Make career planning on top of your agenda

Much that we may claim, most of us lay little emphasis on career planning. We tend to give more thought on other issues; planning a social event or a vacation perhaps occupies a greater priority in our lives. We do not realise that in actuality, more than sixty per cent of our life as an adult is spent working. So should not your career be your top priority? After all, it is your career that defines the quality of life that you lead.

Nobody else will ever feel a concern about your career. It is you and you alone who has to do that. You simply cannot allow yourself to be complacent about your career because things can get altered drastically. Be it because of a personal matter or a workplace issue, your life could suddenly be in doldrums. Therefore, it is essential that you are clear about where you want your career to take you so that in case you encounter difficult situations, you know how to overcome them. Three things that you should not miss out on are:

· Set objectives for achievement: Whatever career plot that you carve for yourself, it can always be transformed into objectives and sub-objectives. This implies identifying things that you need to accomplish within specified time-frames. To illustrate the point, your objective could be to secure a salary hike by the end of the current year. Having an objective like that will evidently entail injecting additional purpose in your work; and doing so will raise your inspiration level too. The objectives that you set for yourself should be pragmatic, reasonable and feasible. It is possible that you may fail to achieve them and if that happens, the fact that you know what you wanted to accomplish will help you analyse the causes for your failure better. But if you do not have any objectives or if they are not practical, you would remain rudderless and directionless; and drift aimlessly and repeatedly in the job or position that you are in.

· Considering & evaluating yourself: The need to regularly evaluate yourself should not be lost sight of. When you assess yourself, besides looking into your personal skills and qualities, you should also measure various attainments that you have had. It is always in good stead to keep a record of all your accomplishments. In addition, details of professional clubs and institutions of which you are a member should also be maintained. When you do all these, you will be able to estimate your true worth and professional value so as to facilitate a good marketability of the person that you are. You will thus be able to see yourself from a professional eye and be able to identify shortcomings so that you can bring about an improvement. In this way, you career will not get paused but will keep progressing instead.

· Monitoring employment opportunities: A career or job change may not be on your wish list, but there is no harm in staying abreast with all developments related to employment opportunities. It has been seen that most organisations regard spontaneous and reactive job-hunters seriously because anybody who is contented in his or her current employment perhaps feels that he or she is on the correct path. It is essential that you keep updating your resume regularly, besides being aware of every development in the field you are working. You should keep your contact base alive – besides staying in contact, you should also focus on expanding it on a continual basis. If you think that there is no scope to improve your present settings, how certain and convincing will such an assumption be? Any new opportunity ought to be evaluated in detail and for all you know, it could well be a jumping board for a monumental realisation.

Formulating a career plan is important alright; it is also necessary that you periodically visit it for the purpose of swotting and review. A proactive approach is what is called for. In case you adopt it, you will remain focussed on your future and endeavour to prepare for it. But if you do not, you will remain preoccupied in fire-fighting only. Remember that it is important to find a career to which you are tailored innately and thereafter toil hard at it, is a sure-shot method to be successful and happy to the maximum extent possible. The best characteristic of this recipe is that if you get into the correct career, your industriousness will propel you up and ahead.  And when that comes about, you will not feel any strains of your toil.