How To Create a Career You Love
We spend a great deal of time working. For most people, life is scheduled around work and how much you do outside of work, often depends on the income you earn. But it doesn’t have to be like that. It is possible to design a career that gives you what you need to live the way you want. Note that I’m not talking about mansions or sports cars, although that is possible. I’m talking about doing work that fulfills you and also gives you the time you want to spend with family and/or pursue other interests. Here are some quick tips to doing just that:
1) Determine what’s not working in your current career. Sometimes it’s not the job or even the hours, but something else that makes work hard. Poor lighting, downer colleagues, or a long commute could be the problem.
2) Decide what you’re ideal life – work and personal – looks like. If money weren’t an issue, what would you do all day? What do you enjoy doing? What are your skills and talents you’d like to put use? I like to be able to do what I want, when I want and how I want. That means I don’t like too many rules or appointments, and lucky for me, I’ve a career that fits that.
3) What job features do want? Working at home is only one of many features including flex-time, job share, benefits, contract work and more.
4) What types of jobs sound the most appealing to you? Have you ever heard someone say what they do and think, “That sounds like a fun job?” Today, people can get paid for all sorts of things including gaming, writing, hiking, gardening, traveling and more.
Once you have an idea of the types of jobs that sound interesting, you need to research what the job entails. Sometimes a job sounds great from the outside, but in reality it’s tedious. I’ve heard this statement from lawyers, who say TV dramas make the law look intriguing, but in fact, it’s mostly research (which is fun for some people).
If you want to design your own career, I encourage you pick up a copy of Lifestyle Career Design . Not only will you get the information and worksheets to figure out what your ideal life is, you’ll get tips in researching and test driving careers. It’s short, fast read that give you the meat of what you need to do create your ideal career. It includes free handouts you can print from the companion site. You can get Lifestyle Career Design at Amazon. It’s available on Kindle only, but you don’t need a Kindle to read it. You can download the Kindle app to your computer, smartphone, or tablet.
