I recently hosted a room on Clubhouse with another career expert.  We dubbed our room “the career couch” and invited people to ask us any questions they like about their careers.  One question that came up was this: “Once I’ve done the work to identify my strengths, values and purpose, how do I make sure that it lasts and I don’t get sucked into the daily grind again?”.

What a great question.  Because it’s easy to get sucked into the daily grind isn’t it?  Suddenly, this carefully curated career gets a bit boring again.  Suddenly, you’re sucked into doing those tasks that don’t energise you.  Suddenly, someone else is deciding what you should be doing and you realise that you’re no longer being intentional.

So, how do you make sure you don’t get sucked in?

There are many potential answers to this question but there is one answer that encompasses them all.  And that is: you must continually, intentionally and proactively manage this process of creating a career you love.  The 10/10 career is not a final destination.  It’s a work in progress.

To make sure you don’t lose your way by getting sucked into the daily grind, you need to create some rhythms and routines that enable you to always be checking in with your career and keeping it fresh.

Keeping it fresh

In order to keep our career fresh and engaging, we need to conduct regular reviews and periodically recalibrate our goals.  There are two main reasons for this:

1. As the world around us changes, this can have an impact on our values and our goals.
2. Our strengths are dynamic, so we need to make sure we are still using those that we find most energising.

Clients that have worked with me will have achieved a certain level of career insight.  They will know their strengths, values and purpose.  They will also have a definition for a mediocre career, a good career and a great career.  Based upon this, they will have created short-, medium- and long-term career goals. 

With this baseline of career insight, I would then recommend the following reviews at the following intervals:

Annually:

• Revisit medium- and long-term career goals – Do they still support my values and purpose? Are they still relevant?
• Set career goals for the coming year – What do I want to achieve this year? How does this move me towards my medium- and long-term goals? What are my next steps?
• Measure where I am currently on the 1 – 10 career happiness scale. Am I on track? How can I move up to the next number?

Every 6 months:

• Redo your Strengths Profile. Has there been any movement in your Strengths – perhaps some that you have been working on have moved from Unrealised Strengths to Realised Strengths. Take some time to analyse any changes.

Each quarter:

• Revisit career goals for this year – Am I on track? What’s working well? What do I need to do more of / less of?

Monthly:

• What Unrealised Strengths do I want to incorporate into my work more?
• What Learned Behaviours do I want to use less?
• Which combination of Realised Strengths will help me remain energised and motivated this month?

Keep at it

If you carry out these small steps each month, you will keep on track and be consistently moving forwards towards a career you love.

If you’ve not done your Strengths Profile yet, I have created a new product for £18.  You will receive:

• Your introductory Strengths Profile
• A video message from me explaining how to interpret your report and 5 actions you can do right now to start using your Strengths every day.

You can access this product here.

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