The pandemic brought a big shift in most people’s work routines and prioritisation. These changes may have altered how you look at your career, or made you understand that you might lack the learning opportunities or motivation you need.
It is a period where feeling stuck can be common. We have listed 4 tips below to combat that stuck feeling while also helping drive your career forward.
1. Create a career plan
A career plan is a great way of motivating yourself to progress and achieve. Writing a career plan can help you visualise what you want to accomplish and where you want to go in your career. You can spend some time with your manager developing this. However, to avoid a company perspective, it’s crucial you go away and think about your career plan from a personal perspective too. A career plan can help you bring direction, clarity and motivation to get to that next goal.
2. Build on your Skillset
Building on your skills and learning new ones is a great way to help progress your career. Aligning your skills with your career goals will help propel your career progression. Often you will have to look for these development opportunities proactively, but it may also be possible to work these into your current role, adding them to your yearly reviews as goals.
There are many ways you can upskill, whether that be through furthering your understanding of a project, by attending courses or staying up to date with current market trends to allow you and your team to stay ahead of the competition.
3. Re-enforce your self-belief
Working from home can make you feel isolated, but also like you are missing out on those small positive reinforcements you get from working in an office with others. It could leave you questioning yourself and your skills.
If this sounds familiar, take some time to create a list of all the things you have achieved throughout your career, understand that you are the one who has worked hard to get you where you are. Keep this list and whenever you feel like you doubt yourself revert back to it.
4. Discover your passion for your career
In these challenging times, some people experience a loss of drive and dedication to a career in which they were previously passionate about. This is a great opportunity to spend some time rediscovering and remembering why you were passionate in the first place. Was it the company, the role, the team, the culture or something completely different? Finding this reason should help re-energise and motivate you to push yourself within your job. However, if you find this is not the case spending some time reading around your industry and new market trends may trigger that desire to learn and grow.
If after trying all these suggestions, you still feel like you are stuck in your career, it may be time to think about a career change, although this may be a scary concept. It can often be a great way to reanalyse what is important to you in your career, and direct you into doing something that makes you feel fulfilled.