Mid-Year Career Fitness Check-In
5 questions to ask yourself before Q3
We’ve just about reached the end of Q2, it goes fast doesn’t it? For some this means summer vacations, for some H2 planning, for some it’s just another month on the job search trail, but regardless here are a few questions to ask yourself about your career fitness:
For each of the following career fitness pillars, what are some wins, and what areas fell a bit short?
Goal Clarity
Network Strength
Impact Visibility
Industry Awareness
If you could do the last 6 months over again, what would you do differently?
If somebody asks you to pick one thing in the last 6 months you’re really proud of, what is it? And how can you do more of that?
For those that are in a full time role, how stable are you feeling heading into the 2nd half of the year?
So, what do you think? It’s almost like an agile retrospective, but on yourself, which most of us don’t do often enough.
I did this myself earlier today and here’s two things that stand out from my answers:
Since Jan I’ve gone from minimal Network Strength and no real social media presence, to making a significant effort in this area and growing a following on LinkedIn and Substack. What you’re reading right now is a part of that effort. I don’t quite have an end goal, but the connections I’ve made and the “thank you” messages have made it worth it.
The area I need to do better at is Industry Awareness, mostly around AI. I’ve been using it casually for a while, but I think it’s time that I go from being just ok at it, to driving adoption and being seen as a leader in the space within my org. We can all debate what AI means for the industry, but none of us can stop or slow it down, so we might as well be really good at it.
On the fitness side, I’m looking ahead to my annual half marathon in Feb and trying to decide how much I want to push to beat my time from last year. Last year I ran it in 1:50, thinking this year I’ll go for 1:40. Why am I thinking about this in June when the race is 8 months away? I’ll start running 4 months before the race, and before that I need to get back into a stretching routine.
It’s the same in careers, you can’t just focus on this week, or this month, you need to be looking far out ahead to what you want to achieve, and then work backwards with what steps are necessary.
Not sure where to start? Send me a message with where you’re at, your goals, and what’s stopping you from achieving them.
- Dan
PS I like how podcasts sometimes have a “picks” section at the end, so I’m going to do that too, here’s the first one!
Picks
I was in NYC this past week at an onsite and discovered my new favorite Ramen restaurant - Tonchin.
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