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Similar to choosing a major in college, deciding on a career to pursue after graduation is stressful, overwhelming, and intimidating. In addition to picking the right field, you’ll also want to make sure that your path will help you reach your future goals in both your professional and personal life while being equally rewarding and enjoyable, too. This includes the idea of parenthood – even if in the distance, it can be a consideration for “someday.”
Even if it sounds like a lot to try and figure it all out now, planning ahead doesn’t have to be daunting. Thanks to the valuable advice in, “Carry Strong: An Empowered Approach to Navigating Pregnancy and Work,” by Stephanie Kramer, you can have a glimpse into navigating the intersection of work and life. Kramer found that 92% of college-age women considered motherhood to have an impact on their career, so having this resource now will help you understand the reality of your current or future colleague’s career and personal goals, potentially as well as your own one day.
Along with research and incredible stories from inspiring women, Kramer’s advice comes from years of her own experience establishing herself as a beauty industry executive, mother of two children, and a teacher of management communication in an NYC-based graduate program.
Check out our key takeaways from Carry Strong and the best questions to ask yourself when planning for your future career – and be sure to buy the book in stores or online here!
How much flexibility do you want in your day-to-day?
Is working from home something that you think you’ll enjoy so that you can spend time going to the gym or meal prepping during the time you would usually be commuting? Or maybe you think you want to work only three days a week so you can pursue starting your own business or nurturing your side hustle.
No matter what flexibility means to you, what you want your day-to-day to look like is something you need to consider so you can make sure that you’re still able to enjoy things that are important to you outside of work – something which is commonly referred to as having a “work-life balance.”
Kramer herself prefers a different approach to the commonly used term “work-life balance.”
“In reflecting on ‘work-life balance,’ I found a way to think about it that sets me free,” Kramer writes. “Instead of a work-life-balance seesaw with ‘work’ on one end and ‘life’ on the other, imagine a sliding scale. This takes some pressure off of trying to find “balance” which is in fact something that we train for, not that’s feasible every day. The idea is that the different roles take priority at different times.”
What do you want your community to look like?
Just like college, when you enter the workforce and start a new job, you’re going to have a lot of people around you that you interact with daily. And – also just like college – you can choose who you want to form a community with.
“Community is created at your workplace, but also within it through the power of colleagues who become friends, mentors, and advocates that extend far beyond it,” Kramer writes, explaining that community is “something you create for yourself and for others” and that it can “even help to shape your identity.”
Kramer said that “creating community is about connecting with colleagues and creating resources,” and suggests that you should be thinking about your community right now, as well as when you’re in your job.
Who are you and what is your purpose that forms your identity? (And what are you going to achieve with it?)
By the time you’re graduating college, you’re a different person than you were when you moved into your dorm freshman year. You not only know more about yourself now, but most likely, your values changed, too.
“As women, our various identities can run off a list [of labels that society gives us and we give ourselves]: ‘I am a friend, a sister, a daughter, a wife, a teacher, a leader, a mother,’” Kramer said. “As your identity shifts and transforms…having a personal mission statement can serve as a grounding motivation for you to connect all the ways you define yourself, and to reconcile something that one multi hyphenate contributor defined as ‘the overwhelming list of who I am.’”
Kramer continues, “Together with vision (where you want to go) and goals (what you want to achieve), a mission connects identity (who am I) to impact (the legacy you want to have).”
Kramer explains that your personal mission statement should have three parts: “your skills; your purpose or the reason why you’re doing what you’re doing; and your compass, your direction or plan to make it happen.”
Want more valuable advice about embracing your career and looking at it from a new perspective? You can buy Kramer’s debut book in stores or online here!