Master the art of being a “Work in Progress”

Written by Rakhee Talukdar

Are you someone who likes to grow? Are you someone who is constantly looking for ways to improve themselves but find yourself lacking a focused approach? Do you also count yourself as one of those people who have their bookshelves inundated with self-help books but find yourself at bay when it comes to your own self-development journey?

Well, you’ve found yourself at the right place!

Here are 5 easy ways for you to begin your self-development journey today

Reading

Time spent burying your nose into a book is one of the most productive ways of enriching yourself. No matter which career you find yourself in, reading is a necessary habit for success. It is the easiest way to gain more insight into your current field of work. It comes to your rescue should you find yourself short of time to sign up for an upskilling course or are seeking clarity on whether to go ahead at all!

If you are new to reading, have been wanting to be consistent with the habit or are simply looking for tips to get started, here’s what you need to do;

Pick a genre you naturally enjoy in the initial phase of building the habit
Start slow by chalking out 20 minutes out of your schedule to read daily. If it seems hard, bring it down to 10 minutes but stick to the habit to build consistency
Increase the duration once you get more comfortable
Ease into more genres gradually
To absorb takeaways from books into your life, keep a notebook and jot down relevant points
Wherever you can, incorporate the learnings into your practical life and reflect

Finding yourself a mentor

You could always choose to navigate through your career by yourself, but having an industry mentor has the advantage of you receiving advice straight from the horse’s mouth, someone who’s “been there” and “done that”. The first thing you ought to do is to determine the goals you seek to achieve through this relationship. That would help you decide on the choice of mentor- can be someone from the same company, industry or someone you’d like to help you grow personally.

Here’s how a mentor can help you develop yourself;

If they’re an industry mentor, they can tell you how to approach and take your career forward
They can act as a sounding board to provide you clarity about your roadmap, giving you direction
They can act as your accountability partner lending you discipline and focus to pursue your goals

Signing up for a course to upskill yourself

Advancing in your career requires you to identify in-demand skills that you need to learn periodically to improve yourself and stay competitive. In addition to standard skills in your own domain, rapidly changing market trends throw up emerging skills, learning which could help you gain an edge over your contemporaries. While it’s possible to learn new skills independently and on your own considering the gamut of available options, signing up for a course formally adds more structure to your learning experience. It can help you better identify and close on goals you would like to achieve and foster greater accountability.

Maintaining a career journal

Journaling is a great way to enhance self-awareness by clarifying your thought process and giving you the ability to gain an outsider’s perspective into your own life. While it is common to journal about your everyday life, it can help your career advancement profoundly if you maintain a career journal. At every stage in your career, it is vital to evaluate your goals, have more awareness of where you are and where you want to head next. If you are unconscious about your strengths, the weaknesses you need to work on and whether your career is evolving with your changing interests to still feel rewarding, journaling can act as your friend.

What can you use it for?

As a creative dump for ideas that come to your mind
To record the mistakes and lessons learnt along the way
To record the big and small achievements like an unexpected pay raise or compliment for a project
To use it as a safe outlet to vent
To keep a track of goals and document your everyday journey

Turning your hobby into a side hustle

You could be interested in reading, writing, hiking and a whole bunch of other hobbies. But it won’t add up to much if it simply remains a hobby. That is why most of us are guilty of picking up hobbies and not following up with them. If there’s a hobby that appeals to you more than others, 2022 could be the year you decide to turn it into a side hustle.

Here’s how turning it into a side hustle can benefit you;

You would get more confident with your hobby turning into a skill
When it involves money, you would pursue it with more seriousness lending the pursuit discipline and accountability
Putting it out there would elicit feedback which would help improve your skill
It could become a surprising source of reliable income

Replacing interest with commitment can set you up for mastery in skill and transformation in ways you probably wouldn’t have imagined. With the security of a job, a side hustle allows for both creative pursuit and the opportunity to take risks.