Start Thinking of Your Career as a Project

Projects are ubiquitous in the world of work, so perhaps it's time you started to think of your career as a project—the longest project of your working life. It has all the components of a long-term plan, so break it down to see what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, and how you can improve.

As with any long-term project, you need to have a plan, and a career without a plan is a career with few prospects. Look at where you are and where you want to be. What do you need to do to get there? Consider education, costs and all the other issues that you would with any long-term project, and work around them. Make sure you have the strategy worked out, and keep that strategy in mind throughout your working life.

If your long-term plan involves being promoted, work out what's preventing you from being promoted right now. If you've simply not been in the job long enough, waiting may be the only option, but in many cases, people are not promoted because they're not impressing the right people. Work out who you have to impress and look at how you can do it. Your long-term plan ultimately needs to grab other people's attention.

Perhaps the long-term plan is to break free from the corporate culture and start your own business. Again, you need to sit down and work out what you need to do right now to get the ball rolling. Then plan weeks, months, and years ahead. One of your biggest worries is likely to be cost, but the advantage of building up your own business is that you can do it gradually and create contacts as you go. Is there a unique selling point to your way of doing business? Do you have clients that you can transfer to your business? All of this needs to go in your long-term plan.

One thing many people forget is to allow a lot of leeway for the future. Most people can anticipate roughly what will happen to their careers within six months, but any plans over a year are never set in stone. Revisit your long-term plan every three months to ensure it's up to date, and that it encompasses whatever new obstacles that are in your way of achieving your goal. A new baby, new regulations and even the passing away of parents often cause priorities to readjust.

When you're looking at your career as a long-term plan, be flexible but be honest as well. Your career is simply a huge project that will last for your entire working life, so be sure that you have it planned appropriately to ensure lasting success.

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