CAREER CHANGES

Career Changes Can Be Emotionally Trying
by: Eric Lynch



Ever feel like you’ve hurt your chances of getting a job interview because you’ve changed careers in the past? Multiple career changes used to raise some real big red flags to prospective employers.

But nowadays, it’s completely normal to have more than one career change. Interestingly enough, most career changes aren’t about getting rich. Most are about getting happy.

Marci Albhoer is the author of One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success. If you took note of the slashes in the title of her book, there’s a good reason for them: she calls the multiple career path “the slash effect.”

Marci was a corporate lawyer who was extremely successful. And extremely miserable. She wanted desperately to become a writer instead. But as she found out, it’s very difficult to leave a very high-paying job that you’ve had for a long time.

In an interview with Time Magazine’s blog, Marci shared a bit of her dilemma…

"it’s really hard to leave a job you’re trained for, rewarded for and perform well. A friend told her, 'I can’t believe you’re so good at a job you hate so much.'"

Marci isn’t alone out there. Those with high-paying jobs can be every bit as miserable as those who make less money. In some cases, it can be even worse.

If you’ve made the mistake of allowing your lifestyle to rise to match your income (house, cars, and the accompanying payment obligations), you can feel trapped into keeping a job you hate. It’s either stay miserable and keep your overpriced toys, or downsize and take a job you’d be happier doing.

And as you’ve heard me say before, and I’ll say again - you’ll never be happy in your career until you figure out what skills you enjoy spending your 8-hour days using. And that takes a lot of prayer and introspection. Maybe even some career counseling with some wise elders or pastors that you trust.

I fully believe God uses our job satisfaction (or lack thereof) to steer us where he wants us to go. And he certainly can do so as often as he likes. So don’t feel bad if you’re a “career slasher.” Life is too short to dread going to work every day. Find out what your maker put you on this planet to do. Then do it to His glory.





About The Author

Eric Lynch

Career Peace offers hope, help, advice, and emotional support to those who are changing jobs or even changing careers. God wants to establish the work of your hands so you will be more content with the work you have on this earth. Career Peace - Find some here at http://www.careerpeace.com.

TIME MANAGEMENT

What Type Of Time Manager Are You Now?

Often, you can see where your problems in time management lie by taking a close look at yourself right now. The way that you do things now can often be your ticket to improving your situation into the future. But, how can you accomplish this?

You need to find a way to actually record what you do each day. This may be small things or larger things, but it all needs to be accumulated and used to construct a plan of action.

A good place to start is with your average work day since this is often the largest chunk of anyone's life. Pick a day and explore it. Through this chapter, we will show you how you can see where your time management problems really lie so that you can fix them and overcome them so that the end result is successful time management.

Your Possible Time Drains

If you think of time management as being a small hole in which grains of sand pass through, you need to determine what is allowing them to pass through.

There are many things that seem small and insignificant that really will add up to being a potential problem for most people. Here are some of these things that you need to take into consideration.

•How much of your time do you spend reading email, reading an online news report, checking out the sports games from the night before and finding out who is online at any given time?

•How much time do you spend eating lunch, getting a drink or making a cup of coffee for yourself?

•How much time does it take you to get into the place you work? For example, do you need to stop and chat with friends and colleagues first, greet the boss, check your mail, grab the newspaper, etc….?

•How much time do you spend working that is really being spent on things other than work?

Consider all of the things, small things too, that are potential drains on your time and your work load?

You may see clearly how easily it is for these small things to overcome the larger elements. In fact, all of these small things are so insignificant you may not remember doing them which means even more of your time is drained.

Now, flip this around. How much actual time, minutes and hours, do you put into actually doing your work? Actually working, that is.

You may be very surprised to learn just how much of your day is considered to be doing things that are unimportant, unrelated to work or even just simply a wasted time. You may be appalled by the way in which you really spend your days.

Time of Day Drains

Another common problem for those that are wasting time is that of the time of day. For example, for many individuals, the time of the day that they are in is the reason that they struggle to accomplish tasks. A good example is after lunch time. You are sleepy and tied, generally from having a full stomach and a tired mind. You are less likely to be successful at any task that you complete at this time of the day and that may be frustrating enough that you simply stop working during this time making it even worse on you altogether.

Consider what time of day is your draining point.