Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
Have you taken a look at your fannishness lately and seen what you can mine for your career?
Every now and then, when I'm evaluating the next steps in my career, updating my LinkedIn.com profile, and similar activities, I like to review what I do as the total geek that I am. I review it because there's often a lot of useful things you can use in your career that you miss.
Surprises are a key to your career.
That of course sounds like a shocking statement, doesn't it? Aren't we supposed to plan our careers and navigate them carefully? How is it that surprise can help you with your career? How can sheer randomness help you?
For that matter surprises are, well, surprising. How do you work those into your career?
Do you have someone you look to and say "I don't want to be like that?"
If you do that, and my guess is most people do, you're in danger of trapping yourself.
Negative Role Models, as I call them, are insidious traps – and easy ones to fall into. How many of us could easily list mistakes we don't want to make we've seen others make, or sadly, people who embody what we don't want to be? How many of us have actually learned good lessons by learning from other people's mistakes.