Heard them one.... heard them all...

"Did you notice that you were taught everything in school, except for how to build a career?", said the presenter.

"There were tonnes of things that schools don't teach, like how to get a girlfriend, and how to wisely invest your earnings", crossed my mind.

I was attending this mini seminar about "How to build a more successful career" at Great World City. Overall, the talk was pretty all right, although I seem to receive mixed messages from the presenter at times. E.g. - he said that one has to learn to trust one's intuition, and follow a career that is more suitable to one's basic personality, but then he said that one has to make a commitment to gravitate towards a faster growing industry (what if the industry/position does not suit one's personality?). We managed to get quite a few tools on career advancement (some of which I have learnt already), but no mention on how to resolve the conflicting directions (like what if I don't want to become a manager?). So I am having mixed reviews.

One thing that sticks out for me though, was his initial question about "do you plan your vacations?" to which I immediately responded "No." (internally). Then he goes on to say that people put more time in planning their vacations, that last maybe 4 weeks in a year, compared to their careers, that takes up anytime between 26-42 weeks of a year (averaged to be 60% of our lifetime according to studies). He then followed up the reasoning by saying that, people do not plan, unless they fully realize what are the consequences of not planning. In the case of a holiday, it would result in a nightmare (missed flight, mixed up hotel room, etc.) Yet it is not so easy to plan for a career, because the consequences are largely unknown. Unfortunately, he did not manage to make it clear what is the consequence of not planning one's career, and if there is a way to find out, because each person (as he said it himself) is unique. (Especially a person like me, who don't plan holidays.)

I find the 'holiday planning' comparison to be not very suitable. When one plans for a holiday, there is a specific place to go to, how to get there, and what to do there. For a career, there might be positions one aim to get (that may not be there in future), an industry one tries to go into (that the person might not be qualified in), a specific skillset that one wants to learn (that might not be available in one's country) or a specific company that one wants to get into (that have all the three 'improbabilities' mentioned before). It would be like planning to go into a country that may not exist by the time you get there, not knowing how to get there (paddle boat maybe) nor what to do there (reality in an industry is usually very different from what people tell you.) Plus, if it takes 8 days total to plan for a 4 week holiday, it would take 50 days to plan for a 26 weeks career. And the most interesting holidays usually happen because of unplanned events (pleasant ones of course).

On top of that, he kept on emphasising on how he could not know the consequences of the things he does. Like, this seminar would not have happened if he had not written an article in the newspaper 1 year ago. And he again said that he would not know the consequences of him giving this seminar. (Like that how to plan? Doh...)

I guess the statement "something that works for you may not work for others" is very true. At least I have my goals, now just to figure out how to get them done... No timeline though, I hate deadlines :P