Work with purpose
Careers are often framed as a means to an end and more often than not that end is money. Working with a purpose means ensuring that your work is beneficial to your company and your personal development. If you simply show up each day and the only thing you take home is a paycheck then are you truly getting a valuable return on your time? While there is a vast amount you can learn from people in your life who have many more years of work experience than you, there are also opportunities to improve upon their efforts. You first have to understand why purposeful work is beneficial for your own growth before you can truly value your own time and effort. Learning this information earlier in your career provides you an advantage that you can leverage for the balance of your working years. As you grow within your career, clarity about your purpose will strengthen.
First, understand what you want to get out of your work. Pursue roles that give you exposure beyond the work you were hired to do. Take advantage of opportunities to learn new skills and new ways to apply your existing skills. Challenge your thought patterns and approach to your work, to keep your ideas and problem solving abilities fresh. When you begin to approach your work from a place of curiosity, you quickly evolve from someone who takes direction and applies it, to someone who understands how to successfully apply those same directions in other areas of your work. Your understanding of the existing approach to a challenge expands, which enhances your ability to explain and even improve an existing process. Your work should not be limited to transactions. Approaching work in this way will certainly create an imbalance, where your time investment will never exceed your knowledge return. Being in a constant state of learning is the advantage that current work culture has downplayed. The current rhetoric focuses on the self-proclaimed expert, who will unfortunately have to learn over time that their knowledge and skills have expired. This cycle is why we are constantly fixated on career trends and headlines instead of understanding the much bigger story of the evolution of work. Your ability to balance what you are learning in your role today with your contributions to the overall success of your company will be your differentiating factor.
Your development depends on your ability to learn and apply your knowledge. Approaching your work with this level of intention will expand and expedite your growth. You become a student in the work environment, absorbing the knowledge around you and improving your skillset through application of those lessons. Taking on new projects and challenges allows you to test your knowledge while learning how to navigate those new challenges. Document these experiences with intention, it's easier to forget the details than you may think. It's also common to lose sight of your own growth and development when you don't have tangible evidence of your work to reflect on. As you gain more experience, use your own notes in conjunction with feedback from past performance reviews, for example, to see your own growth. This reflection provides a critical outline that makes goal setting for your personal development much more pointed and meaningful. Your career goals should be building blocks for your overall development. Taking your foundational knowledge and enhancing it by deepening your understanding of a concept and expanding your application of those concepts to your current and future work.
Don't leave yourself behind in your work. This is quite easy to do when your focus is on delivering your best performance to impress your manager and colleagues, instead of first impressing yourself. Extrinsic motivation can often create a blind spot where personal development exists. You get so caught up in trying to prove yourself that you are no longer learning, but instead performing competence. Encourage yourself by acknowledging your ability to not only face the challenges in front of you but conquering them with applied learning. Each time you are successful in accomplishing something new, it's important to examine your achievements to understand how you did it. Those insights improve your ability to continue being willing to sign up for more complex challenges and experiences. Your career bravery will ultimately help you define your purpose by clarifying what satisfies your curiosities and fuels your willingness to show up.
Approaching your work with purpose will ultimately leave you with a skillset that far exceeds the amount of time you have been working in a specific capacity. Your intentional focus on learning and application helps you make the connection between the work required and the most effective approach to deliver. You will have a wealth of experience to draw from, which will ultimately position you as a valuable resource for your current and future company. Bigger than that you learn to trust your own judgement and ability to be successful even in the most ambiguous circumstances. Learning is a major confidence builder that encourages you to be in constant pursuit of experiences that are meaningful to your development.
Purposeful work is rewarding. It challenges you to seek knowledge that expands your capabilities and fills you with intentionality. It's much more difficult to become complacent with work that is fulfilling. It's up to you to make your work experiences count toward your personal growth and development.
*Written on a cool autumn morning, with a peaceful view of the trees.