How to make time for professional development in your career

Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the career strategy podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth, and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients. You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain, advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop dreading Mondays. Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it. Hey, friend.

Sarah Doody [00:00:39]: Today, I wanna discuss a question that I’m asked all the time, and that is how to make time for professional development. So if you feel like developing yourself in your career, in your role, in for the role you wanna get in the future, if all of that feels like it is a part time or full time job on top of what you’re already doing, then this episode is for you. So in the episode, we’re gonna look at kinda 3 different types of people based on how much time they have to put into professional development and give you some really actionable tips for what you can do depending on which person you relate to most. Alright. So, let’s dive into how to make time for professional development. And, this also applies, you know, to investing in a career coach or even something like career strategy lab and career development in general. So every person has a very different goal and unique situation, regarding what professional development means to them. So take whatever your goal is and kinda abstract these tips to make it fit your goal.

Sarah Doody [00:02:01]: Alright. So there’s really two sides to this spectrum, and for some, it’s I’m working a full time and I have a busy life. My schedule is already jam packed. How do I fit in professional development? And, on the other hand, there could be someone who was just laid off and this is their main focus. They are treating their professional development like a full time job. So we’re gonna dive into each of those scenarios. And if you’re somewhere in the middle of those, then maybe you have a full time job, but you have lots of downtime where you can, you know, get work done and make progress on professional development, then I’d really suggest listening to this also and then customize your career development schedule based on the time you have. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:02:54]: So let’s start with the busy folks, the people who have a job, maybe you’re volunteering, you have a family, pets, etcetera, who knows what. Bottom line is you don’t have a lot of time. So I’m gonna talk through this through the lens of someone who might be considering how do they tackle a career coaching program such as the one I run called Career Strategy Lab. But, of course, you can use these tips for whatever professional development means to you. So, number 1, put time on the calendar. Nothing happens unless it is on your calendar. You are going to quickly forget things. You’re going to let other things take priority, but when professional development is on your calendar, it is far far more likely to actually happen.

Sarah Doody [00:03:46]: Now when you put this on your calendar, think to yourself, do I feel more energized or more focused before 8 AM, after 8 PM, during my lunch break? You know, think about how your brain and how your energy and how your schedule work, maybe it’s even on the weekend, who knows? But think about where is the time in your schedule that you can dedicate to professional development, and then look at it from an energy and focus perspective also. Then put it on your calendar, and I would even encourage you to try and block off time that recurs every week, maybe it’s every day, so that you can create this rhythm in your schedule. And, you know, every Tuesday from 8 to 9 PM, you are working on professional development, and then it becomes more of a habit and you actually show up for yourself. Alright. The second tip is to remember that you are focused on this professional development likely for a season. You are not committing to doing this every Tuesday from 8 to 9 PM for the next 5 years. You are pursuing professional development because you have some goal or milestone in mind and you are realizing that sometimes that might take some sacrifice or some stretch effort on your part, so you have to realize that you may need to change things up in the short term to get those long term results that you are looking for. So, that’s really more a mindset shift, but it’s super important because, you know, even when I was writing my book, I knew, okay, I’m essentially, like, sacrificing a year of my personal life, actually longer, for this book.

Sarah Doody [00:05:49]: However, I knew it was only going to last, you know, a year, although a little longer. And so it made it feel a little easier, a little less daunting because I had some type of endpoint in mind. So think of your endpoint and realize you’re not just focused on this forever, it’s just for a season. Now, the third thing I want you to think about is to don’t beat yourself up if it takes a little bit longer. Life happens, work happens, unexpected things come up. There is no perfect amount of time it takes to move through whatever your career development goal is. So you have to give yourself a little bit of grace and flexibility and realize that if you don’t reach that goal in the next 30 days, it doesn’t mean you are a personal failure. It doesn’t mean you were not competent.

Sarah Doody [00:06:48]: It just means that it didn’t happen, and it could have been very well for reasons that are out of your control. So notice if you get stuck maybe in a perfectionism loop and commit to recognizing that and not letting that hold you back because it’s far better to continue making progress rather than to be kind of stuck on a hamster wheel of indecision or perfectionism or chasing this proverbial kinda there that that may not exist. And speaking personally, I will tell you I already spoke about the book. It’s taking longer than it was supposed to. Does it mean that I consider, you know, myself a failure of a writer or that I failed to project manage this? Absolutely not. There are many things that have popped up that were completely out of my control that I have just had to kind of surrender to and accept and not allow, allow those things to kind of erode my confidence and my motivation, to keep going with this project. So I hope that gives you some perspective on what to do if you’re trying to tackle professional development with an already jam packed schedule. Now, if you are on the other end of the spectrum where you have a lot of time on your hands and you’re thinking to yourself, you know, I’m gonna treat this like my job.

Sarah Doody [00:08:22]: I’m going to commit for the next 30, 60, however many days to treating my professional development like a job, then let’s dive into some tips for you. So, sometimes, you think, like, not having time is stressful because you just don’t have time. But, honestly, I see a lot of people who join my program, career strategy lab, who have a lot of time, and they find that is actually more stressful. People put so much pressure on themselves to get things done and work long hours, and I wanna just invite you if you’re in a season of less work, meaning job, and you have more time to work on things. Just notice how you’re moving through it and maybe slow down. You are in charge of the pace that you go at, and it’s great time to bring some intention to it. So just because you have 8 hours or 9 hours or more out than that in a day to commit to this, maybe commit to just using half of that time because the longer amount of time you give yourself to work on something, guess what? It’s more time to second guess, to spend hours rewriting or redesigning, etcetera, when maybe after 3 hours it was good enough. And so the challenge for you, if you have more time to get it dedicate to this stuff, is to not allow things to take longer than they need to just because you have that much time.

Sarah Doody [00:10:07]: You may be surprised if you, for example, cut your time in half and just play with that as an experiment and see how far you get. It’s gonna take some discipline but it could be a really interesting experiment to pursue. Now, I also suggest that you break your work into sprints. And what do I mean by that? Sprints are essentially short bursts of work where you are super focused on getting one thing done. You’ve probably heard of design sprints before and similar concept here. Now I really, really would not recommend spending 8 hours a day, for example, working on your portfolio. That’s when you’re going to start getting stuck in the weeds, Sarah guessing, overthinking, going into too much detail detail that your User, recruiters, hiring managers, etcetera, may not necessarily need in order to have confidence that you have the skills and experience they’re looking for to do the job they need to fill on their team. So instead of working 8 hours a day on your portfolio, for example, I wanna encourage you to break up your time into sprints.

Sarah Doody [00:11:25]: And if you want to space it out over an 8 hour period, maybe focus on 40 minutes at a time with, like, a 40 minute break in between or figure out a cadence that works for you, but really, really be mindful about your energy and your focus because there’s a point where you reach diminishing returns. Right? Where you’re sitting at your computer and your hand is moving the mouse and you’re typing and things are moving on the screen, but let’s be honest, half the time a lot of that, activity you’re doing is not leading to quality work. So, for example, you might spend the morning working on your resume, and then maybe you go for lunch, a walk, go to the park or something. And then in the afternoon, maybe you do more outreach or relationship building on LinkedIn and research some companies you want to apply to. But I would really look at, you know, in this example, we’re talking about someone in their job search where you are in this, kind of zone of creating, meaning creating your resume, creating your portfolio, creating cover letters, etc, versus connecting, right? So like I said earlier, conversations on LinkedIn, maybe you’re actually meeting people in real life or over, Zoom or something like that, So think about how you could break up your tasks, especially in a job Sarah, around creating versus connecting. That would be a really great strategy. Now, if you’re somewhere in the middle, meaning you don’t have all day to work on this, but you’re not kinda overwhelmed with a jam packed schedule already. Let’s check-in with you.

Sarah Doody [00:13:17]: So I want you to look at your calendar and get clear on what your priorities are and what perhaps on your calendar might actually be optional. So do you have things on your calendar that you said yes to that in reality, you could probably say no to, and no one’s gonna push back or care or hold it against you. Right? We probably all have things on our calendar that we could just say, you know what? My plate’s full. I can’t do this, and people probably won’t even bat an eye. So then after that, decide for this season, whatever amount of time you’re committing to this kind of chapter of your professional development, decide what you are focusing on. And then similar to earlier, block it out on your calendar so that you have prioritized this as something you are saying yes to, so other things don’t come into your life that you say yes to out of obligation that end up pushing this priority of professional development off of your calendar. And it may mean that you’re saying no to things that you’re gonna feel FOMO on or that you’re saying no to friends or things like that. But I think you’ll find it will be worth it because you will finally have a checkbox next to professional development tasks that you have probably had on your calendar and to do list for weeks, months, or let’s face it, maybe years.

Sarah Doody [00:14:56]: And after you have that checkbox next to those things, you’re gonna feel awesome. Alright. The one other thing I would add to this idea of making time for professional development, and maybe this needs to be its own episode, but we will see. I’m gonna leave you with this tip. Developing yourself professionally is a lot easier when you’re not doing it alone. Right? It is very challenging to commit to saying yes to what’s on your calendar, just showing up for yourself. It’s easy to get pulled in all kinds of directions. It is a lot easier if you have other people who are committing to similar goals or similar, you know, 30 day or 60 day focus of professional development because now you feel like you have your people.

Sarah Doody [00:15:55]: You have a community you can lean on for encouragement, accountability, feedback, etcetera. And all of a sudden, it makes you feel like you are not alone, and that if you’re feeling like you’re kind of behind or not motivated, there are probably other people in that community that feel the same way. And just knowing that could kind of be the motivation to keep going even when you may not want to. Even with my book, I joined different author communities, and I was kinda more active in some than others, but just the very fact that I knew that there was this place on the Internet that I could go to connect with other people who had committed to taking on this giant task of writing a book, and they were there if I needed them. It was almost like there was a lifeline there if I needed it. So I would really encourage you to find that community related to whatever your professional development goals are. Of course, community is a huge part of the career strategy lab experience where we have everyone in this online community, where we have co working, we have questions, we have live events, we have, all kinds of things to help everyone stay focused, to stay connected, and stay accountable to whatever professional development means to them. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:17:31]: I know that was a lot. So I hope whoever you are and how much time you have, you, learned some practical tips for how to approach your own professional development journey. And, maybe you’ve never heard about Career Strategy Lab before this episode, or maybe you have heard about it since we launched in 2021. Whatever your experience is, if you are interested in learning more about career strategy lab and how we can help you with your professional development in the user Experience, design, tech, product design industries, just visit careerstrategylab.com. You can learn all about it. And if you’re interested in joining us, just click apply. And we will see if you are at the right career stage where we can help you. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:18:26]: That is all for today, my friend. I hope you have a great rest of your day. I will talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the career strategy podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Doody, on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. If anything in today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear about it. Tag me on social media or send me a DM. And lastly, if you found this episode helpful, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with a friend or give us a quick rating on Spotify or review on Apple Podcasts.

Sarah Doody [00:19:00]: Catch you later.