IT IS CLOSED - INVENTORY! … Where? In our head. (EN)
Hello,
I hope that you started your first days in the new year happily and with fortune. But besides the classical New Year’s wishes, I would like to send you a small GIFT which, I hope, will tune you into the wavelength of this blog and which will push you to do a small pilot “inventory”! But before I tell you where you can download it I would like to give you a small intro about why it is sometimes good to “close shop” and to at least do a small revision of “from where - to where” we are going …
During the last days of the past year, as well as a few days after that, I noticed different styles of balancing and working with visions on different social networks . This is really good because it helps us to anchor ourselves in our current wider reality and realize what we want, who we are, where we are coming from and where we would like to go. All of these things give us an internal feeling of safety. But I notice very often that some people prefer inventories, working with memories, and some of them would rather hover somewhere in the clouds… Not many people do this inventory completely.
In any case, the ability / skill to look at what is behind me and where I would like to head (and please notice that both of these directions are important) is, in my experience, one of the key current skills. We capitalize on it many times during our lives especially when we go through some important life moments - e.g. job change, moving, …
And that is why I created a methodology for each of you for the empowerment of these “regular-life-inventory-skills”. Especially for this reason, I created Career DYARY - an original tool which puts together all parts of this very important “life inventory” skill:
one part which looks back and examines the past year
space for working with visions for the next year
and, as a bonus, there is the last part focused on personal brand and working with priorities - both are very important for being happy and successful (not only) in our working life
The good news is that this “life inventory skill” which is the base for DIY career management is trainable! So let’s go and check how to do these inventories effectively and with joy and how to improve them in the long-term perspective.
So, if you are already a proud owner of the DYARY then I recommend you roughly follow the guidelines written below. If you do not have one, then take this as an opportunity to do something for yourself in the beginning of the new year and have your own Career DYARY sent to you (from here).
If you already have your own way of doing your inventory, or if you use other tools, then I recommend going through these 3 main points as inspiration for how to do it not only effectively but also enjoyably.
1) REVISION
Check your calendar, outlook, 2016 diary or anything which could help you reflect on the past year and start working with the revision.
Check your bookshelf - what did you read?
Remind yourself which events you visited and what you gained from these events.
Who did you spend a nice time with?
What time did you dedicate to yourself, to your health, to your development?
Calculate for yourself how much time you spent at work, what were the benefits compared to the energy you invested and money you earned.
… it is very interesting to observe how working with memories usually has different, slower energy than working with visions, which I recommend continuing with now.
2) VISION …
You need a little bit more energy when you start working with visions because starting with creativity and transforming your ideas into a visual version is one of the most energy demanding processes in our brain (we engage our prefrontal cortex).
It is a joyful part (or it should be because who wants to dream about a dark future:-) so enjoy it properly - use both of your brain hemispheres: work not only with numbers and spreadsheets (e.g. when you count your private costs for next year) but also with colors, values, visions - the DYARY gives you a great space for that.
One technique that you can combine with the work in the DYARY is vision board creation - you can either use the blank side of the worksheets or you can insert a new piece of paper or, if you prefer bigger vision board formats, you could e.g. take a photo and insert the photo to the Dyary.
… why do I combine working on an vision/dream board (collage with our visions) and working on my DYARY?
It is a great way to relax!
I love “off-line” creativity with pencils, paper, colors … and sometimes I like to take a break from my laptop.
It is nice just let ourself drift by our intuition when choosing topics which resonate with you this year (especially if you are an analyst: your right hemisphere would be grateful for this engagement:)
There are always some topics which appear this way and which probably would not if I was using just my left “logical” hemisphere.
My vision board is hanging on my meeting-room wall and I have to say that sometimes later I forget it is there… but in the past it always happened that I just coincidentally stop and start thinking and in that moment I realize that I am staring at my vision board, and it very often happened that I realized that some topics which I posted there just based on feelings were now part of my reality - eg. new products, new people I “incidentally met” …)
… but back to my last part of my life-work inventory
3) PERSONAL BRAND
Ask yourself what you want to let other people know about you - online and offline.
And how people around you perceive you now.
What is your uniqueness, your style, your strengths according to you vs according to the people around you.
Realize what your resources are (skills, knowledge, money, other assets, …).
Check if/how your values have changed or if there are still the same.
Try to recognize and describe your verbal and visual presentation - and again: online and offline in your real life.
And what do we want to emphasize and develop during the new year?
… personal brand is not only a “must have” part of a business person’s presentation, but it is also a very important part of all of our professional paths. Whether you work on it or not. So how do you want to present yourself to be satisfied and to stay authentic and coherent?
So what did help me, which techniques do I use at the beginning of the new year?
Mainly I use Career DYARY as a base which gives me the frame for my internal creativity.
When I do my “reflection part” I usually go through my Google calendar (and the sums I get thanks to www.iknowmytime.com application) and check my photo albums - this year I also created video-memory for 2016 which you can see on my Career Designer YouTube channel.
Working on my visions I usually start with the vision board because I want to give a space for my intuition at first, then I put a photo of this vision board into the folder and I start working with the second part of the DYARY focused on the next year where I work more with facts, numbers and where I verbalize the visual part (I simply move from pictures to words).
In the end I tune my personal brand and strategy, action plan of my personal and business development including PR and social networks activities.
And what is your own personal experience? If you have your prefered procedures, tools, tips and activities which work in your case that’s great and I would appreciate your openness to sharing them with us, e.g. on my Facebook Career Designer. Even I still fine-tune it and improve. The ideal “recipe” is definitely the one which is ideal for you right now in your life situation.
I designed my New Year card this year as a small “degustation” for work-life inventory - and it is my present for all of you who I met during 2016 at work and privately as well, for my blog readers, for you who are open to moving yourself forward and changing the world to be a better place for all of us. Thank you for everything and I wish all of us success in this during the all of 2017.
... enjoy nice winter days, Petra Drahoňovská www.CareerDesigner.cz
PS - thank you www.maketadesign.cz for the graphic design of the present
PPS - EN corrections by Nathan Fields
