Often, when you see advice about advancing your career or achieving better job satisfaction, it seems to have been created by someone who doesn’t quite exist in the real world. After all, how else can you explain someone advocating dropping everything and abandoning your job in search of future skills or experience? For most of us - especially if we live paycheck to paycheck - that’s just not possible.
What Are Your Options?
So what’s left if you can’t leave your job, but you want to be able to advance in the future? If you find yourself at the top of the line as far as your current position goes in terms of promotion, it can feel like you’re at a crossroads you will never be able to navigate. You need the job so you can afford to live, but you need to be able to take extra qualifications.
The solution, then, appears to be to juggle your life and your career at the same time. But, again, that’s far too simplistic. Time is short for the majority of us at the best of times, how on earth can you manage to juggle both without feeling like you’re torn in two different directions?
The Importance Of Course Selection
If you’re going to make this change work for you, you have to be certain that you’re doing the right thing to advance your career. Some people embark on additional education and then realize that they wish they hadn’t, or that their choice was less than useful when it came to a practical application.
Add, Don’t Change
It, therefore, makes the most sense to pursue additional qualifications that you know you’re going to be able to use. That means you should look to enhance your current job, rather than abandon everything you have worked at thus far in exchange for a radical career change.
There are plenty of different ways you can do this, depending on your career path. If you’re a nurse, you could look for a RN to BSN online program that could increase your capacity for future promotions. If you work in a customer service role, then you could seek to gain recognition for your management skills or even an MBA that could lead to a position higher up the chain of command. For almost any industry, there is a natural advancement that you could be taking advantage of rather than embarking on an entirely new career.
Acknowledge Your Lack Of Time
Pretending that everything is fine and of course you’re going to be able to juggle everything at once is a one-way route to insanity. It’s not going to be easy, and you need to ready yourself for that reality. You need to admit that you’re sometimes going to have to come home tired from work and throw yourself right into a course project; that sometimes your precious weekends are going to be impacted.
Make Plans
If you think that sounds depressing, then it shouldn’t; it’s all about managing your expectations so you don’t get a nasty surprise when you have already invested a lot of time and effort into pursuing further qualifications. Coming up with a plan that will assist in your ability to cope when everything becomes very real and you are strapped for time, so start working out your schedule the minute you sign up for your course.
Good luck!
