and friends to back me, I might have enough money to open a place.") You make sure that step is never going to cost more than it would be acceptable to you to lose should things not work out. And you bring others along to acquire more resources, spread the risk and confirm the quality of your idea. 3. Reflect and build on what you have learned from taking that step. You need to do that because every time you act, reality changes. Sometimes the step you take gets you nearer to what you want ("I should be able to afford something just outside of downtown"); sometimes what you want changes ("It looks likes there are an awful lot of Italian restaurants nearby. We are going to have to rethink our menu.") If you pay attention, you always learn something. So after you act, ask: Did those actions get you closer to your goal? ("Yes. It looks like I will be able to open a restaurant.") Do you need additional resources to draw even closer? ("Yes. I'll need to find another chef. The one I know can only do Italian.") Do you still want to obtain your objective? ("Yes.") 4. Repeat. Act. Learn. Build. Repeat. This is how successful serial entrepreneurs conquer uncertainty. What works for them will work for all of us. A couple of points. . .  First, notice that your desire doesn't have to be a burning passion. It just needs to be enough to get you moving. Quit spending time worrying about finding that EXACT THING that is going to be your be-all/end-all. Let curiosity be your guide. You need just enough desire to care to do something--and no more than that. Think of these steps as sparks that may or may not ignite a fire. Remember that you can't build a roaring blaze without igniting the kindling first.  That "smart step" you take--notice that you take it with what you have at hand. You don't wait until conditions are perfect or you have every possible bit of information. That's a good way to stand still. Work with what you have and see where that takes you. And notice that you should bring others along with you. That's a good role for your positive peer network.  Do not--DO NOT--skip the reflection step. You need it, to catch your breath and to figure out where to go next and how to get there. At the same time, don't get stuck there. Don't use it as an excuse to stop moving again. Make sure you go to step 4--the Repeat step.  Believe me, I get that careers are scary, uncertain things these days. But life is scary and uncertain. We can choose to meet it and move forward or we can sit down on the path and refuse to go anywhere. I vote for keeping it moving. . .   

For the past several months, I've been advising  the clients I work with to use a career journal to record and explore their ideas about the work they are doing, what inspires and drives them and what they want to experiment with in their work lives.  I've also been telling people to quit thinking and start doing--to experiment and then reflect on what happens. And then devise new experiments to keep moving forward.  Other advice I've given:  Use positive questions to explore what you want more of, rather than negative questions designed to "solve problems."  Seek out and nurture "the awesome". Make new connections and have new conversations as a way of fertilizing career seeds.  I'm sure there's more, but these are the ones that come to mind.  Last night, I was feeling a little adrift about where I want to go next--where to focus my attention. And I realized that all this advice I've been giving? I haven't been taking it myself. And (surprise!) now I'm feeling a little lost.  There's an adage in counseling that says that when you hear yourself giving advice to someone else, often that's the very advice you need to be taking yourself. Basically, physician, heal thyself.  So this blog post serves two purposes--one, to remind me that my career works best when I'm taking my own advice. And two, to remind you that when you hear yourself telling other people what to do, you might want to start asking if this is advice that you yourself should be taking. . . 

A post from Chris Brogan has me thinking this morning:  Jacqueline brought me iced coffee a few weeks ago, and I commented that it tasted especially delicious. She said, "I used two sugars instead of one or none, the way you usually say you like it." As is often the case with me, I ended up thinking about a bit more than how many sugars I take in my coffee. The truth is, I wasn’t really being honest with myself. I can say I prefer my coffee black, but what I was really saying was, "I know that I’m supposed to have it black." I prefer my coffee with two sugars. It’s much nicer that way. Healthier? No. But I have to be where I am. Maybe it’s a matter of having it sometimes with sugar and sometimes black. One thing I've noticed in myself and in the people I work with is how often we lie to ourselves. In Chris's case, he was telling himself that he "prefers" black coffee, when the reality is that he prefers sugar; he just thinks he should prefer black coffee because it's better for him.  One way we lie to ourselves is through our "shoulds." I should be happy with my work, so I will ignore the reality that I'm not. As if denying reality is an effective method for dealing with our lives.  Another way we lie to ourselves is by saying that something is beyond our power to change. I hear this all the time. "I can't quit my job" or "I can't take that responsibility."  That's not true. Just about everything is within our power to change. The bigger issue is whether or not we can or want to live with the consequences of those changes. There's a big difference between saying "I can't do something" and "I choose not do something because I don't want to experience what I think are the likely consequences." The former makes us a victim. The latter says we are making an informed choice.  One of the reasons we lie to ourselves is because we don't want to be kind to ourselves. We find reality unacceptable, so the it feels like the easiest way to deal with an unacceptable reality is to deny it. But denying reality is one of the best ways for us to stay stuck. We'd be better off exploring and accepting our reality and learning how to be kind to ourselves in the process. No need to start berating ourselves for being whereever we find ourselves. Just accept that we are here and figure out the next step to move forward.  One sure way to explore reality and stop telling ourselves lies is to allow ourselves to feel the emotions that go with our experiences. If I allow myself to feel my responses to what I'm experiencing at work, my emotions can start to help me better understand the reality of where I'm at. At the least I can get clearer about how I'm responding to what's going on, which is half the battle in starting to tell ourselves the truth of our lives.  I know that for me, I deny reality when I want to protect myself from having to make painful or difficult decisions. I don't want to take risks or I don't want to deal with the potential fall out of changed circumstances.  But all that denial does is prolong the inevitable. Eventually, reality will intrude, often in huge ways that force my hand and have far greater consequences than if I'd just accepted reality earlier and done what I needed to do to address it.  I think that part of effectively managing our careers is starting to be scrupulously honest with ourselves. Where are the places that we need to stop denying the reality? What would happen if we stopped doing this? It can be hard to stop lying to ourselves, but ultimately it's liberating. Even if the changes you have to make are difficult or challenging, you also feel a peculiar energy because deep down you know you are dealing with what is, not what you wish it would be. Your body and mind know when you've finally given in and are working from truth.  So what lies do you need to stop telling yourself? How do your options change when you start telling the truth?   

To me, the most energizing questions are those that involve people's values, hopes and ideals--questions that relate to something that's larger than them where they can connect and contribute. People don't have a lot of energy around questions that are about removing pain."                                 --Verna Allee A lot of the work I do with people ends up being around removing pain. There's a problem to be solved or something to be improved or they are at a career crossroads and need to get out--NOW! What I find most challenging in these situations is helping people find the energy to actually do something about the issues they are facing. It's easy to sink into the morass and lethargy that problems seem to generate. Negativity breeds complacency I've found and a kind of learned helplessness that is difficult to escape.  One of the reasons that I've been working so much on asking more powerful questions is because I've seen what happens when we can shift from questions that remove pain to questions that generate possibilities and connection. What we focus on grows, so the more we can ask questions that engage our hopes, dreams and values, the more likely we are to create forward movement. The more I can engage around hopes and possibilities, the better my ability to move toward what I want.  But our world seems to be geared toward pain removal, so it is a daily battle to ask ourselves different questions. Two strategies I've found that help are these.  Follow the energy. The surest route to the right questions is monitoring my own responses and how others seem to be responding as well. If a question is asked and you can feel the collective (usually silent) groan, then you know that most likely you are in a "pain removal" situation. I also find that when the answers or follow-up questions seem to focus on irrelevant details or more complaints, this is another sign that we're focusing on pain, not possibility.  Ask yourself "Is this a pain removal question?"--The more direct route is to evaluate questions and ask yourself if they are about removing pain. This is particularly helpful in the career change realm where I've found that people are likely to focus on how they can escape from a bad situation rather than run toward a good one.  Pain questions are about escape, not possibility. Pay attention to how your question points you toward a positive future rather than away from a bad present. Don't ask "How can I get out of this?" Do ask, "What do I want to move toward?"  I'm finding that the more vigilant I am about the questions I'm asking, the better my outcomes. When I feel stuck, often it's because I'm asking the wrong questions--questions that focus on removing pain. I can generate forward movement again if I go back to reframing what I'm asking. 

We hunger for inspiration, purpose, exhilaration — but mostly, we settle for lives of annihilating boredom, alternating with sheer panic. Perhaps we get our fix of "life" through the finely honed narratives of the hundreds of channels of reality TV and "news" we're smilingly offered night after pixelated night. We want contracts that don't steal our future — but we're often unwilling to walk away from those that already have. Perhaps we feel a sense of moral responsibility to pay our debts — but I'd suggest the greater, perhaps greatest moral responsibility is choosing to live. . .  We don't want the future we're getting — but most of us shrug our shoulders at the end of the day; only to wake up panicked, the next — and begin the cycle all over again. Welcome to the Great Collision. In the aggregate, our preferences are savagely at odds with our expectations; the future we want is at odds with the present we choose.                         --Umair Haque A few days ago I read Umair Haque's The Great Collision on the Harvard Business Review blog. The paragraph that resonated the most for me was this one: It's easy to construct a narrative of victimhood; and a narrative of victimhood is as easily palatable as a Big Mac. Sure, you can argue that the modern condition is a finely jawed trap: bound by the chains of debt peonage, our horizons have been ineluctably delimited. But I'd say we're equal parts victims and victimizers — preying not merely on one another, but our own better selves. When it comes to real human prosperity, in the crudest terms of political economy, "demand" is about what people have the impertinence to, well, demand — and perhaps the simple fact is that we've become a society that's simply not demanding enough. As I go about my work day I'm struck  by how often we see ourselves as victims, at the mercy of other forces greater than ourselves. The boss who won't "let you" do what you know is right. Some other department that has tied your hands. The co-worker who holds you back. The spouse or partner or children who must be served first. It's easy to play this victim card--safer, somehow, and certainly less demanding.  But I agree with Haque that we are equal parts victims and vicimizers. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that we are entirely victimizers, as he puts it "preying on our better selves." Many people--myself included--know in our hearts what it takes to be our better selves. Yet each day, we make small and large choices that keep us tied to being less than we could be. I don't think it's too dramatic to say that we victimize ourselves and those around us when we choose to be less than we are, when we forfeit our best selves to hold on to what seems safe or unchallenging.  Because to be less than our best selves is to choose actions that chip away at us, that challenge our integrity and wholeness. Inevitably we feel this chipping away on a deep, often unacknowledged level, and we take out our anger and resentment and sadness on ourselves and other people. Don't believe me? Then do something that is in alignment with your deepest sense of your best self and watch how it changes your interactions with others and what you bring to the table. Watch what it does to how you treat yourself.  Each day we make choices. Let's make our choices so they support that future we want.  

One of my current projects involves managing an online community of practice for professionals who help people with disabilities find employment. For the past year we've struggled to get folks engaged. Often it feels like I'm throwing information into a digital abyss.  This is a grant-funded project and I'm in the last year of the grant, so decided that we needed to try something different. Going for broke, as it were. So I proposed to the funders that we begin experimenting with face-to-face conversations, what we're calling "Connecting Coffees." These are one hour networking events at local coffee houses that combine networking with conversation on professional development topics.  Earlier this week I put out an announcement about our plan. Since then, there's been more discussion in the group than we've probably had in the last 6 months combined! What it made me realize (again) is how hungry we all are for opportunities to connect in the real world. To sit down and have real conversations about topics that matter to us. The digital world and social media can help us find each other and connect when we aren't able to be together face-to-face, but in the end, we are human and we long for that opportunity to sit around a table, break bread together and just talk.  We need to find more time for this, recognize and accept the importance of informal conversations in the larger world of our work. We need to intentionally build more of these into our practice. They are major drivers for learning, development and growth.  We want connection and we need to support this where ever we can. 

Our instinct is to try to ignore what’s going wrong so it doesn’t bring us down all the time. But really, the key to improving what we don’t like in our lives is to pay attention to it. By paying attention we can’t help but make it better.                             --Penelope Trunk For the past several months, I've been avoiding mirrors. I noticed my clothes getting tighter, but I didnt' really want to see this, so I pretended that wasn't happening. If I didn't give my rising weight attention, then maybe it would go away. This weekend, though, I was forced to pay attention because I needed some new clothes for a big training I'm doing this week. And let me tell you, the image is burned into my brain. Now when I think about dessert, it's been replaced by the picture of me in that mirror.  Why am I talking about the fact that I need to lose weight and what does this have to do with careers?  It clicked for me when I read Penelope Trunk's post this morning on paying attention to problems. This is something we do in our careers all the time--pretend that things aren't as bad as they really are. We avoid looking at what is really going on, both the results and all the behaviors and choices that have brought us here. Just like I've been avoiding paying attention to my creeping weight gain, we avoid paying attention to our creeping career unhappiness. Until that day when we're forced to confront reality. Usually it isn't pretty.  Our days are made up of a million small choices. When we go on auto-pilot (as I've been doing with food, mindlessly eating when I'm not really hungry), we stop paying attention to what's really going on. That's when things get away from us.  Change starts with paying attention. 

. . . look for opportunities, look for growth, look for impact, look for mission. Move sideways, move down, move on, move off. Build your skills, not your resume. Evaluate what you can do, not the title they're going to give you. Do real work. Take a sales quota, a line role, an ops job. Don't plan too much, and don't expect a direct climb. If I had mapped out my career when I was sitting where you are, I would have missed my career.                                    -- Sheryl Sandberg As we leave May and enter June, it's that time of year when graduation speakers give us their best advice. (My favorite graduation speech of all time is Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford talk, by the way.)  This year, it was Sheryl Sandberg's speech at Harvard Business School that caught my eye with her recommendation to treat your career like a jungle gym, not a ladder. That is, to forget the upward climb to the corner office and embrace a more networked career where you are likely to move down a step, then across, then up and then across again. The focus is not on job titles and "building your resume,"  but on developing skills and engaging in experiences that you can take with you across industries and occupational titles.   As we go from the 20-year career to a 4-year career, this is advice I think we need to take to heart--especially those of us who remember a time when people had 20-year careers. We live in a hyper-connected, fast-paced world where it's virtually impossible to predict your career trajectory with any assurance. Some of the jobs with the fastest growth didn't even exist 10 years ago, so "planning" for a career becomes even more difficult to do.  The best we can do to stay on top of things is to be flexible and to focus on developing skills that transfer into different jobs and industries.  As we climb that jungle gym of our work, we need to look for opportunities to re-package our skills and experiences in ways that bring us meaning and engagement, as well as solve problems for our potential employers.  Career ladders are dead for most of us. We are dealing with jungle gym careers. But at least jungle gyms are more fun.