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When it comes to careers, we all have something we’d like to achieve, and that can differ for everyone. Whether it’s a financial success you’re after or reaching a certain point on your career ladder, there are plenty of ways to help you work towards your goals. Here are ten things that you can do to improve your career.
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Set A Variety Of Small And Big Goals
Goal setting is always useful, whether you use it within your personal or work life. It can benefit all aspects, and you should be using it as much as you can when it comes to your career. You should be setting yourself with a variety of small and big goals. The reason being is that these big goals that might not seem attainable can be achieved by working up to them through your small goals. The smaller goals, the ones you can do on a weekly, monthly basis etc. are a great way of motivating you to strive and push through the tough days. Not every day is a successful one, but as soon as you tick off one of those small goals, it makes you feel as though you’ve accomplished something and that you are moving on up. Your big goals should be achievable too but maybe chuck one in that challenges you and something that you may think isn’t possible in your career. You never know what might happen in the future.
Push Your Limits
It’s said that the key to success is to put yourself out of your comfort zone. Your comfort zone is the place where everything works well and it feels like any change to the status quo is scary. However, it’s important to push your limits, especially when it comes to your career because without taking a leap of faith every now and then, you could be missing out on something wonderful. There will be plenty of opportunities in your job where you are giving these opportunities that will usually feel like something you’re not capable of doing. But unless it’s way out of your skillset or you’re 100% that you’re not ready, what’s stopping you from saying yes? We need to do things that scare us because they end up building our character and confidence.
Utilise Your Time – Work Smarter, Not Harder
Time is precious, and as we age, we realise that it really isn’t on our side. We all get the same amount of time per day and the same amount of days in a week. So, in order to make the most out of our time, it’s important to utilise it. The key to working is to work smarter and not harder. Working harder will mean that we end up burning ourselves out and actually hindering our performance. By having good time management and finding areas where we can actually cut down how much we spend, it can help to give yourself the time needed to focus our attention on other parts of work that need it. Repeat this work smarter, not harder mantra, and you’ll notice a big difference in how you handle your time.
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Always Ask For Feedback
Improving our work and ourselves as individuals come from the feedback of others. Now feedback can come to you whether you want to take it or not. This is completely up to you, but you should acknowledge all the feedback you receive as some of it will be useless, and some of it will help in order for you to improve. We can end up being pretty biased or critical of ourselves, but that might not be the viewpoint that others have of you or your work. If it helps, find someone who you can trust to give you honest feedback. Maybe even find yourself a mentor or someone to look up to within your industry. That doesn’t have to be in your workplace, it could be a friend or family member, or another professional from a different organisation. Having this mentor can really help as it’s a fresh pair of eyes to help spot things you may not have noticed before.
Learn Something New And Unrelated
Learning is something you do from an early age, and up until you leave education, you are learning something new every day. That stops happening to a degree when you get older. However, educating yourself or learning a new skill can all help towards your career, even if it’s completely unrelated to what you do. It might be looking into the benefits of NAATI certified translators or building your own website from scratch. They’re random, but they can help build character and distracts your mind from just always being focused on your career. Sometimes a break from it can be refreshing and just what you need in order to get back on track.
Curate Your Work In A Professional Way
We often forget to praise yourself for the work we do and tend to only focus on the times we fail. Being able to have something that’s a reminder of everything you have achieved is important to building up that belief in yourself when you go through moments of losing it. So you should be curating your work in a professional way, not only for yourself but for you to show off to others. Curating your work is easy, and you can show it off in a physical format or digital, depending on what works best for you. It also shows others that you care about your work and hopefully that will pay off for when you’re trying to secure a promotion or a new job.
Get Involved With Your Industry
It’s not about what you know sometimes but about who you know and getting involved in your industry is the best way to meet new people. Networking is a great way of boosting your connections which could end up providing you with more opportunities in the future. If you don’t have much experience in networking, that’s fine as you can work your way up. Start by attending smaller networking events, smile and approach others even if the thought of doing so is a little daunting. Once you’ve gotten used to interacting with people you’ve never met before, you can then focus on attending bigger networking events like conferences. This might open up more doors for you in terms of collaborating with other companies, meeting new clients and promoting your own company.
Work On Your Strengths And Your Weaknesses
It’s useful to know both your strengths and your weaknesses because they both contribute to you achieving success and improving yourself. Your strengths are something you can lean on, but it’s your weaknesses that you should focus on improving. It may be that you just haven’t given yourself enough of an opportunity to build on them or it could tie into a lack of confidence towards it. Take each weakness and work on it to make it a strength. There’s no time limit to this, and it might be something that doesn’t change instantly overnight. Have patience and trust that you can change this weakness into something that can work for you.
Give Yourself Time To Relax
As much as it’s important to use all of your time and efforts to improve your career. It’s also important to give yourself time to relax. Relaxing can have a bit impact on improving your career because if you are working all the time, you end up having a work-life balance that’s completely one-sided. So listen to your body and when you need it, take some time off to reset your batteries. Do something that you enjoy and switch yourself off completely from work. It might be tough to do if you’re someone who is always work-focused, but when it comes to your physical and mental health, it’s important to prioritise it as often as you can.
Build Your Confidence
And finally, a lot of your career improvement comes from improving yourself. Confidence is something that only you can give yourself, so despite what people might say to you to put you down, you are the only one that stands in the way of you saying ‘yes I can do this’. Have trust in yourself that you are capable of anything you put your mind to. Confidence is essential within all aspects of your life and the more you have of it, the better chances and opportunities you’ll be able to give yourself both in your personal life and in your career.
Work makes up for a big chunk of your life, and although we’re all different, many of us will want to leave behind something we’re proud of and a fulfilling career maybe that something. Hopefully, these tips give you the insight you need in order to help you in your own career. Trust yourself, work smarter and take a leap of faith every once in a while. It may just skyrocket your career!