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10 Career Mistakes to Learn From by richakpan: 11:01am On Dec 23, 2016
“IT’S GOOD TO LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES. IT’S BETTER TO LEARN FROM OTHER PEOPLE’S MISTAKES.” — WARREN BUFFET

In the last decade, I went from student to entrepreneur to freelancer to climbing the corporate ladder to blogger to teacher.

Yes, that’s not a normal career path, and it’s also not what I ever expected. But life hardly turns out the way you expect.

That’s because we’re only human. And humans make mistakes.
Recently I received an email from a reader. He asked about my biggest career mistake.

That got me thinking. And writing. A lot.

And after writing more than 2000 words about my career mistakes, I thought: “Wow dude, you’ve made every single mistake you possibly could.”

Anyway, I’ve cut out the obvious stuff and I made a list of my top 10 mistakes. I hope that one of the points is useful to you.


1 ) ASSUMING THAT YOUR CAREER IS LINEAR
That is, by far, the most important lesson I’ve learned. Firstly, I’ve learned that assumptions are always bad. We collectively assume a lot of things without ever asking or researching.

One of those assumptions is that careers progress linearly. Who ever said that? When I think about it, I have no idea why I believed that in the first place.

It goes like this:

You get an education.
Get an internship.
Stay put for three years.
Then try to become a low-level manager
After a few years you move up.
And if you stall, you move to another company for a better paying position.
Or:

You’re a freelancer.
You start doing work for free.
You keep doing that for years.
You can’t make ends meet.
You get a job.
You quit your job because you hate it.
You start charging for your work.
And you increase your rate a little bit every year.
Last one: you’re an entrepreneur, you start a business, you grow, you think you’re awesome, you spend more than you make, you try to get investors, they own you, and you Bleep up.



Again: Why do we do that stuff? It’s so predictable. Life’s way too short for that boring stuff.

Accelerate your learning curve. Focus on value. Learn more, earn more. Make leaps. And sometimes when you learn, you take a step back. But that’s fine because you will earn more in the future.

In today’s economy, it’s more about what you have to offer. For the first time in history, a lot of companies (not all) don’t look at age, gender, race, degrees — they care about what you have to offer.

So offer some great work. How? Learn faster. Access to information has never been this easy. Use it.


2 ) PRIORITIZING MONEY
I’ve done this. And if you do that, there are three things that can happen:

You end up in a sales job you hate.
You become an aggressive sales oriented business or freelancer.
You say yes to work that crushes your soul.
There’s nothing wrong with those things, but they are not sustainable. I’m not trying to stop you from earning some cash money.

But instead of focusing on money; why not focus on other things that are more fulfilling? Things like learning, experience, doing work that you are interested in, adding value to other people’s lives.



Will most people follow this advice? Probably not because they can’t say no to money. There’s only one simple rule to money and freedom: Live beneath your means. And yes, that’s hard.

If you want to know more about how you can train yourself not to depend on money, please read Seneca — Letters From A Stoic. He writes about it a lot.


3 ) WASTING TIME
You won’t believe how many evenings and weekends I’ve lost by watching tv, going out, pointless shopping, or whatever leisure activity.

Sure, entertainment is good, but you don’t have to relax every SINGLE free minute you have.

Look, this is your life, and this is your career. Take it seriously.

Can I ask you something? What’s your skill? What are you exceptional at?



If you don’t know the answer, it’s time to get down to it. Start learning, practicing, doing, whatever. Do something that turns you into an expert at something.


continue reading: http://nysc-cds.com/article/10-career-mistakes-i-wish-i-had-never-made

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