Saturday 14 May 2011

5 Ways to Improve Your Career

Set goals
Setting career based goals sounds as if it's common sense but it's easy to overlook. Setting goals - both for the short and long term allows you to plan how to get where you want to be.
First of all identify where you want to get to. Then break this down into exactly what you need to do in the next year in order to get there. Now you know what you need to do in the next year, what about the next month or even next week?
By breaking it down like this what may seem like an impossible dream now becomes more manageable and easier to achieve. It also allows you to see exactly what steps you need to take in order to achieve your goal.
Procrastination - Why and how
Procrastination is something we all do. This is obviously a big barrier in our careers, the first step to overcoming this is to figure out how you procrastinate and how. For instance if you work at home do you often get distracted by the television, if you work in an office do you often find smaller jobs that you claim 'need' doing in order to avoid doing the larger, more daunting jobs?
Once you've worked out how you procrastinating, the next step is working out why you procrastinate. Is it, for instance, because you find the harder tasks more off-putting, is it because you feel you have too much to do and so find procrastinating the "easier" option? Finally, start overcoming your procrastination. Whatever the reason you're doing it for - find ways to stop.
To-do list
To-do lists are wonderful things. They can seem like a waste of time to start with but making a list of exactly what you need to get done allows you to firstly ensure everything gets remembered and secondly provides a sense of satisfaction when you tick things off the list.
Don't be tempted to get all the big jobs done first, the smaller jobs can be a good way of breaking up the more mundane tasks just be careful not to use this as a way of procrastinating!
Ask for a promotion or pay rise.
Your boss isn't a mind-reader. If you think you need a promotion or a pay raise then you need to ask for one. The trick behind asking is to point out your strengths over your employees without putting the other staff down. Instead of being critical of others be positive about what you've done for the company. This can be difficult to see at first and so try rewriting your CV as if you had had a career change every year. What extra tasks have you taken on or been given? It may be that you're doing a lot more now then you were when you started that job. Point this out to your boss and explain that this is why you're asking for the pay raise or promotion.
If they say no ask why. It may be that there isn't enough money spare yet, in which case you can ask again in a few months to a years time or it may be that there is more they need to see before they can give you your raise, in which case you know the goals you need to achieve in order to get what you want.
Take care of yourself
Finally, remember to take care of yourself. Eat healthily, get enough sleep and take breaks. Your career is important but you're no good to anyone, including your employer, if your health is suffering. Don't fall into the trap of not taking breaks in order to get more work done. The old saying "quality not quantity" is important here. You will have more time available if you work through your breaks but you'll be more productive and therefore make better use of the time available if you plan and take regular breaks in your working day.

No comments:

Post a Comment