How to do a Career review
Conduct daily, weekly and yearly reviews of where your career is heading and make proactive adjustments
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Conduct daily, weekly and yearly reviews of where your career is heading and make proactive adjustments.
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Apparently, most people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a year. One antidote is goal setting and periodic reviews.
Let us take a look at how to review your career.
Daily review
End your workday with a 10-minute review of how your work day went. Block it on your calendar. Below are some questions to get you started.
Today
Did I get my primary task done?
What did I enjoy about today’s work?
What could I have done differently?
Notice how this works well with the 3 questions to answer in an agile standup
What did I do yesterday?
What am I working on today?
Are there any blockers where I need help?
Tomorrow
What is my primary task for tomorrow?
Is there any prework I can do today to get my primary task done easily tomorrow? Do I need any information from another team member, for example?
Are there any meetings scheduled for tomorrow, which I can cancel or can decline?
Here is a daily review template - editable pdf after you download it. Take it for a spin.
Weekly review
Block 30 minutes on Friday to review your work week. Again, block it on your calendar. You can use similar questions to the ones from your daily review.
This week
Did I deliver any impactful work product this week?
How much of my time was spent on work vs work-about-work1?
Next week
What is my key focus work item for next week?
If you have weekly 1:1 with your manager, talk about your work and bring up any challenges that you are facing to get your work done. Put down your week’s work product summary in your professional brag document2.
6-month review/Annual review
You can use big-picture questions during your longer-term reviews3.
Are you in your Ikigai role? Meaning, are you good at your job which you also love? Are you paid well enough for a comfortable lifestyle?
Do you enjoy working with your teammates?
Does your manager support and challenge you?
If you could change anything about your job, what would be it?
Is there a different role or different industry that piques your interest?
Are you able to find time for your friends, family, and outside interests?
A lot of organizations have 6-month or annual reviews. You could club yours with your company’s schedule as well.
If you have a mentor or group of mentors, review your answers with them. If you do not have a mentor, find one. Thanks to the internet, you can choose anyone in the world with an online presence, as your mentor. It could be the founder of YCombinator, tech CEO, CXL CEO, etc. Of course, you will need someone in your professional circle if you need personal feedback.
The key here is to do some sort of career review both in the short term(day, week, month) and long term(quarter, year). The questions and considerations will evolve over time. Also, write it down so that you can refer back in the future. Booking the time on your calendar can make it easier to stick with the habit.
Okay then. Estimate what you can do accurately with periodic career reviews!
A survey from Asana shows that 60% of the time is spent on work about work like meetings, status updates, hunting information, slack chats, etc.
Not a fan of bragging though. I say we call it an accomplishments document.
Block it on your calendar