Brief Guide to Achieving Work Success
How to achieve professional success and build a dream career? Here and there they say that all you need to do is to work twice as hard as everyone does, learn new skills constantly and show positive attitude at work. However, this is not entirely true.
If you work in the office, you can think of a coworker who works really hard but hasn’t been promoted for quite a long time – or wasn’t promoted at all! So, you don’t have to be a workaholic to have huge career accomplishments (To learn what differentiates a workaholic from a hard worker, see here: https://resumeperk.com/blog/main-differences-between-workaholic-and-hard-worker). To achieve career success, you need to work smarter, not harder.
Professional resume writers online who create resumes on a regular basis know how a road to accomplished career looks like. So, read below if you are determined to succeed at work.
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Step 1. Define your purpose
All those people who consider their career a failure have one thing in common: they lack purpose. In other words, they don’t have a detailed career plan at hand.
If you have any idea what you do, what are your reasons for doing things you do on a daily basis at work, you’ll unlikely succeed. Without a sense of purpose, you can spend years in the same position and moan why you haven’t been promoted again.
On the contrary, with a major career goal defined, you start accumulating resources and take steps to make it come true. You learn new skills, get in touch with the right people and set priorities. As a result, step by step, your career progresses.
So if you still don’t have a career goal, it’s time to set it right now. Here’s our guide to career planning to assist you along the way: https://resumeperk.com/blog/planning-a-future-career-are-you-for-or-against.
Step 2. Understand your professional routine
To get the most of your time every day, you need to identify what you spend this time at. Keeping a time log for the entire week is a good idea to start with.
By journaling your working hours, you’ll understand how much time is allocated for each time and this will make a good base for increasing productivity in the future. You’ll see when you spend too much time on simple or routine tasks, take breaks to check social media, or do things which are outside of your circle of responsibilities, thus postponing the priority assignments.
In its turn, the time log of spare time will help identify the resources of time you’ll be able to use for professional development. The journal gives you the information about daily routine so you can change it by changing your habits and approach to work.
Step 3. Start new, successful habits
Despite of your ambitions and motivation, it’s your everyday routine that determines whether you will succeed or fail. The actions you take every day in your work, eventually lead to one of those results.
In the previous step, you have identified your daily routine at work and outside of it. Now, it’s time to replace non-productive habits with those that can help you succeed in the future.
For example, instead of listening to music in a car you can start listening to podcasts in Spanish if you need to learn the language for your work. Or, instead of checking your inbox every hour, you can spend this time reading a book.
Success is formed by repeated habits you do every day. Once you replace the counterproductive actions with effective ones, your professional success will be a question of time.
Step 4. Break the big goal into achievable tasks
The big goal in mind can be daunting, especially if you don’t know so far how exactly you will achieve it. That’s why breaking a career goal into smaller steps is a must to keep yourself encouraged throughout the way. When the task is expected to take a month or two, odds are high that you actually get to it.
Set deadlines. For each of the smaller steps, plan the expected amount of time. Moreover, you’ll need to create motivation and be accountable for the results. You can plan doing something you like upon achieving this goal and something unpleasant if you fail. It’s great if you find a friend or partner to check in with to get support and extra motivation.
Step 5. Demonstrate an upbeat attitude
It’s been long time proven that our mood and attitude have a dramatic effect on how well we do our job. Negative emotions not only make people reluctant to work with you, but also reflect on your productivity. Demonstrating enthusiasm even in front of challenges is another key to work success in the long run.
Take the criticism positively. No one is perfect, and to grow professionally, you’ll need to ask for feedback from seniors or mentors. Avoid getting defensive or upset when receiving negative feedback – instead, focus on understanding and correcting your mistakes. Even if things don’t go smooth right now, the positive mood will help you overcome the tough times faster than if you moaned and groaned about things at work.
Step 6. Invest in your career capital
What is a career capital? It’s the total amount of all your job related skills, knowledge and professional relationships. Career experts say that it’s the career capital that helps you find the next job, and eventually it predetermines the level of positions you can apply for. There are three major ways to increase your career capital:
- Broaden your set of skills and apply them in your current line of work for practice. It’s the new hard and soft skills that allow you to get promoted for management positions or to search for higher paid jobs on the side;
- Prepare a portfolio that would serve as a proof of your knowledge and skills. Sometimes your blog posted out there in the web can search new opportunities for you without any efforts from your side. That’s why the established professionals take on blogging – to establish the reputation of a subject matter expert and find new clientele;
- Expand your professional network – as they say, to find a well-paying job, you need not only to have what it takes, but also to know the right people. Someone with a wide network of professional connections finds it easier and faster to work their way up.
Step 7. Enjoy what you do
You can do extremely hard-working, self-organized and skilled, however, if you do not enjoy what you do every day, pursuing success will be a hard task. While it is not possible to enjoy every single thing you do during the working day, try your best to spend more time doing the things you love.
When you are truly enthusiastic about your profession, when you genuinely want to learn more just because it brings you joy, you’ll succeed much faster than someone who is only working for a paycheck. Fair compensation, of course, is important. Nevertheless, being passionate about your work is far more crucial for both professional success and happy life in general.
If your current role doesn’t seem to bring you much joy and doesn’t motivate you, you might be in a wrong role. Finding your true calling is possible – learn here how to do it quickly: https://resumeperk.com/blog/discover-your-true-calling-tips-from-resume-services-online.
If you are aimed at building a groundbreaking career, it’s important to work smart rather than hard. You need to invest your time in things and activities that will end up bringing you more reward in the long run. Remember the 80/20 rule and use every opportunity to learn the new skills, meet influential people and apply the knowledge gained. And, if you have a clear goal that speaks to the core of who you are, your wildest ambitions will inevitably come true.
Want to make a big career move but don’t know where to start? Act smart and start with getting your resume redone. You can use the expert advice from our blog for reference or use professional resume services offered by our website. Our staff writers specialize in multiple industries so we’ll match you with someone who will understand your background. Moreover, it’s quite affordable even for graduates.
Reaching success starts with small steps – make the first one and improve the quality of your job search with a well-written resume.
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