Recently a friend said to me “you’re actual career goals”. I didn’t think too much of it despite the fact that she said it about two or three times in the course of our conversation. Then weeks later, another friend while complaining about not feeling motivated at work and wanting to leave her job said I seem to love what I’m doing. Again, after sharing a career win on my instagram story, a friend asked me if I wouldn’t mind being her mentor and that’s when it hit me. I actually seem to be in a good place in my career but it wasn’t always so and if you followed my previous blog, www.bondibilala.blogspot.com, you would see how I’ve struggled with purpose and knowing what I want to do. Heck, I even have a post on this site about job dissatisfaction. So how did I go from that to being called career goals?
When I wrote about waves aligning, I had just moved from my previous department to the one I had wanted for the past three years. Tuesday last week was my one year anniversary and my career has made more sense in the last 12 months than in the past 5 years. How did I go from floating, feeling lost and wanting to leave my organisation to being some form of inspiration? Life truly is funny because I would never look at myself and think I’m career goals. But isn’t that life? We spend so much time working to get to the next season that we hardly stop to take in where we currently are and how far we’ve come. On a work trip in March, circa when I posted about celebrating yourself, my friend Seun and I were catching up during a sleepover and while updating her on career developments, she advised me to keep a journal of my accomplishments. Now you know anything journaling already has my interest. She was originally supposed to work on a google sheets template for me to regularly update but didn’t get around to doing it. I ended up doing one and I would like to share because I feel it would help someone.
Why I think it would help is because we’re very forgetful as humans. You may really be doing way better than you think but because you don’t write it down, it may slip past your memory. When you journal your work accomplishments, I believe you would see some form of growth. And there’s no pressure to it. Even if your work feels monotonous and you work on the same report every day, jot down “successfully completed xx report for the 100th time“. To me I think that shows that your employers/supervisors trust you enough to let you handle a task that long. Plus, this journal could prove useful when you’re interviewing for another role. You’d be in a better position to sell yourself because you would be able to remember accomplishments that you wrote down.
Here’s what mine looks like. I use excel and I can access it on any system as long as I sign into my account. You can use excel, a hard cover book, your notes app or whatever appeals to you.
I think the accomplishment diary works in two ways; one, it motivates you to get things done so you can journal them down and two, on days when you feel like you’re stuck in a rut or just need some encouragement, you can read through your accomplishments and celebrate your progress so far. I hope you consider keeping one. And just in case no one has told you this lately/ ever
You’re doing amazing, sweetie.
