Why Do You Need a Career Blueprint?

Is achieving success in your career easy? "Yes" and "No" are the answers. Since the answers contradict each other, there needs to be some elaboration. Success in your career is easy and simple if you accept the fact that you have to take a few diligent steps for achieving it. That is the reason experts advise that you have to delve deep into success stories that seem to have happened overnight. Such an in-depth study of these success stores will reveal that they have been work-in-progress for a very long period. In short, if you want to succeed in your career, you should have a blueprint and work on it over a period of time. The following few suggestions may help.

1. Dispense with the traditional way of setting goals.

In the traditional way of setting a goal, experts advise that you must first put in place a specific goal. Next, you must set a deadline for achieving the goal. The next suggestion you will get from these traditional experts is that you should start working to achieve the goal you have set. Though this seems to be logical and linear, modern-day personal development gurus, and especially those who offer guidance in career-related matters, advise that instead of opting for the traditional way of setting goals, you should prepare a blueprint that consists of process goals. 

Process goals specifically talk about the processes and the steps you intend to take for achieving your goal. For example, if you are a member of a team and if your immediate goal is to become a team leader, your process goals should consist of every step you intend to take for translating this goal into reality. You should meticulously follow these processes. Even if you follow the steps at least to the extent of 7/10th of perfection, you are certain to achieve the goal quickly.

2. Change the way you make your plans.

Earlier, experts used to advise that you should make a plan for the next day the previous night itself. But the modern gurus prescribe that you should plan for weeks. They advise that you should plan at least for six weeks. This plan that is a very important ingredient of your career blueprint should consist of the tasks or the steps you must complete every day. The plan should specifically mention the tasks you must ensure to complete every week also. More importantly, you must take action with the utmost precision. 

But you may argue that things may not turn out to be as smooth as we expect them to be and hence, there may be threatening situations that are likely to derail your plans. Experts provide a solution for this as well. They advise that you should be creative and put in place alternative, back-up steps that can help you combat such situations successfully. Such back-up steps should be equally strong and put you back firmly on the path that can take you towards your goal.

3. Ensure to remain motivated.

You should remain motivated throughout your journey. It is true that when things do not move according to your blueprint, you may get frustrated and demotivated. But if you put in place a meaningful incentive system, you can keep yourself motivated. This means that whenever you reach a milestone, however small it may be, you should incentivize yourself. If the incentives in your system are meaningful, your determination will be strong and hence, you will tread your career path with confidence.

Secrets You Must Know to Become a Successful Employee

When you land a job and set foot at the threshold of your workplace, you do so with lots of hopes. You want to be a successful employee because you are aware that only then, you can enter the good books of the top management of your company. Once this happens, it will be easy for you to move up the career ladder smoothly. But how to become a successful employee? 

This needs planning. Of course, it is not enough if your plan is of normal quality. Your plan should be very good and viable. Further, you must start taking action and execute your plan meticulously. But to make such a good plan, you must learn a few secrets. The following are the secrets you must know.

1. Specialized knowledge.

You must study the industry in which your company is operating. Just like other fields, the filed in which your company is operating may also be changing at a fast pace. You must, therefore, keep abreast of the changes, innovations, and improvements that keep happening in the field. Possessing out-dated knowledge will jeopardize your very existence in the company. If the management of your company comes to know that you are not in possession of the latest innovations or ideas in your field, they will not hesitate even a second to show you the doors. 

On the other hand, if you are in possession of the knowledge related to the latest innovations in the field, the management will shower all the privileges you demand. Therefore, keep taking the required action to acquire specialized knowledge related to the field in which your company is operating.

2. Keep adding value to your company.

Managements never care for average employees. Such employees can not expect to have a reasonably good increase in their remuneration. The management of the company may even decide not to increase their pay. On the contrary, if you keep adding value to your company, you can demand what you think you are worth. But how to add value to your company? This is by generating innovative and workable ideas and proving to the management that those ideas will do wonders for the growth of the company. Again, this cannot be a one-time affair because managements are notorious for their forgetfulness. But ironically, managements remember a few things for longer periods. This statement may sound like an oxymoron. But this is very much true.

Managements never forget the mistakes committed by their employees. But they do not remember the good work of employees for long. This means that you should carefully avoid committing mistakes and at the same time, consistently and continuously, bring value to the company. Only then, you can constantly be in their good books.  

3. Be an opportunity-hunter.

During the course of executing your official tasks, you should always keep your eyes, ears, and other sensory organs open and look for opportunities. By identifying such opportunities, you will be able to showcase your talents and knowledge. It is true that talents and knowledge can never be suppressed and they will be "visible" to everyone at some point. But the present-day context demands that you should hasten the process by deliberately and purposely looking for opportunities and showcasing them. By doing so, you will accelerate the process of becoming a successful employee. 

Keep the above suggestions in mind and work on them on a continuous basis. You will soon become a successful employee. 

A Keystone Habit That Can Help You Become Unstoppable in Your Career Growth

As an employee, you may want to have accelerated growth in your career. Especially, when you see some of the most successful people occupying very high positions, you may be puzzled over the conundrum as to how they have climbed the career rungs so quickly while you are still struggling. According to experts, the main reason for your career struggle is your mental blocks though there are several other factors that determine the success or failure of a person. This means you must ensure to eliminate these mental blocks first in order to tread confidently on your success path. Let us find out more about this.

What are the steps you must take for eliminating the mental blocks that do not allow you to climb the career ladder?

1. The foremost impediment to your career growth is YOUR PSYCHOLOGY or thought process. You have to drive out those thoughts that clutter your mind. Never forget the fact that thoughts alone govern your attitude. There are scores of instances to show how highly talented people are NOT considered for high positions just because they have attitudinal issues. Therefore, you have to work on your thought process for changing your attitude.

How to work on your thought process? The process goes like this. Sit in a secluded place, do an introspection, and identify those thoughts that do not allow you to take the required action for changing your attitude and accelerating your career growth. This is a very important step because if you do not drive away such thoughts, you will never be able to achieve what you want. Only when you examine and analyze your thoughts, you can rewire your brain appropriately and change your thought process. 

2. Another important step to remove mental blocks is to CONSCIOUSLY DRIVE AWAY NEGATIVE THOUGHTS. It is true that you are human and therefore, it may not be possible to completely eliminate negative thoughts from your mind. But when such negative thoughts knock at the threshold of your mind, it is better not to let them in. Even if they sneak in, do not allow them to stay in your mind for a long duration. But how to do this?  The best way is to replace those thoughts with positive thoughts or ideas. If you keep practicing this process for a few days, you will automatically banish all the negative thoughts from your mind. You can then rewire your brain to think only positive thoughts or ideas. This will bring about a phenomenal transformation in your attitude and will ultimately fast-track your career growth.

This is the keystone habit that can help you in fast-tracking your career growth.

Productivity Level at the Workplace and a Modicum of Common Sense

Though you may wish that you should achieve quick growth in your career, there is another aspect that you cannot afford to ignore. That is you should see whether you are getting satisfaction from what you are doing. In fact, experts opine that if you are able to complete your tasks on time and without making any compromise on the quality of your output, that itself will provide you with unparalleled job satisfaction. But how to complete quality tasks on time? In management parlance, completing quality tasks on time is known as increasing your productivity level. There are a few steps that you can adopt for this. Though you may dread bombastic and high-sounding words such as productivity, output, efficiency, and so on, the steps to achieve these goals are quite simple.

Unfortunately, the top brass of several companies seems to be fond of fancy terms such as "productivity-linked bonus," "productivity-linked promotion," etc. But these terms have a tendency to become subjective because they can easily be tweaked to suit some of the managers of these companies and those employees who have the backing and patronage of those managers. A classic example is that a few years back, the CEO of a big company recommended a lower-level executive for promotion to a high position just because this executive made it a point to go to the airport every time the CEO visited his city. He even carried the luggage and other items of the CEO and saw to it that they were loaded properly in the car.

Now, what are the simple steps you can adopt for bringing about a huge difference to your productivity level? Let us find out.

1. Start with making lists of your daily tasks. 

If you are not in the habit of making the to-do lists of your daily tasks, you should begin this forthwith. This will help you in ensuring that you do not forget your tasks. Unfortunately, your mind is exposed to various types of distractions and hence, you may forget some of the important tasks. By applying your mind and preparing a to-do list, you can avoid such lapses. 

2. Review your to-do lists once every three weeks. 

Once every three weeks, take out all the to-do lists of those three weeks and review them thoroughly. This will help you in finding out the number of tasks you could not complete during the period. You should especially focus on two types of tasks. The first type is the high-priority tasks you could not take up at all. The second one is those tasks that you could not complete on time.

It is imperative that you take the above two steps so that you can identify your problem areas. Once you identify these weak areas, it will be easy for you to take corrective action and strengthen your productivity quotient. 

Now, what steps can you take if you find that the number of tasks you are not able to complete is alarmingly high?

1. You can work for more number of hours and complete the tasks.

2. You can try and learn more efficient ways of doing your tasks.

3. Thirdly, you can decide to take up fewer tasks.

Though most of the folks including you may choose the second option, you should explore the possibility of embracing the third option as well. This means that you should learn to delegate some of your tasks to your subordinates, peers, or colleagues. If you think that you and you alone should do every task, you will continue to struggle and your productivity will never improve.

Further, if you are falling behind the schedule while trying to complete important tasks, your reputation will get a beating. One of the best ideas is to accord top priority to such important tasks and complete them during the morning hours when your energy levels are at the peak. There will be fewer distractions during those hours. In fact, your confidence will get a boost also since you may have completed very important tasks before the drudgery of your routine tasks starts swallowing your day.

In fact, you should be ready with the list for the next day before you retire for bed every day. While preparing the list and the time schedule for each of the tasks, you should ensure that you allot a realistic duration for completing them. You should provide sufficient cushion for unexpected distractions, interruptions, and emergencies as well. Very importantly, if you take up similar tasks together, you will find it easy to complete them. 

To summarize, achieving good productivity level requires a little common sense. The only point is that you should apply your mind and keep innovating judicious ways of carrying out your tasks. 

This Four-Letter Word Can Help You Grow in Your Career

On seeing the caption of this post, do not let your imagination fly in the wrong direction. Remember that in English, you have thousands of four-letter words but unfortunately, most of the folks remember only that particular word that should not be remembered. Let us now get into the intended topic without wasting further time.

As an employee, your aim may be to achieve quick growth in your career. But how to accomplish this aim? It is here you have to remember the four-letter word. The word is spelled as "PLAN." Yes. You have to make a solid and workable plan for your career growth. Let us find out how you should go about it. 

Remember the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, "If you would not be known to do anything, never do it.” Even Saul Gellerman, who authored the book entitled "Motivation," says that when your boss recommends you for an elevation, he or she is betting his or her or even the company's reputation on you. This means that you have to earn such a name that the company and your boss is willing to promote you despite the fact that there is an element of risk in it. But how can enter the good books of your boss and the company's top brass? There are three things you should do for achieving this.

1. If you think that you are only a good performer in your organization, you are terribly wrong. There may be others who may be as good as or even better than you. They may be more knowledgeable or more talented than you. The only way you can make your management or bosses choose you over other performers for promoting is to stand out from them. You should show the management that you are competent in a wide range of tasks. You should also display your intelligence and knowledge in more number of areas than the other performers. Simply put, by distinguishing yourself from others, you can make the management choose you for a higher position. On the other hand, if you keep focusing on your own tasks and do not make the management realize that you are versatile, the top brass will prefer to retain you in the same position in which you have been showing your excellence.    

2. Let the managers of the other teams also know about your competence. If you succeed in accomplishing this, the leaders of the other teams will vie with each other when there are suitable positions for you in their departments. For making the other departmental heads know about you, you should be ready to mingle freely with the members of those teams as well. There may be several occasions that can help you develop a good relationship with the members of the other departments. There may be company outings, get-togethers, company seminars, etc. These people should know that you are competent and knowledgeable. You should be nice to them. It is not that you are advised to embrace hypocrisy and be nice to them. You should really be sincere and nice to them. If you fake, you will be found out very soon. 

The purpose of making the suggestion that you should create such an internal network is that these people will carry the details about you to their managers who, in turn, will keep the information in mind for future use. When there is an appropriate position in their department, they will remember you. Of course, they will test your competence before giving their final nod. Secondly, once you are chosen for the position, the folks who have passed on your details to their bosses are likely to be your peers or subordinates. They will extend their fullest cooperation and support to you and this will eventually help in your growth.

You have to make a plan to execute the above suggestions. That is the reason we firmly say that PLAN, a four-letter word, can help you achieve quick growth in your career.

How the Attitude of Mediocrity Can Kill Your Growth

A study says that the number of people who are complacent with their mediocre skills and their learning aspirations is huge. On the other hand, there are people who firmly believe that any level of talent or skill is not enough in the highly competitive environment that is prevalent now. For these latter folks, even the sky is not the limit and they do not even consider age, qualifications, and other barriers as impediments. There are people who are in their eighties who keep studying and enhancing their knowledge levels. In this context, you should understand and realize that if you develop such an attitude, no one on this planet can stall your growth. Let us find out how the attitude of mediocrity can stunt your growth and how the attitude of not getting complacent can help in improving your growth trajectory.

1. It is true that mediocrity may make you comfortable. But it may take a toll on your growth regardless of whether you are running a business or in employment. If you believe that average or normal performance is enough for executing your tasks, you will be increasing the chances of your faltering along your way. This means that your output and performance will be below par. You may commit errors and mistakes as well. Therefore, you may have to repeat the tasks again and again. This may sap your energy as well as your enthusiasm. When your enthusiasm gets a beating, your output will again be much below satisfactory levels. In other words, this may become a vicious circle and so, getting out of this quagmire may become highly difficult for you.

2. If you continue nurturing your mediocrity mentality, it may negatively impact your health as well. Your stress level will increase. For example, if you are employed and if your output or performance is not to the satisfaction of your boss, he or she may ask you to repeat the tasks until he or she is satisfied. Unfortunately, you have always been in possession of the mediocrity mentality and hence, you yourself are not certain if you will be able to improve the quality of your output. This uncertainty coupled with the energy you spend for executing the tasks repeatedly will increase your stress level. It is a known fact that constant stress can lead to serious ailments such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart-related health issues. 

3. Your attitude of mediocrity can rob your peace of mind at the home front. A home is a place where you can enjoy tranquility and peace of mind. But thanks to your mentality and mediocrity habits, you will adopt a cavalier and insouciant attitude towards your close relatives including your spouse and children. Remember that such a lack of concern for them will certainly annoy them and they are bound to get upset with your behaviors and habits. This may lead to avoidable arguments or tiffs within your family, the casualty being the tranquility at your home.

     

4. Another very important point to remember is that your mediocrity mentality will not allow you to utilize the opportunities available on the career front in an appropriate manner. Though every organization affords near-equal opportunities for its employees, it will not be a level-playing field for you because you have chosen a mediocre mentality. Those who believe in acquiring more and more skills and developing their knowledge will be able to move ahead of you and you will find yourself in an unenviable situation. 

The problem with your mediocre mentality is that if you are a team head, your attitude will deprive your team of great achievements also This is because you will either hesitate to make decisions or even if you dare to, you will perpetually make faulty ones. 

How to dispense with this mentality?

These are some of the disadvantages you are likely to encounter owing to your mediocrity mentality. You should, therefore, try and get rid of it. But you have to remember that you cannot achieve overnight success. By taking small and baby steps and achieving small successes, you can boost your confidence. 

You should remember another fact also. You cannot acquire skills in all the areas. Even if you try your best, there are bound to some areas in which you can never become an expert. In this context, it is better to recall a conversation between Bruce Lee, a Hong Kong-American martial arts instructor and philosopher, and another upcoming martial artist. This upcoming artist told Lee that however hard he tried, he could not lift his legs and use them as effectively as his peers did. To this, Lee replied that it was not necessary to acquire that skill, and instead, the artist could develop those skills in which he was strong.

You should apply the same analogy here and focus on your areas of strength and try to develop your expertise in them. You should not get complacent with average-level skills. You should learn to adroitly sidestep roadblocks along the way. You should work hard to become an expert in your strong areas. This will empower you to a great extent. You will be in a position to leverage your skills for achieving enormous success on the career front as well as in your life.  

  

Become Unstoppable in Achieving Your Career Goals

If you are one of those employees who aspire to achieve exponential success in their career, you must be ready and willing to upgrade yourself and your habits. Of course, you have to plan your course as well so that you will find it easy to move along that path. But is planning enough to achieve this movement? The answer is: No. Planning alone will not be enough; YOU SHOULD TAKE ACTION. If you keep on planning, you will not move even an inch and get closer to your destination. As they say, "A thousand-mile journey begins with the first step." In short, you should keep taking the required steps on a continuous basis until you reach your career goal. But what are these steps? Let us have a look.

Be wise while setting career goals

A number of people commit the mistake of setting goals without thinking even for a minute how they intend to achieve them. For example, if you aim to become the top executive of your company, you can achieve this aim in two ways. The first method is a step-by-step approach which means you have to move from your present level to the next one, then to the next one, and so on. The second method is to acquire so much capability that you become deserving and eligible for the top position. In short, while setting goals, you should have clarity as to how you intend to achieve them.

Kick away the distractions

Bruce Lee once said, "It is not daily increase, but daily decrease. Hack away the unessential." Distractions are the most unessential things in our lives. They can derail all the efforts you take for achieving your goals. They can sabotage your dreams and prevent them from getting translated into reality. Therefore, destroying distractions is very important. If you win over your temptation of excessive watching of television or spending your time on social media sites such as Whatsapp or Facebook, you will get a lot of time that you can use for making efforts to grow in your career.

Put in place personal rules

You are the one who sets your career goal. Your goal will not be the same as those of others. Therefore, you should put in place personal rules that suit you the best and that can get you success. But remember that you should consistently follow these rules. There should not be half-hearted efforts.

Success hates delays

Never postpone taking action on ideas that may lead you towards success. As the saying goes, "procrastination is the thief of time." Further, experts firmly advise against delaying actions on ideas. If you delay your action steps, there are chances of the circumstances undergoing drastic changes. You may lose interest and focus as well. Ultimately, you will not be able to achieve the career goal you are aiming at. By putting in place unique, personal plans that are best suited to you and following them meticulously, you will automatically put your plans to action. To be precise, your discipline will become an automatic habit.

Plant only those thoughts that are tuned to success

If you are aiming at great career goals but if you always nurture those thoughts that focus on how and why you may fail to achieve the goals, you will never be able to achieve them. Therefore, you should learn to remove unwanted thoughts from your mind and plant only those thoughts that are focused on your success. If you practice this step consistently, you can easily master this technique.  

Be ruthless while self-reflecting

You should be ruthlessly honest while doing self-reflection. Only then, you can identify the lacunae in your approach and do course correction. Otherwise, you will keep committing the same mistakes. You will ultimately not be able to achieve your goals. This may cause frustration and so, you may even decide to jettison your goals. 

Now, which is the best time to do self-reflection? Every day, before you retire for the day, you should recollect what all you did at your workplace. By reflecting on every task you carried out during the day, you will be able to know if the manner in which you did your work would help in fructifying your aim of growing in your career. This step will help you find the shortcomings, if any, in your approach also. You must immediately take action to correct yourself so that you will not commit the same mistakes again. The step will help you fast-track your career growth as well.