Читать книгу Career Management - Carolyn Boyes - Страница 14

A plan is great, but nothing can happen unless you take the first step, and then another. What are some things you can do today, this week, this month, this year to produce the results? Every journey, however long, starts with a single step.

Having set yourself some goals, the secret is to start taking action as quickly as possible on them. Identify your first steps.

1 Ask yourself, what is the gap between your current situation and what you want to achieve? Will it take training, discipline, study? What would you have to do first to accomplish each goal?

case study Ben decided on a 10-year goal for his career. The first actions he took were to write down details of what he wanted to achieve in terms of his qualifications, job title and degree. He also made a list of the skills, attitudes and beliefs he would need to have in order to achieve what he wanted. Then he made a list of how he had sabotaged himself in the past and what he could do to solve these patterns of behaviour. Because the job he wanted was in a different work area, he also asked his boss if he could do some work shadowing in another department in order to gain some new skills. This gave him valuable experience with direct relevance to his long-term goal.

“Strong, deeply rooted desire is the starting point of all achievement” Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich

2 Now decide on the smallest action that can immediately commit you to your plan. Is it applying for a course? Ringing a friend for information? Writing your CV?

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a complete plan and some of your later steps are a little hazy when you start out to achieve your new career vision. You can fill in the later steps as you go on in your career. The important thing is to commit to heading off in the right direction. If necessary, you can always revise some of the milestones along the way.

Think of a first step you could take immediately for each goal.