Why You Need to Pay Your Dues in Your Job - The Muse

Why You Need to Pay Your Dues in Your Job - The MuseWhy You Need to Pay Your Dues in Your Job Before I finally gathered the courage to quit my job and pursue my goal of becoming a freelance writer, my mind was constantly swimming with all of the daydream-worthy visions of how awesome my career was going to inevitably be.Ill spend my days cozied up in the corner of a quaint coffee shop, Id think to myself, With my laptop in front of me and a latte macchiato by my side, working on must-read articles that will appear in all of my favorite, glossy magazines.Dream big, right? But, a few months after I managed to wave goodbye to my cubicle and throw myself into the freelance life, I realized that there was a big difference between my fantasy and my reality.Rather than perfecting work that I was proud of in that coffee shop of my dreams, I found myself somewhere different entirely Huddled over my laptop in the wee hours of the morning, cranking out 500-word blog posts about storage units an d senior living facilities. Its not exactly the stuff a newbie freelancers dreams are made of.For a while, I convinced myself that Id made a huge mistake. I obviously didnt know what it meant to be a freelance writer, and I was certain that I had jumped the gun in quitting without doing enough research into what this career was all about. And, where did it get me? Stressed out, frazzled, and flat broke while writing endless pieces about what to do when your beloved storage unit floods? This was definitely not what Id signed up for.I got to the point when I was ready to throw in the towel and chalk my idiotic decision up as a learning experience when things began to change. I started to develop a solid portfolio of work and build more a name for myself. Slowly but surely, I started to land gigs with larger publications that I actually admired (so long, articles about senior-safe showers).It was then that I realized something important Just because Id chosen a somewhat untraditional c areer path didnt mean that I got to entirely skip all of those traditional milestones. No, even in my so-called dream career, I still had to roll up my sleeves, put in some hard work, and pay my dues.Sure, weve all likely heard those stories of people who seem to experience almost instant success. They appear to skyrocket from the bottom rung of that ladder straight to the top. But, let me assure that those stories are few and far between- and, even further, youre not often privy to the entire picture.More often than not, you need to start at the bottom, put in your time, and prove yourself before you truly get to the part of your career that youve spent years fantasizing about. And, take it from me, that holds true even when you land in what you believe to be your dream job.I wont deny the fact that paying your dues can be frustrating and disheartening. Like I said, I had plenty of late nights when I was close to tears, convinced that I couldnt write one more article about renters insurance. However, in retrospect, needing to claw my way up from the bottom was actually an incredibly rewarding and important part of the experience. It quickly illustrated to me how hard Id need to work in order to make big things happen for myself, and it made every single new byline that much sweeter- I knew I was taking steps in the right direction. While I no longer write about storage units (and, honestly, Im grateful for that), I dont think Id have built the career I have today without starting out with that humbling experience. So, rather than growing discouraged by the fact that you need to put in your time, its important that you remember that its all a part of the process- and a valuable part at that. Yes, skipping steps might sound ideal. But- trust me- youll appreciate reaching your goal that much more when you can reflect back on just how hard you worked to get there.Photoof woman at computercourtesy ofBraunS / Getty Images.

Career Fairs Aren#8217;t Just for Kids

Career Fairs Aren8217t Just for Kids Career Fairs Aren8217t Just for Kids Yesterday, I found myself saying something I often say this time of year One of my all-time favorite things is to go to a job fairThe response I received to this was not unexpected. The job seeker I was talking to hadnt even thought of attending a job fair since college. They seem so juvenile on some level, dont they?Go Big The Benefits of Large Job FairsI will admit tiny job fairs arent always everything theyre cracked up to be. Ive been to fairs with 10 or fewer employers who have tiny booths and very few actual jobs. These events add little value to your life and could eat up an otherwise perfectly good afternoon.But a good job far can be worth its weight in gold. On more than one occasion, Ive successfully landed a job as a result of attending one of these events.Large fairs can have as many as 300 or more employer booths. Often, the companies represented are the ones youve been dreaming of, such as Faceb ook, Google, and FedEx. Each employer has a booth thats manned by someone from the companys recruiting team. Theyre there to answer questions, collect resumes, and in some cases, conduct interviews.You heard me right The recruiters often conduct first-round interviews at large career fairs. Can you imagine how much time you could save in your job searchif you could simply walk from recruiter to recruiter in person?Where to Find Job Fairs Near YouFinding the right fair can take time, but it is worth the effort. Start by looking on local chamber of commerce websites and the websites of young professional groups. They often help career fairs get the word out.Then, check out the websites of various national organizations, such as the National Society of Hispanic MBAs, the Society of Women Engineers, or Net Impact. These groups have huge annual conferences. As part of these conferences, they typically host large career fairs. The organizations will often sell career fair-only passes for $100 or less much cheaper than the full conference price.If youre not aya which organizations to look up, try checking out your local convention centers website. You can usually find a calendar of eventsthat will contain a listing of all upcoming fairs and conventions.Keep in mind that the same recruiters attend many different job fairs all year. The particular fair you attend is not as important as the specific employersyou meet.Attending the FairOnce youve found the fair you want to target, prepare four things your outfit, your resume, your business cards, and your elevator pitch. Study the job fair map provided and decide which employer booths you want to stop by. Look up those companies online to see which open positions they are currently promoting.On the day of the event, arrive early. Prepare to stay all day. Feel confident when talking to recruiters about your job search, and dont be afraid to ask for their business cards. After the fair, follow up through email and LinkedI n.With a little work, youll find job fairs can beinvaluable no matter how old you are.A version of this article originally appeared on The Memphis Daily News.

What Happens to Your Pension When You Leave a Company

What Happens to Your Pension When You Leave a CompanyWhat Happens to Your Pension When You Leave a CompanyBreaking ties with an old job is often enjoyable, sometimes bittersweet, and other times just plain bitter. If you have adefined benefit pension, breaking ties can also be complicated. What happens to your pension plan when you leave a company before youre ready to retire? Will you get the money, and what should you do with it? Are there tax consequences you need to consider? There was a time when some folks wouldnt consider leavinga job with a defined benefit pension, but peoplechange jobs much more frequently than in the past, and thetypes of benefits employers providehave changed. If a better offer comes along before retirement, its up to you to decide what to do with the pension you have accumulated. Whats a Defined Benefit Pension? A defined benefit pension is what most people think of as the traditional, old-school pension that your father or grandfather had. You know, the type that guarantees workers who stay with a company a lifetime income stream during retirement. Defined benefit pensions are not as common these days, they have been replaced bydefined contribution plans, like401(k)s, which put much of the savings responsibility on the employee and do not come with any guarantees of a set amount of retirement income. Are you Vested? According to the Department of Labor, in a defined benefit plan, an employer can require that employees have 5 years of service in order to become 100 percent vested in the employer funded benefits. Employers also can choose a graduated vesting schedule, which requires an employee to work 7 years in order to be 100 percent vested, but provides at least 20 percent vesting after 3 years, 40 percent after 4 years, 60 percent after 5 years, and 80 percent after 6 years of service. Plans may provide a different schedule as long as it is more generous than these vesting schedules. You are only entitled to the vested portion of your pension at the time you leave your employer Pension Options When You Leave a Job Typically, when you leave a job with a defined benefit pension, you have a few options. You can choose to take the money as alump sumnow, or take the promise of regular payments in the future, also known as anannuity. You may even be able to get a combination of both. What you do with the money in your pension may depend on your age and years to retirement. If you are young and have a relatively small amount of money at stake, a lump sum may be the easiest choice. Keep in mind that most annuity payments are fixed and do not keep up with inflation. Todays small annuity will look even smaller in the future. In 30 to 40 years, the buying power of your pension could be greatly reduced. Invest it yourself, perhaps with the help of an accredited financial advisor, and you may be able to get a better long-term return on your money. However, know thyself, if you are a disciplined investor, m anaging your pension resources will make more sense than if you are prone to fear based reactions to market moves. On the other hand, if you are closer to retirement and looking for guaranteed income, the annuity may be a more attractive option. You dont have to worry about investing the money yourself in the precarious pre-retirement years. You may also have a better sense of the companys near-term health and ability to meet its pension promises, (pensions are insured by the government through thePension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, but when companies go under, employees and former employees usually dont get everything they had been promised). Sometimes, companies will offer extra benefits to encourage older employees to stay in their plan.If your research indicates that your plan is underfunded or is likely to be so in the future, then you might be more likely to select a lump sum. What to Do With a Lump Sum Pension Payment If you do take the lump sum, consider transferringth e money directly from your pension into arollover Individual Retirement Account (IRA)to keep it from being taxed. If your company writes you a check, you have 60 days to move the money into a tax-favored account before the money is taxed. Unless you really need the funds, its best to avoid spending the lump sum before retirement. Not only are you missing out on long-term investment growth, but you will also have to pay taxes on the cash plus a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty. If you have significant assets in your plan, you could face a significant tax bill. Within a rollover IRA, the funds can be invested in any way you choose. You could even purchase an annuity within the IRA to capture some of that guaranteed income on your own. Some retirement plan administrators, including Vanguard and Fidelity Investments, offer advice and online tools to help employees decide between an annuity and a lump sum. Its worth playing around with a few of them before making a decision. You can a lso contact plan administrators for advice based on your specific circumstances and goals.

The Top Positives and Negatives about Job Descriptions

The Top Positives and Negatives about Job DescriptionsThe Top Positives and Negatives about Job DescriptionsEmployee job descriptions are written statements that describe the duties, responsibilities, required qualifications and reporting relationships of a particular job. They are based on objective information obtained through job analysis, an understanding of the competencies and skills required to accomplish needed tasks, and the needs of the organization to produce work. Employee job descriptions identify and spell out the responsibilities of a specific job. They also include information about working conditions, tools, equipment used, knowledge and skills needed, and relationships with other positions including the immediate boss. Effectively developed, employee job descriptions are communication tools that are significant to your organizations success. Poorly-written employee job descriptions, on the other hand, add to workplace confusion, miscommunication, and make people fee l they dont know what is expected from them. If you use employeejob descriptions as living, breathing documents that are updated regularly to reflect the changing requirements of each employee, these descriptions can become more of a job plan than an irrelevant document. Positives about Job Descriptions Job descriptions provide the following Provide an Opportunity to Communicate Your Company Direction and Inform Employees How They Fit Into the Big Picture Whether youre a small or large business or a multi-site organization, well-written employee job descriptions will help you align employee direction with the direction of your senior leadership.Alignment of employees with your goals,vision, andmission spells success for your organization. As a leader, youre guaranteeing the trans-functionality of all of the positions and roles needed to satisfy your customers. Set Clear Expectations About What You Expect From People Ferdinand Fournies, in Why, Dont Employees Do What Theyre Suppo sed to Do and What To Do About It?says that worker expectation is the first place to look if people arent doing what you want them to do. He says you need to make certain that all employees clearly understand your expectations- and that understanding starts with the employee job description. It holds true whether youre recruiting new employees or posting jobs forinternal applicants. Help You Cover Yourself Legally As an example, for compliance with theAmericans With Disabilities Act (ADA), youll want to make certain that the description of the physical requirements of the job is accurate down to the letter.Help Organizational Employees, Who Must Work With the New Hire, Understand the Boundaries of the Persons Responsibilities People who have been involved in the hiring process are more likely to support the success of the new employee or promoted coworker. Developing employee job descriptions is an easy way to involve people in your organizations success. Remember, as you develop e mployee job descriptions, recognize that they are one component in an effective performance management system. Consider these warnings about employee job descriptions. Negative Potential of Employee Job Descriptions Employee job descriptions have their downside, including the following They Become Outdated in a Fast-Paced, Changing, Customer-Driven Work Environment You must supplement employee job descriptions with regularly negotiated goals and developmental opportunities, at a minimum, quarterly- preferably monthly. It requires the employee to meet with the boss, or the gruppe, to establish the next set of specific, measurable objectives.This meeting must also be realistic. If the employee receives new goals and is still responsible for every task listed in the original employee job description, this is unfair.Especially, if the goals and job accomplishments are tied to salary or bonus, you must take a look at where the employee is investing his or her time. If the employee jo b descriptions provide an inaccurate picture, change the employee job description. Dont Always Have Enough Flexibility so Individuals Can Work Outside of the Box. Employee job descriptions must be flexible so that employees are comfortable cross-training, can help another team member accomplish a task, and have the confidence that they can make appropriate decisions to serve their customers.You want people who are comfortable taking reasonable chances to stretch their limits.Dont Always Provide for Reviews of an Employees Day-To-Day Work. In addition to the updating of regular goals and objectives suggested, employee job descriptions are an integral part of the performance management and evaluation system. They are used to determine salary increases and bonus eligibility.They are a job reference for determining how an employee spends her time at work on a daily basis. They provide a measurable focus for energy and attention. Can Sit Unused in a Drawer and Therefore Are a Waste of Ti me Employee job descriptions must be integral in your hiring selection process. Bottomline You can use employee job descriptions to obtain employee ownership and to trace the parameters of the skills and abilities you seek for the position. When hiring, well-written employee job descriptions can help you make sound hiring decisions. And hiring the right team is critical to your future success.

The Best Plan You Should Be Using for Dream by Genie Promo Code

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How to Build the Career Roadmap That Leads to the Job of Your Dreams

How to Build the Career choreografie That Leads to the Job of Your Dreams I started my current career journey when I welches 25. I had a prestigious job at a highly regarded company analyzing potential acquisition targets for the executive team, regularly discussing our findings with some of the most important people in a very sexy industry. I worked with smart, cool people, and my parents were proud. But something about the job, deep down, didnt feel right, and it was making me unhappy, though I could not put my handglied on why. The hours were lousy, but I had been working all-nighters since high school and that had never been a problem. I felt overdue a promotion (as usual), and couldnt help but notice the disproportionate money my friends in finance were making, so I assumed that was it, and that once I was finally made a vice president I would be happier.Then a friend who was a kindergarten teacherbei invited me to speak to her class at career da y. I told the kids that I helped come up with big ideas, buy companies, and identify synergies. During the QA session, one little girl approached me and asked her prepared questionsDo you work in New York City?Yes, I do I love New YorkDo you bring your lunch to work?No, I usually buy a salad, but that is a really good ideaIs your job important?What?Is your job important?Well, we guide overall capital allocation, which is a key driver of shareholder value. And, granted, the MA deals do not always work, but we execute those deals and someone has to do that. And look, the business leaders dont have the overall view of the strategic landscape that we do, and Im supposed to write down yes or no.Oh. Um no?And there it was. All my ambiguous work anxiety, my fixation on the next promotion, the residual unhappiness that slipped from my workday to my personal life, and it took a childs simple question to illuminate the issue.This was a perfectly good job. But I had always believed my best w ork would come when I was leading and executing, not strategizing. I felt that the world is moved forward by people who build, motivate, and direct great teams to do big things. I was not doing that, and I was not learning how to do it. It was a truly great job, and it was not the job for me.I began a soul-searching exercise that would eventually lead me to develop the Impact Map and Happiness Matrix. I kept redrawingthe Impact Map and redesigning my Happiness Matrix until I felt I had the direction my life needed. I faced the fact that I wanted to lead others, be accountable for the success of the team, and have an important impact on the lives of customers. I also knew that I wanted to do this in the context of marrying my amazing girlfriend, making a life in New York City, having kids and being a good dad, and giving back to my community by contributing to education and getting underprivileged people back to work. If I succeeded, maybe I would write a book. If I pulled all of tha t off, I would be proud of my eulogy.Just one problem remained. I had virtually none of the qualifications or experiences I needed.By this stage of our journey, you are probably in a similar situation. The career path you desire requires experience doing the job, but how do you get experience without getting that job? The average person is sitting in her role waiting for the person above her to retire or get fired to create an opportunity. But not you, not anymore you create opportunities.We are going to do a couple of exercises to build the Career programm that will help you realize your dreams. This is how I planned the career path that I wanted, which guided me on countless occasions to take on the right new roles, volunteer for relevant additional responsibilities, seek out mentors and coaches who could teach me what I needed to know, read the necessary books, and so on. These exercises are simple, clarifying, and will light the way to your career destiny.Lets pick an example, and pretend you have decided that your career purpose is to be a senior technology leader of a company in the eCommerce space, building an online shopping experience that brings lower cost and improved convenience to millions of peoples lives while lowering the environmental waste of brick-and-mortar shopping. To clarify this picture in our minds, lets call this role chief technology officer (CTO), though you may figure that running a large technology team with any title would be a great career destination.Write down the names of all the CTOs in your industry of interest that you can think of. Google something like best CTOs in eCommerce. Study their bios and look for the patterns in their career paths to learn what skills, experiences, and achievements they have amassed. Start recording your observations. Seek other avenues to enrich this list, perhaps by talking to friends of friends who are in the higher ranks of technology organizations, reading books on the topic, and so on.As your research is coming together, your list of needed skills, experiences, and achievements may look something like thisThis list is going to form the foundation of what is essentially your career to-do list. Some of these elements will appear clear and achievable, like staying current on latest technology trends, while others, like managing a hundred people, will seem insurmountable. Dont panic when I first performed this exercise and reviewed the bios of successful CEOs, the only person I had ever managed was Felix, the summer intern. You just have to make a plan. As Henry Ford once said, Nothing is particularly hard if you break it down into small jobs, and then he turned a horse into a car. For you, then, the next step is to break down each of these characteristics into the small jobs that are easier to visualize and plan to achieve. For instance, lets break down the first itemfrom the list, ability to manage large numbers of people effectively, into some of the components it m ight entailSo, while you may have struggled with the leap from where you are now to CTO-level organizational leadership, learning the component parts like hiring good people is not so daunting. Next, you are going to make a plan to learn and demonstrate each of these tasks in the coming years of your career. Again, we will break down the first item in the list above, comfortable with management tools like budgeting, designing organizational structures, and performance managementYou will do this exercise for each item on the checklist. A few may be achieved just through the normal course of your work for example, if you are currently a software engineer, your day-to-day work and hands-on learning may already support something like excellent engineer who codes well. Others are learning experiences that will likely never present themselves to you unless you are magically promoted into the big job or you create the synthetic experiences, like those illustrated above, that will give you your first taste of the new skill. This checklist will inform the action items you tackle every week of your career. Write it all down, set deadlines, and commit. Each time you execute one, you will learn, grow, and demonstrate success in some way that helps advance your plot.There are some keys to getting your Career fahrplan and its execution right. Here are a few snippets of advice that others have found helpfulCommit to an Unusual PathAchieving extraordinary outcomes will require unusual measures. Very few of your colleagues, classmates, and friends will have a Career Roadmap most of them will be measuring their success in titles, compensation, and awards, and behaving accordingly, rarely with a clear-eyed plan for their future. Many of the people senior to you in your chosen profession will be guilty of the same if enough people just do what is expected of them, eventually a few of them will be made senior vice president. Most people will find the idea of a big detailed plan f or their future to be somewhere between odd and off-putting.They will also find some of your career choices to be confusing. Not long after a kindergartner had shamed me for being misaligned from my career purpose, my team had begun negotiating the largest acquisition in the companys history. Everyone was salivating over putting this career-making deal on his or her resume. At the same moment, a mentor of mine, who understood my Career Roadmap better than I did at the time, offered me a long-shot opportunity to develop and launch a new channel for the company, which would provide me with extensive operational and leadership experiences. For the next few months, the whole team worked excitedly on a deal thatconsistently graced the cover of the Wall Street Journal, while I played alone in the corner developing a new business plan. That channel became my first business launch, my first management experience, my first PL responsibility and it catapulted my career in the arc of mynew Ca reer Roadmap.I have yet to read in the autobiography of an important person, I just did what everyone else did and, wow, here I am. If you do what everyone else does, you are going to get what everyone else gets. I want a lot more than that for you. Achieving yourCareer Roadmaprequires a commitment to executing your own path.Do Your ResearchYour Career Roadmap calls for you to advance in your field well beyond your current scope of knowledge. By definition, that means you are making big assumptions and plans regarding a career and jobs about which you are at least somewhat ignorant. In ways you cannot yet see, your plan is wrong. Poring over books, articles, blogs, and TED Talks on relevant topics can help. And there is no substitute for talking to someone on the other side of the journey.Delightfully, people are usually happy to share their advice the successful tend to be motivated by service or by ego, and telling someone else the secrets of their success is consistent with both. With some hustle, you can gather a lot of insight and inspiration. For instance, in the exercise above, we strategized a CTO career path and collected a list of top CTOs in the industry. With some time on Google and LinkedIn, you could find a way to get in touch with each one of them and ask if you could visit or call them for fifteen minutes of advice, and if that would be too much trouble, could you email a question or two. At least one, likely more, will say yes. If you can find someone in your network who knows an individual on the list and agrees to make an introduction for you, your likelihood of success increases tenfold. Ask them what propelled theircareer. Ask what they look for in top talent. Ask if the items on your Career Roadmap are consistent with their career observations. Ask them, if they had to go back15 years and do it again, what they would do, knowing all that they know now.Will this feel awkward? At first, of course You are asking intimidating strangers exotic questions about their success. But each of them can give you a piece of the map to the special place you are trying to go. Most every step of this extraordinary career path is going to require you to make yourself uncomfortable at first. Again, get comfortable being uncomfortable.Enter Into a Career Covenant With Your ManagerYour current manager can have a significant impact on your success. If advancement in your company is a component of your career plan, she can advocate for you at critical junctures, like when promotions are considered. Even if your Career Roadmap points in a different direction, your manager is someone who regularly observes your work and can provide valuable feedback and advice. Recruiting your manager to be a part of your Career Roadmap is key to success.Michael Feiner writes in The Feiner Points of Leadership that a leaders responsibility is to deliver on a career covenant, agreeing to provide skill development, performance feedback, advice, and career spon sorship to employees who deliver good work. You can initiate this relationship by asking your boss explicitly if she would be willing to provide this mentorship, and if shed dedicate a fraction of your one-on-one meetings to coaching you on your career plan. Here you could discuss elements of your Career Roadmap and solicit advice or introductions as you work your way through it.Your bosss commitment to a career covenant with you also opens the door for you to take on side hustles bonus projects that will develop new skills and experiences for you and benefit your boss. For instance, you may conclude that you need to become a better interviewer on the path to learning to be a manager, and you ask if it would be appropriate to join your boss for interviews and take notes for her and send her the summary. At some point in the future, you might be positioned to do first-round interviews for your manager and screen out candidates who are not worth her consideration. Or you may have a C areer Roadmap action to learn marketing, so you are reading a few books on the topic and you offer to take a crack at producing a new marketing brochure for customers describing one of your teams services. If you deliver in your day job and in your side hustle, you will continue to build your managers trust and receive more and more responsibilities. This has the added benefit of distinguishing you as a person who is learning the craft at the next level, which puts you on the radar for promotion.Your side of this bargain is the heavy one You need to do excellent work in your day job, keep your relationship with your boss focused on the work she needs the team to get done, and then create added time for the coaching and advice. You will very quickly lose your managers support and goodwill if your assigned work appears to be slipping because of your focus on longer-term goals. You can be both sthlerne and Clark Kent, but you have to get your articles in on time.Be a Giver, Not a Taker Blatantly ambitious people often come across as needy, selfish climbers. There is a way for you to be ambitious without being that kind of person Frame your Career Roadmap and your career discussions in the context of what you want to contribute and how you want to help. You could, using the interviewing example above, just go to someone in human resources and impose on his time to learn how to interview. Alternatively, you could say, I have always respected professionals who value their people and understand HR and am hoping to be able to do the same someday. If this is something important to you, too, could I pick your brain? I dont know if you have interest in engineering, but I would love to repay the favor if you ever want to see how we do it. The latter is a sincere exchange and one to which an HR professional who cares about his craft will likely be excited to contribute.There will be people upon whom you impose for instance, the successful people in your field whose advice you solicit to whom you cant really provide much value today. But you will someday, and it is important that as you progression along your path, you do not forget the people who helped you get there. In the meantime, there is always someone junior to you, who could use your help in one way or another. If you have read this far, you would probably make a good mentor to someone else. Pay it forward.Change Jobs Thoughtfully and PurposefullyYour job needs to be important to you, aligned to your Happiness Matrix, and challenging to you in ways consistent with the demands of your Career Roadmap. Unfortunately, many settle into jobs that do not achieve these principles. Some are aware that their job is not right, but are afraid of making a mistake, so they wait for the perfect opportunity to come along next. Others may not be comfortable pushing themselves to the next level, getting soft and lazy instead, convincing themselves that they have worked hard to get here and deserve to sit back and enjoy it for a while. The problem is, if you are not moving forward in your career, you are moving backward, because there are ambitious people all around who are gunning for the next challenge and are going to take your seat. The alternative to an extraordinary career is not an easy and comfortable career it is failure.Properly executing your career plan requires constantly assessing your current role and other potential roles in the context of your Career Roadmap. This does not mean opting instead for job hoppingvariety without a strategy is hardly better than sitting passively with the same old responsibilities. It does mean working relentlessly through your checklist of skills and experiences you need to achieve the next level. A well-managed career covenant with your manager can help to maximize what you are learning in your current role, but at times the next set of lessons will require a new job with your employer or with a new organization. For instance, your employer m ay not have management opportunities available for you, but another, faster-growing company does. Or your career plan may require you to work in a different industry or region, necessitating a move. Another company may be more willing to give you ownership of your own budget or some other broader responsibility. Or perhaps your Career Roadmap is leading you to starting your own business. Your job may change a dozen times over the next few decades the key to a successful career is making those decisions proactively, with a focus on accomplishing the items in your Career Roadmap as quickly and successfully as possible, while continuing to honor your personal values.With regularity, you should assess your current job as well as other jobs for which you may be qualified in the context of your Career Roadmap. As you do so, keep in mind the human bias to overvalue what you have and undervalue what you could have when comparing opportunities, pretend you are already in the other job you ar e considering, and ask yourself if you would leave it to take the job you have now. If not, then it is time to think harder about making amove.Fundamentally Change How You Think About Time ManagementMost people see their lives in two parts working and playing. Either they are required to be at work to get their job done, or they can do whatever feels fun. Executing an extraordinary career and life requires a radically different approach. You have to set goals and action items and deadlines, and a good number of them need to be due this quarter. They must be in your calendar and you have to commit to them. You should be checking in on your plan regularly, assessing and adapting yourplan based on your progress. Leaving work on Friday for two days of mindless fun and returning Monday morning sleepy are for someone on a different path. To achieve your career goals, we are going to stack the calendar with the routines that are fundamental to your success.Dont Lose Sight of the Big Pictur eThe examples offered here focus on work-related strategies and tactics because they are the most universally relevant (we all suffer from email overload and endless meetings). However, that is not meant to imply that work is more important than the other things you value in life family, friends, and community may play a more prominent role in your lifethan anything you do at work this year. My goal is to help you succeed in your career as part of an impactful overall life plan.Therefore, your Career Roadmap should accommodate, and force thoughtful trade-offs among, the things that are truly important to you. You could spend all your waking hours working on your Career Roadmap, but that would come at the expense of your relationships with the people you love. A big promotion to a role full of international travel may fill important gaps in your Career Roadmap, but if that conflicts with your important responsibilities as, say, a new parent, you may be wise to decline. Being the fir st to reply to the bosss emails may earn you goodwill at work, but a life spent glued to your screen may not be the eulogy you were looking for. Having a clear plan for each of the things truly important to you, and investing the time and focus each deserves, is the balance required for an extraordinary life and career.Adapted fromThe Career Manifestoby Mike Steib, copyright (c) 2018. Published by TarcherPerigee, a division of Penguin Random House, Inc.Mike Steibis the president and CEO of XO Group, a family of brands that includes the popular sites The Knot, The Nest, and The Bump.