NEXT> on Career ~2

Career success strategy
So that's a fat lot of thinking we've done about change down there. Nothing highly original about that, except it's good when someone tells us what we already know. Good when someone articulates our thoughts for us.

I love the word "articulate," because this is what I do in my mind when meta-thinking: I articulate the thought to understand it, until it becomes clear and visual. But I digress.

Career structuring: IKEA style
My career success strategy #1&only is to treat my career skills as I would treat a piece of IKEA shelf.

• Career skills are modular.
• Mix, and match to make interesting new, useful, functional combinations
• Discard or stash away the old and un-useful
• Get small new "pieces" (career skills) as need arises. Retrain yourself, refresh your education.

Step-by-step modular career design:

1. List your various career or professional skills. There are various ways of looking at them: education wise, skill set inventory wise (I type, design logos, make crystal jewelry, etc.), and a variety of other ways such as by a "passion rank". Just get an unstructured laundry list.

(1b. Smile! Doesn't this make you feel surprised and a little better already?!)

2. Try bundling the laundry list together by combining the tiniest together to form "chunks." Some lesser important things can be combined with relevant umbrella skills. As in, MS Word can come under MS Office.

3. Visually break them apart, and combine them to form interesting combinations. You can do it in the head, and you can better do that on paper. For instance, I put my love for strategy and media and entrepreneurship together to choose a job in the media sector where I work close to new initiatives and analyze & suggest strategy.

4. But I've jumped the gun! I first visualized clearly on how may I bundle my interests and skills together. Parallel to that, it's useful to read the market and see where it's going. Visionary reports often appear in Time, Newsweek - you don't even have to go as far as the Economist and HBR unless you wish. Back in 2000, I read in Time that showbiz, law, and media are some of the next big growth areas of the new millennium. That was it!

4b. Prepare your little report on "where the world is going to" in the opinion of PEST leaders - the global leaders in the fields of politics, economics, society/culture, and technology.

4c. Match your relevant skill module with it. Be ready to anticipate change and re-design your module.

The trick is to pick the winning combination so that you don't have to change too often, and you get paid and are rewarded. For this, choose the most likely market of the future. Is it real estate, or is it electronic media? If both are good, which makes you more passionate? Which requires least level of extra learning and yields more rewards? Do the maths:

• Extra learning required divided by how long will that learning be useful
• hours input/comfort output
• money spent/money earned

THE ABILITY TO SO DESIGN YOUR PROFESSIONAL AND CAREER SKILLS - TO STRUCTURE TO MATCH THEM WITH THE NEXT> MARKET IS ONE OF THE MOST ESSENTIAL SURVIVAL SKILLS OF TODAY. AND IT'S PRETTY SEXY TOO!

Lesson for today: remember the term modular career.

MODULAR CAREER.

Make it your mantra.

Pass this on to your friends who may need this insight. Click the email button below. Someone may use some help!