Featured Guest Blogger: William Merunka
Follow me on my journey to become a great engineer.
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Career development is something that is never completed. It is like an uncharted road trip with friends. You start out with one objective, and when you think you have accomplished it and it’s time to go home, a new objective comes to life and the trip continues. Along the road there will be good times and bad times, fun times and serious times, and relationships can be strengthened or broken on these adventures. One thing for sure is that there will always be distractions. Sometimes the distractions will be valuable and other times it will just have a negative impact on your objective.
A good distraction is one where you are taken off course, but in the end brought back on course, or even advanced further than you expected. An example is going out to dinner with an old friend or colleague and being presented with an opportunity to move up within your company, or take a higher management position in another company. An example of a bad distraction would be going out bar hopping with your friends and getting trashed the night before a big presentation or client meeting. Today, I will talk about some ways to control some of the most common negative distractions that you are likely to be faced with on your road to success.
- You’re too tired after work and will put it off until the following night. This is something that is really easy to give in to. The problems with giving in is that more than likely the following night you will also feel too tired, or have something else to do. Eventually this would turn into an easy excuse for you not to do something on a daily basis. The best way to overcome this distraction is to try and do the tasks at a different time. If possible, wake up an hour earlier and work on these tasks before you go to work. Another option would be to work on them at lunch time. It is important to realize that when trying to advance your career or leadership skills, you need to give it your full attention. If you only put in 20%, you are only going to accomplish 20%.
- People telling you that you can’t do something or that you are wasting your time doing something. Every individual has their own objectives and interests. What somebody may see as useless, can be a treasure to your career. The biggest thing to remember is that it is your career, and ultimately it is up to you to decide what is good for you. You can ask for guidance, but you shouldn’t do something just because somebody tells you too. Consider their advice and evaluate how it coincides with your goals.
- Family. Family has got to be one of the most encountered experiences as well as one of the most critical distractions. Family is very important and you should always make it a point to enjoy family time and do things together. While you do not want to push your family away, you also don’t want your family to become your sole purpose for living. It will be hard, but sometimes you have to say no. Explain to your family why your career and what you are working to accomplish is important and they will understand. Besides yourself, they will be your number one fan, and will be there through the good and the bad. They will be the first ones to help you up if you stumble. However, if you do not let them know what you are working on, they will never know when you stumble, and it may be too late for them to help you out if you have already hit rock bottom.
- Social Life. With the stresses of work and life in general, quality time with some friends is a great way to blow off steam and bring you back to normal. While friends are great to relax and enjoy life, they also make it easy to forget about those tasks that are causing the stress. While friends can be a good short time solution, or emergency bailout, you need to focus on stopping the stress at the source. One of the things that make this distraction even more difficult is that wide range of friends that you might have. If you are an engineer, some of your friends may be teachers, or salesman, travel agents, or still in school. This can result in them having more free time and wanting to do more things than fit in your schedule. IT will be hard, but there will be times when you need to tell them no to work on your own goals and agenda. One way around this is to set up routine events with your friends, so that you don’t drive them away. For example, maybe you meet up at a local pub once a week to catch a sports game, or join a bowling league together. This way you still get to go out with your friends while having time to work on your goals.
While you can work to minimize the negative effect that distractions has on your career, it is important to realize that no matter how hard you may try, you will never avoid all of them. This is just a part of life, and something that we need to deal with as it arises. Unlike in a laboratory or a movie, we cannot control every single aspect of life. The best that we can do is learn how to deal with the situations as we encounter them, and work to avoid them from happening again in the future.
What are some major negative distractions that you encounter? How do you deal with them?
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Insightful post, William. These are all important factors to consider when planning your career – especially since all of these factors tend to be in constant interplay. One typically doesn’t have the luxury to take on these factors as singular challenges. Prioritizing while under fire is difficult under the best of circumstances. You’ve set the table very well.