Is Your Career Growth Worth 10 Minutes of Your Time?
If you want to produce superior work, be viewed as invaluable, and be appreciated by others in your organization, it is.
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Our careers are a great source of personal fulfillment, offer an opportunity to make an impact, and contribute to our long-term, meaningful relationships, all leading to a great sense of satisfaction and happiness.
But these achievements don’t just happen. They require attention. If we want to grow, contribute to something bigger than ourselves, and feel fulfilled, we must invest time daily in our development. This daily time investment compounds over time, just like a financial investment. The ROI (return on investment) can be exponential, leading to incredible opportunities.
By education, I’m an accountant. During my junior year of high school, I took my first accounting class and decided that was my career path. Eight years on in my working life, I was in a finance role, supporting the Marketing team. One day the person I supported offered me a Marketing job. That was certainly an opportunity I had never imagined. I took advantage of this person’s confidence in me and accepted the new role; it has been one of the best decisions I’ve made about my career.
This incredible opportunity came about thanks to my conscious, committed investment in learning new skills and developing collaborative relationships at work. This person had observed my “figure it out” approach in my job. If I did not know how to do something, I researched the topic or asked for help. I also invested time in developing collaborative relationships at work. I knew I wanted to grow in my career, so I carved out time to invest in it. At that point, my goal was to strengthen my business acumen – learning as much as I could about the different aspects of a business. The payoff was this tremendous, unexpected opportunity.
With so many competing work and personal responsibilities, we can get wrapped up in spending time doing things – just trying to get it all done. We say we will invest time in our careers but then make the excuse of not having the time to do it.
But that is not the case. I can easily find 10 to 20 minutes in my day that would be better spent on my self-development. Maybe I don’t need to scroll through social media as much.
To successfully gain compounding interest on your daily self-development investment:
- Commit to working on your career. Without a conscious commitment, you probably won’t do it. Commit to investing at least 10 minutes daily in your career growth and development.
- Know what you are working towards. Define a goal and what you can do that day to progress toward achieving it.
- Measure your progress at least monthly.
Naturally, I can offer an example of how you can leverage Brize. If your goal is to work with intention or improve your work relationships, spend your time daily with the Brize app. Complete the discovery questionnaires to identify what you do well and areas to strengthen. Learn more about the skills or mindsets you want to improve. Or practice a strengthening exercise.
If your goal is a different job that requires other technical competencies, spend your time learning and developing the technical skill needed for that position. I had never taken a marketing class when I accepted my first marketing job. So I invested time in learning the best practices for the position I now held. And I took classes to learn more about the principles of Marketing.
Don’t give in to complacency that can lead to dissatisfaction and frustration. Invest at least 10-minutes each day focusing on your career development. At a minimum, the return on your investment will be a superior job performance, being seen as valuable and appreciated by others in our organization.