Weekly Pulse is content curation and highlights from readings, books, podcasts, insights, ramblings, and other interesting things I discovered and digested during the week.
So, let's go with some discoveries from the week!
#1 - Why You Should Build a “Career Portfolio” (Not a “Career Path”)
#2 - How to Figure Out What You Want Next in Your Career
#3 - What If People Don’t Want 'A Career?'
#4 - The Difference Between Movement and Progress in Your Career
#5 - Book Notes: Lean Impact - Ann Mei Chang
#2 - How to Figure Out What You Want Next in Your Career
#3 - What If People Don’t Want 'A Career?'
#4 - The Difference Between Movement and Progress in Your Career
#5 - Book Notes: Lean Impact - Ann Mei Chang
Why You Should Build a “Career Portfolio” (Not a “Career Path”)
Source: Harvard Business ReviewAuthor: April Rinne
Year: 2021
Summary: Building a career portfolio is a way to broaden your professional identity and career focus. It is a new way to think about, talk about and craft your professional future in order to navigate the ever-changing world of work with purpose, clarity, and flexibility. It includes skills, experiences and talents that can be mixed, matched and blended and includes traditional paid jobs as well as freelance roles, volunteering, community service and hobbies. Curating your portfolio is more than professional development, it is how you design your life. It gives you greater ownership of your career, as it cannot simply be taken away. It also helps you to be proactive, learn and contribute in ways that a traditional career path would not. Telling a good portfolio narrative requires understanding how the different things in your portfolio enhance one another.
3 Highlights:
"... Whereas a career path tends to be a singular pursuit (climb the ladder in one direction and focus on what is straight ahead), a career portfolio is a never-ending source of discovery and fulfillment. It represents your vast and diverse professional journey, including the various twists and turns, whether made by choice or by circumstance..."
"... A career portfolio is different in that it is not a physical entity or system. It’s a new way to think about, talk about, and — most importantly – craft your professional future in order to navigate our ever-changing world of work with purpose, clarity, and flexibility..."
"... Telling a good portfolio narrative requires understanding how the different things in your portfolio enhance one another. How does your combination of skills give you an edge? I like to think of this as “1+1=11”: Your combination of skills is far more valuable than any of them on their own. When answering interview questions, for instance, share a story about how you applied skills you learned in two very different settings to solve one, specific problem. The future of work is full of uncertainty. It is hard to know what to do or to trust that things will work out. For all the things that you can’t control in today’s world, taking ownership of your portfolio is one that you can do. You can start today. Your future will thank you...."
How to Figure Out What You Want Next in Your Career
Source: Harvard Business ReviewAuthor: Ann Hiatt
Year: 2021
Summary: This article encourages them to take a step back and assess their values in order to find meaningful challenges in their career. It suggests focusing on the three Ps: purpose, people, and pace, in order to help make career decisions that are value-aligned. It offers questions to help assess opportunities, such as what passions and purpose align the team members and what employee attributes are most effective in the organization. Finally, it advises readers to seize opportunities that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
3 Highlights:
"... Reminding ourselves of what we value most in our lives and careers can illuminate empowering opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed. We can actually engineer our own luck simply by knowing what we’re looking for and seeking it out. This doesn’t need to take much time, but it does need to be purposeful. Value realignment rarely happens passively..."
"... Defining your life and work’s purpose can sound overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Purpose, at its core, comes down to two things: knowing whom you want to serve and empower and by what method..."
"... Those who don’t take the time to evaluate their own values and find alignment with teams and employers who are on the same path are those who become stagnant, prime to be disrupted by industry evolution, and end up burned out or passed over for promotion..."
What If People Don’t Want 'A Career?'
Source: Warzel
Author: Charlie Warzel
Year: 2021
Summary: The trend of career skepticism has been growing, with people quitting jobs in droves and reevaluating their options to send a message about the exhaustion and unsustainability of the status quo of modern work. People are questioning their careers, asking questions such as: what if work didn't make you feel awful, what would life be like if we didn't live to work, and what if we structured our work lives around a different idea of success? This is a response to the idea that a career involves a non-trivial amount of sacrifice and submission, and are looking for alternative ways to cultivate satisfaction and self-worth, such as working for places that invest in them and balance work and life.
3 Highlights:
"... Careerist’ has long been a dirty word in the working world — usually, it’s meant to signify a cynical, ladder-climbing mentality. A careerist isn’t a team player. They care more about the job title and advancement than the work..."
"... A work/life balance that truly divides the work and life components of a person’s experience may be okay for a job. But for a career? It simply won’t fly. There’s no disputing it — sometimes emails need to be sent at night. Sometimes calls need to be taken early in the morning. Sometimes a Monday deadline necessitates a few hours of work on a Saturday..."
"... In reality, 40 years is a long-ass time…to pick something at 22 and stick with it. It actually concerns me to do the same thing for 40 years. Jt does not give me safety and comfort…Jobs aren’t designed for you to love them. That’s not the point. The point is to give you income so you can participate in society and most people can’t accept that..."
The Difference Between Movement and Progress in Your Career
Source: Article of the Week
Are you feeling restless in your current job? Do you find yourself daydreaming about the next big thing, wondering if a change of scenery might be just what you need to achieve that elusive sense of career fulfillment? If so, you're not alone.
Many of us have been taught to equate movement with progress and to believe that constant change is the key to unlocking our full potential in the working world.
But what if I told you that movement is not progress? What if I told you that making changes simply for the sake of making changes could actually be holding you back from achieving your career goals?
Book Notes: Lean Impact - Ann Mei Chang
Source: Book Notes of the WeekDespite enormous investments of time and money, are we making a dent on the social and environmental challenges of our time? What if we could exponentially increase our impact?
Social change is far more complicated than building a new app. It requires more listening, more care, and more stakeholders.
To make a lasting difference, solutions must be embraced by beneficiaries, address root causes, and include an engine that can accelerate growth to reach the scale of the needs.
Lean Impact offers bold ideas to reach audacious goals through customer insight, rapid experimentation and iteration, and a relentless pursuit of impact.
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