💥 Make Everything Important!

Plus a challenge to take action right now.

Early in my career I believed my title was the most important thing in my career. My focus was on having the right title more than improving my craft. I cared more about how other people saw me instead of ensuring I was doing the best I could at my job. I was focused on quickly getting to a title with the words Senior in it without showing proof of the skills to back it up. As a result, I went through many internal and external struggles, which slowed down my career progress and my ambitions of becoming a good designer.

Now I realize I was focusing on the wrong goals.

When we focus too much on our career, title, status, or company because it will look good on our resume, we may lose sight of the job we need to do right now. The job becomes a minor detail on the way, a means to an end.

As artist, designer, and educator, Corita Kent said, in her time tested rules for creatives, "the only rule is work". By focusing on the work in front of us and not on external factors that are out of our control, we can ensure that our career path will take the direction we want. We can only take action in the present, so by doing our best with whatever hand we have been dealt, whatever task we need to do, and whatever job that must be done, we develop our character, skills, and expertise.

From Corita Kent’s Ten Rules

Yes, it is good to have ambitions, aim high in our career, and have a plan for your career, but we shouldn't lose sight of the job we must do that is right in front of us, no matter how big or small, or whether the job fits our job description perfectly.

Adopting a mindset focused on attaining mastery and continual learning through whatever job is right in front of us will help us become flexible and resilient while also making sure we are making progress in our careers.

This is why I love this quote by Mads Mikkelsen, a Danish actor because he gets to the heart of the mastery mindset and finds the opportunity in everything we do instead of over-indexing on titles or company names.

Mads Mikkelsen

"My approach to what I do in my job… and it might even be the approach to my life… is that everything I do is the most important thing I do. Whether it’s a play or the next film. It is the most important thing. I know it’s not going to be the most important thing, and it might not be close to being the best, but I have to make it the most important thing.

That means I will be ambitious with my job and not with my career. That’s a very big difference…because if I’m ambitious with my career, everything I do now is just stepping-stones leading to something… a goal I might never reach, and so everything will be disappointing. But if I make everything important, then eventually it will become a career.

Big or small, we don’t know. But at least everything was important."

💥 Take Action!

I challenge you to identify one task you must do today and give it your full 100% focus, drive, attention, and intention.

Give it your absolute best as if nothing else is more important, and see how it goes. As with any change, it is important to take small steps forward. Start with a small task and then work your way up.

I think you will see just how freeing it is to be fully present with any task, no matter how seemingly boring or useful for your career ambitions.

Feel free to respond with your thoughts on this topic

I wish you the best. ✊🏽