It’s a new year and with it comes new opportunities to grow our businesses and careers. To help you achieve your goals, we’ve collected career and business advice from executives within Upwork, human resources experts, experienced freelancers, and business leaders. We’ll be sharing these tips all month long! You can subscribe to the blog to avoid missing this valuable insight.
Here's what else Stephen suggests:
OWN YOUR CAREER, OWN YOUR VISION
Don’t expect anyone to hand you your dream job. Better yet, don’t expect that your dream job is available or exists. But knowing your dream job is valuable, because it will allow you to create a roadmap that gets you closer and closer to that ideal scenario.
***Important: to envision your perfect job scenario, you have to know what’s important to you. For me it’s work-life balance, innovative thinking, and collaboration.
OWN YOUR JOURNEY
Map out the journey to your dream job with action steps or milestones. Be as broad or specific as you like. Then, the scariest part, share your next few steps/milestones with your supervisor or prospective employer. This conversation has created vast opportunities for me. It is the fastest way to find out if your job will get you closer to your dream scenario. A good fit will help you achieve your goals as long as you can continue helping the company achieve theirs.
OWN YOUR DAY
Contentment at work isn’t just about career progress. It’s about daily fulfillment. As mentioned earlier, all of this requires that you know what’s important to you. I evaluate my daily fulfillment by measuring my big 3: work life balance, innovation, and collaboration. Here are the questions I ask daily:
⁃ Was I able to spend the evening with my family?
⁃ Did I get to solve any problems today?
⁃ Did I get to spend at least 30 minutes working with someone else today?
Know your big 3 and measure them daily. If you aren’t satisfied with the results, talk to your supervisor and find out if that gap can be filled.