It’s Spring and many of us are getting our house in order with cleaning and organizing. Not a bad idea, but while you’re at it consider organizing your professional life by spring cleaning your career. Your future self will thank you.
Here are my top tips for spring cleaning your career.
Track accomplishments and celebrate your success. According to this great Forbes article, creating an inventory of your accomplishments will set you up for success when you need to do those mandatory performance reviews. Plus they are great for reminding yourself just how successful you’ve been over the past little while. So get started with a self-evaluation or review your past month of work and tasks to see what you’ve gotten done. An ego boost never hurt anyone.
Plan your next move. If you’re planning on making a career move, but aren’t ready yet to make a move, now’s the time to learn more about your options. Get out to networking events and press the flesh. Complete information interviews to fully understand your value and, if appropriate, find a time to sit down with your boss to see what they’re vision is for your growth in the organization.
Take stalk of what you’re doing well and where you can improve. Feedback rocks. Have you gotten any lately? If not, read our handy article about giving and receiving feedback. Then approach your supervisor and/or colleagues and see if you can set up a 30 minute meeting between the two of you to review accomplishments and what you can continue to hone to become the ultimate accountant/beautician/professor/HR person/manager. Keep it simple and ask your community: “what should I keep doing, what should I stop doing, and what should I stop doing?”
Break big tasks into bite sized pieces. This advice comes straight from the Guardian. It is particularly relevant when things are slow because that’s often when our minds have a chance to wrap themselves around bigger picture problems and projects. These can be overwhelming – no matter how much time you think you have. So the first step when approaching these issues is to define them, break them down into smaller more manageable chunks and create a list of them so you can pat your self on the back after accomplishing each one.
Follow these tips and make sure you continue to be happy, helpful and productive, no matter what time of the year it is.
Photo courtesy of creative commons Mike Beauregard