Daydreaming about Career Adventures

Do you daydream about future adventures, vacations, and expeditions? 

Have you amassed such a gigantic pile of inspiring trip reports, guidebooks, maps, and itineraries that you realistically won’t be able to get to them all in this lifetime?  Yeah. Me too.
 
When you plan an expedition, you typically have a destination and a goal.  Say you’re going sport climbing on limestone cliffs over the sparkling, turquoise ocean in Thailand. Identifying this goal allows you to pack appropriate gear, bring the right climbing partners, and make sure that you have the climbing and international travel skills to pull off an enjoyable adventure.  Researching climbing routes and Thai culture can also help get you excited about the trip.
 
A 2010 study in the UK suggested that “many people spend more time planning their next holiday than they do planning their careers.”  The average full-time employee in the USA spends approximately 3.8% of their work year on vacation (not counting weekends).  Many of us are lucky to have more than two weeks off per year, but it typically isn’t paid vacation.

If you daydream about your adventures, why don’t you daydream about your career?

One of the problems with professional daydreaming (unless you are an adventure photographer) is that Nat Geo doesn’t feature amazing photographs of our careers and Climbing Magazine doesn’t write job reports for epic careers.  It is hard to amass a gigantic pile of inspiring job descriptions, study plans, and career paths.  Information about individual jobs, specific employers, and people’s job satisfaction just isn’t that easy to come by, so many people skip the planning process and fly to Thailand with ALL of their climbing gear and hope for the best.
 
As this crazy year rolls to a close, I’d like to offer parts of the Career Mapping workshop* that I’ve been facilitating with my students and clients that jump starts the career brainstorming process.  Here is a short list of questions that I use in the workshop to get people thinking about their career aspirations:

• Think back to when you were a little kid, what did you want to be when you “grew up”?
• What parts of that still appeal to you now?  For the parts that no longer appeal to you, what doesn’t fit?
• Rank the following five elements of workplace happiness in terms of importance to you:
  • Workplace culture
  • Compensation and benefits (a.k.a. $$$$$)
  • Job security and opportunities for advancement
    
  • Opportunity for work-life balance
  • The organization’s management strategy and style

* “I would definitely emphasize how thought-provoking, influential (life and career wise) and deeply moving this workshop is.” – 2016 AEE Workshop Participant