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Career Age Vs Actual Age

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Quote of the Month

 


I was informally speaking to a colleague of mine the other day. He was sad. He explained the people who reported to him in his previous organization are now managing large teams by themselves and that he is working all alone.... He said "They progressed very well whereas I am stuck in my present job. I am lagging behind them by many years. How do I push myself ahead?".

 

I hear these words almost every day. This is a story of every other person. Almost every one of us is dissatisfied with his/her career. Most of us feel their career age is less than their actual physical age. Why? In my opinion, this dissatisfaction is caused due to one and ONLY ONE basic reason; all other reasons are byproducts of the same single reason. This reason is lacking a long term visions in life.

 

People take decisions on the fly. Or they decide based on ground realities which are mostly short term. Then based on their incorrect decisions they end up being at a place where they never wanted to be. And then they find a comfortable corner in complaining as it gives them a satisfaction when other people hear their grudge and nod their heads in sympathy.

 

How this distress can be avoided? I recommend the following tried-and-tested few simple steps to overcome this ill feeling.

 

   ✦   Focus on the long term vision (say 30-50 years or more down the line) and the matters (like the above) in life become trivial by themselves. If the focus is on life beyond your present life, challenges in this life start appearing small.


   ✦   Make sure your steps in future are based on your long term visions and calculations which are at best of your knowledge and advice from your sincere significant others. Don't cry in front of every other person.


   ✦   Start turning the rudder of your life boat slowly and gradually by taking small steps towards your desired outcome. Make sure these steps are aligned with your long term vision.


   ✦   Strive for the best possible but appreciate and thank the Almighty for whatever He has given. Gratitude gives satisfaction and brings more to life.


   ✦   Offer your shoulder to others to grow.


   ✦   And the most important of all... Understand the Almighty. He has His own way of doing things which we may not comprehend 100% all the time. Be content and do your best in whatever role you are playing currently.

 

I am sure there must be a lot more that you could add here. But these simple steps above have helped me a great deal in coming out of low productive cycle in past. My career age is far less than my actual age. But I don't feel so. It does not make me sad either. Why? I have practiced the simple steps above :)

 

I invite you to follow them in your life and be satisfied. You will soon realize your career age has nothing to do with your actual age. In fact, you will find it otherwise.

 

 


Nayyer Abdul Rab is a Licensed Business & Life Coach and lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He helps individuals and businesses reach their visions based on the Meaningful Life Framework. He has been associated to Timelenders for more than a decade since 2003. Nayyer also possesses a strong passion for writing and writes regularly on various online forums. He can be reached at: [email protected] 


 

 

 


 


  

 

 

 

Your Best Just Got Better by Jason Womack is a personal training tool on doing exactly what the title says; turning your best effort into an even better one. The subtitle of the book further clarifies the book’s purpose; Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More. Womack, founder and CEO of the Jason Womack Company, is a productivity expert who hones in on flaws related to personal and organizational productivity and performance. The guidelines that he discusses in Your Best Just Got Better are just as applicable on a stay at home mother of two kids as they are on high level executives or entrepreneurs. 

 

Interestingly enough, Womack does not assume that the reader of the book is a novice who necessarily needs help with managing time and performance. Keeping this assumption in mind, Womack offers recommendations on making things even better than before. He splits the book into three sections. The first part ‘Work Smarter’ deals with how to do the same work but with a little more focused attention. Womack’s idea on making clear lists about the way we work and operate is most interesting. Some things just make more sense when they’re in front of our eyes in black or blue rather than vague assumptions in the head. 

 

Working smarter involves not just building good habits but sustainable ones that won’t burn you out over an extended period. Productivity does not mean working in spurts and brilliant flashes when the moment calls for it but working at a well-paced and uniformly brilliant fashion day in and out. In order to stay motivated Womack advises to keep asking ourselves if what we are doing is worth the effort. In attempting to make the most of our time he tells us to be aware of habits that bog down our time unknowingly. He says, ‘until you notice what you do, you don’t notice what you do’.  We have to replace the things we are never going to focus on with things that really matter.  This focus also includes understanding and utilizing all the tools that can help make our tasks easier. 

 

Womack tells us to be ‘doers’ rather than procrastinators who stress and fret over a task and keep putting it off. He tells us to set goals and ‘just get started’.  Here he hammers away the myth of ‘practice makes perfect’ saying that ‘practice doesn’t always make perfect, but repeating something over and over again will eventually make it seem normal and feel comfortable’. 

 

The second part of the book ‘Think Bigger’ deals with positive thinking and the right attitudes. ‘Things are the way they are because of the way you think’. Here Womack presents clear guidelines on how to improve attitudes and think bigger. He advises reading the right type of books such as biographies of successful people and books on personal effectiveness. Here his most outstanding advice is placing the spotlight on ‘team you’. According to the management thinker Jim Collins, ‘Leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with ‘where’ but with ‘who’’.  

 

Womack says, ‘Spend time with people who think bigger and you will think bigger too…the fact remains that the groups of people with whom we interact contribute the most to our mental outlook’. These are all the people who comprise ‘team you’. We should not just envision these people in our head but we need to create lists. The purpose of purposefully selecting this team is because ‘we’re smarter together’. Choose people who lament not about what they were not able to achieve in life but who talk about they are capable of achieving. 

 

In the third part of the book ‘Make More’ Womack introduces an interesting concept of asking for and relying on feedback to assess our progress. He suggests asking the question ‘What did I do really well today?’ from people around us and to then use this negative or positive feedback for increasing focus and clarity. One good way Womack suggests to increase focus is to schedule 15-minute work sessions where you focus on a single task for 15-minutes without any interruptions. This 15-minute session should be timed with a timer. He says ‘Try this several times in a week and see how far you get on some of those projects and actions you’ve been putting off ‘until you have time’. 

 

Your Best Just Got Better is another book you need to have in your collection. Every time you feel like you have too much to do and not enough time, you can skim through it and get some tips on how to put more hours into a 24-hour day. Most of the time, it is not that there aren’t enough hours in a day, it’s just that we aren’t harnessing those hours sagely. In the words of the business philosopher Jim Rohn, ‘Instead of wishing things were easier, wish you were better.’ 

 

 


Irum Sarfaraz is a freelance writer/editor settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA. Her published credits as writer and web content developer include well over 2,000 articles in both American and Pakistani publications. Her notable work is the translation of Harun Yahya's epic Atlas of Creation-Vol 1 and Evolution Deceit. Sister Irum will be writing the Book Review for Envision every month. She offers editing, content and ebook creation, and book translation and representation through her company Wordlenders. 


 

    


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