Tips for Daily Professional Development Activities

Crawl. Walk. Run. The 3 stages of professional development.👇 -- CRAWL The goal here is to turn self-doubt into self-awareness. 1️⃣ Assessment Start by knowing your baseline. - Strengths - Skills - Opportunities - Gaps Use tools like StrengthsFinder, SWOT analysis, and reflection. 2️⃣ S.M.A.R.T. Goals Define where you're going. Then, turn your career dreams into tangible goals. S - Specific M - Measurable A - Achievable R - Relevant T - Time-Bound 3️⃣ Daily Growth Embrace the Develop Daily concept. - 15 mins / day - Targeted - Time-blocked Make consistency your ally. 4️⃣ Learning Basics Seek out foundational resources: - Courses - Books - Thought Leaders Start paying attention to your peak learning hours and formats. 5️⃣ Internal Networking - Build strong bonds with your team - Ask for introductions from your existing network - Volunteer for an internal organization or project Systematize these efforts. -- WALK The goal here is to turn knowledge into action. 1️⃣ Serious Skill Growth Drive toward proficiency, then on to mastery. 1-2 technical skills. PLUS: - Communication (Writing, Presentation, etc.) - Team Collaboration and EQ - Problem-Solving - Leadership 2️⃣ Growth Mindset Lean into challenges. Back yourself to overcome stumbles and mistakes. Study: - Carol Dweck - Angela Duckworth - James Clear 3️⃣ Mentorship Find yourself a top mentor or coach. Take advantage of: - Their outside perspective - Their years of experience - Their tactical advice Start mentoring folks who are one step behind you. 4️⃣ Learning Science Ground yourself in foundational learning principles: - Microlearning - Spaced Repetition - Active Recall Pair this with a highly-curated list of top resources. 5️⃣ Expansive Networking Get outside your bubble. - Volunteer for industry organizations - Get active and bold on LinkedIn - Join LunchClub -- RUN The goal here is to turn experience into expertise. 1️⃣ Lead Regardless of your role, start leading. - Connect - Support - Inspire Read Simon Sinek, Brene Brown, and Stephen Covey. 2️⃣ Lifelong Learning Expand your daily growth. - Curate top content - Organize and lead conversations - Structure your own unique insights 3️⃣ Share Expand your personal brand. The easiest way? - Share what you know - Share everything you know - Package it in an easy-to-digest format Consider speaking engagements and publications. 4️⃣ Cross-Functional Experience Expand your work influence across departments or organizations. - Take on larger efforts - Engage as a DEI leader - Join a board 5️⃣ Develop Others Pay forward your expertise. - Grow your internal team daily - Mentor and coach - Sponsor rising talent -- Want to talk through your 2024 goals? I'm opening up a few slots in January to connect with folks from LinkedIn. No sales pitch. Just good old-fashioned conversation. DM me if interested.

High performers, here’s a career advancement tip: Every day after work, go home and spend 10 minutes writing down something you learned. Your job is a gold mine for insights and takeaways. Capture them. A snide co-worker provides human behavior insights. A production disaster provides operational lessons. The CEO hated your campaign idea, but you fought for it, and he changed his mind. Connect dots. Add your own take. Mix in humor. Share to your peers. Do it under an alias if you have to. Best case scenario, you become a thought leader in your discipline. Maybe a published author. Worst case scenario, you now have firsthand wisdom, jokes and aphorisms at the ready. Front of mind, tip of tongue. Soon you’re a bit sharper. Mentoring the new kid. Speaking at the company offsite. Crushing interviews. Getting promoted. Having fun. Writing is thinking, and thinkers win. 

*4 tips to make space for career growth this year* Did you decide to focus on any career growth improvements this year? Like a lot of New Year’s resolutions, it’s easy to lose steam on annual career growth goals fast — so nowadays I try to proactively find ways to keep the momentum up. Here are 4 tips that have helped me over the years: 1. Choose 1 specific goal to focus on right now. When I think of everything I want to get better at, it seems impossible to narrow down the mind-boggling list of options! But I’ve found it’s most important to just pick one thing and get started. After all, I’ll likely want to get better at my whole list of improvements — but the sequence usually doesn’t matter! So why not just get started at getting better at something, instead of wasting time identifying the perfect place to start? 2. Be clear about what progress looks like. It’s tempting to keep career goals really high-level, like “I want to write more.” But we’d never accept that sort of goal for a product because it’s too hard to know whether we’re on the right track and what to do next. Instead, I identify and write down specifically what it will feel and look like to be successful, eg, “I’ll publish a short post every two weeks in Q1 and feel proud even if no one else reads them.” I generally share my goals with my manager and peers so they can help hold me accountable and cheer me on. 3. Remind myself that growing my skills helps my team today. With the constant influx of urgent, necessary work, sometimes it feels selfish to focus on my personal growth! But it’s been helpful to reframe that — after all, how can I help my team tackle harder problems unless I’m growing my skills? I try to remind myself of how investing in myself will help my team today, whether it’s because I’ll be better able to solve specific problems the team needs or just that I’ll have more energy and creativity every day. 4. Operationalize the time to invest in growth. The biggest reason I end up falling behind on my goal is that I just can’t find the time to focus on it — my calendar gets filled up with meeting requests or urgent work. So nowadays I set aside an hour or two on late Friday afternoons. That time is otherwise underutilized (who tries to schedule a heavy-duty review then?) so I don’t feel like I’m sacrificing core team time. Then I can use that time to take the next step on my personal goals, which re-energizes me to focus on work tasks again. I’ve found that weaving a constant thread of something I’m learning into my standard work routine has been great for my energy. What are you working on in 2024? (This is part of an ongoing series about product, leadership, and scaling! For regular updates, subscribe to amivora.substack.com)