Career – a Sprint or a Marathon

How should we pace ourselves as we look at our working life. Some people go straight to work from College or High School while others acquire an additional qualification before looking at work. Many others take a break after working for a few years and go back to school and equip themselves with more education. Do we run very fast (and in the process risk injury and exhaustion) or trudge along at a pace that you are comfortable with and in the process see others overtaking. Ultimately the choice is yours. You could look at a different approach of either speeding or ambling along for a certain number of years and doing the opposite thereafter. There are no right or wrong answers; it all depends on your appetite, staying power and above all your ability to sustain the pace that you have set for yourself. The important thing to remember is to understand yourself and the goals that you have set for yourself. One thing is for certain – one cannot sprint through for all of the 30 years for sure. Very few people can do this. You cannot sprint in a marathon!

You can for sure make course corrections whenever or wherever required. The biggest facilitator (and obstacle) for this is “change”. Everything around us changes with the passage of time and therefore it will either facilitate or obstruct the course correction. Your career is in your hands; there s no one else who can make a difference as much as you can. In this long race one would come across hurdles all the time. It is for you to weave your way around it and not trip over the hurdle.
Many people get obsessed with their career. As Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally advised in an interview with the New York Times, “Don’t manage your career. Follow your dreams and contribute. Think about just exceeding expectations of every job you’re being asked to do. Continually ask for feedback on how it’s going. Ask everybody involved what you can do to do an even better job and the world will beat your door down trying to ask you to do more and more. The most important thing is that you are open to understanding what is expected and where you can make the biggest contribution”.

The devil lies in the details. It is important that as you run the career race, you keep your foot closer to the ground while not forgetting the big picture. Understand what you are working towards; if you are a project manager in a software company, understand the linkages between the various stakeholders, how important this project is important for the client and the client’s clients. If one isolates the actual career growth and instead focuses on exceeding expectations from every job that the person undertakes then career success is given, one need not even consciously work towards that.

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