EQ:What determines an effective career plan?

The individual has preconceived notions about career. These may have been formed by the people significant to him: parents, relatives, teachers, and friends. At other times they may been caused by certain desires, motives, or ambitions. These notions may all be true. They may also be false or irrelevant. 

Clarifying ideas about career can be done well ahead. The individual can and must be made to realize how he will fit into the real world of work with all the baggage of expectations and ambitions he brings with him. Much like the traveler who is off to a distant land, he must have realistic expectations of where he is going to be able to make necessary preparations for the trip and his stay there.

Sound decision in choosing a career can be made when the individual has adequate knowledge of the different aspects of the particular career path he is interested in. Necessary information because the career he chooses will determine his future life style. When it comes to navigating your career, each of you has a choice to make: settle for what comes your way and make the best of it or reach for the stars and tackle every obstacle that stands in your way. I know that sounds like a very “black and white” decision, but, when it comes to this particularly thorny question, I do believe you ultimately do have to choose. There simply is no “middle of the road” answer that works, in my experience.

While it’s clearly a tough and very personal decision that nobody should deprive you of, knowing what to expect from each of the two paths might make your decision and maybe even your journey a little easier and perhaps more successful. Since I decided long ago that the path of least resistance was not for me, I can’t tell you much about that. But I can tell you everything you want to know about the road less travelled – the one full of possibilities and pitfalls, opportunities and obstacles, and dreams that at least have the possibility of coming true.

Once you accept that competition is just life’s way of weeding out the weak, you eventually figure out that confronting challenges head on and with a can-do attitude will lead to positive results. And that in turn leads to the conclusion that you’re at your best because of life’s challenges, not in spite of them. From there it’s just a short step to the realization that you should constantly challenge yourself, so that’s what I’ve always done. I never settled for less than I thought I could achieve. That kept my professional growth and career trajectory moving up and to the right.

Lastly, it should come as no surprise that doing what genuinely interests and excites you will probably lead to the best outcome. Our lives are constantly in flux. Events change our perception and our perspective changes with experience. It’s only natural that our personal and professional goals and interests would also evolve over time.

EQ:What determines an effective career plan?

Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions you will make in life.  It's about so much more than deciding what you will do to make a living. To start with, think about the amount of time we spend at work. We are on the job approximately 71% of every year. Over our lifetimes, this comes to roughly 31½ years out of the 45 years most of us spend working, from the beginning of our careers until retirement.

The importance of selecting a career with which we are satisfied cannot be overemphasized. While some people are lucky enough to just know what they want to do and end up in satisfying careers without giving it much thought, most of us are not. Many people don't put enough effort into choosing occupations or pick them for the wrong reasons. Maybe they choose careers that seem secure or pay well. They then end up unhappy.

The best way to make sure that doesn't happen to you is to make a well-thought out decision- smart choices. And the worst thing you can do is choose a career to please someone else. Don’t pass-up opportunities to learn and experience new things. Many teachers offer or assign summer and supplemental reading lists — look at these as opportunities for growth rather than a drag on your summer. The more you read, the more you’ll know. It’s a cliche, but knowledge is power.

Bob Parsons - founder and CEO of GoDaddy.com. He had a blog posting one time where he spoke about what he overcame in the pursuit of his dreams. I learned he definitely wasn't an overnight success and experienced a lot of failure on the way. But, he kept his vision in his mind at all times and said, "I spent very little time looking back or feeling sorry for myself."

Another awesome quote from the blog posting was, "Quitting is easy. The easiest thing to do in the world is to quit and give up on your dreams (and quite frankly, that’s what all the non-risk takers want you to do)." Thus, among the goals an individual sets, he is bound to achieve only to those most important and meaningful to them.

EQ:What determines an effective career plan?

At age 5 his father died. At age 16 he quit school. At age 17 he had already lost four jobs. At age 18 he got married. Between ages 18 and 22, he was a railroad conductor and failed. He joined the army and washed out there. He applied for law school where he was rejected. He became an insurance salesman and failed again. At age 19 he became a father. At age 20 his wife left him and took their baby daughter. He became a cook and dishwasher in a small cafe. He failed in an attempt to kidnap his own daughter, and eventually he convinced his wife to return home. At age 65 he retired. On the 1st day of retirement he received a check from the Government for $105.

He felt that the Government was saying that he couldn’t provide for himself. He decided to commit suicide, it wasn’t worth living anymore; he had failed so much. He sat under a tree writing his will, but instead, he wrote what he would have accomplished with his life. He realized there was much more that he hadn’t done. There was one thing he could do better than anyone he knew. And that was how to cook. So he borrowed $87 against his check and bought and fried up some chicken using his recipe, and went door to door to sell them to his neighbors in Kentucky. Remember at age 65 he was ready to commit suicide. But at age 88 Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) Empire was a billionaire.