Contributed by executive coach Ann Daly, Ph.D.

A young client’s mother recently asked her what she had learned in our first few coaching sessions. “Always be looking for a job!” was my client’s instant response. This was a hard-won lesson for Mary (not her real name), who had been laid off unexpectedly after a few years at her first job. She had spent those years so focused on the work at hand that she hadn’t yet begun to consider her next job, let alone her long-term career trajectory.

Mary is hardly alone. We tend to get so concentrated on the daily grind of our immediate responsibilities—especially in this job market—that it’s a challenge to visualize, let alone steer, the full arc of our career.

“Always be looking for a job!” was Mary’s enthusiastic reduction of our first few conversations. She and I continue to explore the distinction between a job and a career. It’s like the distinction between an enduring mission and a current tactic. Mary’s mission is to improve the health of her community. Her current job in event fundraising is just her current tactic. It is a means, not an end. Tactics are necessarily provisional; in order to remain effective, they must continually adapt to changing conditions. No job lasts forever, nor should it.

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Contributed by executive coach Ann Daly

There’s no way around it. Career advancement requires strategy: intentional, ongoing, long-term thinking and action. But today’s “on-demand” workplace conspires against full presence and total attention. It’s a challenge these days for anyone to look away from the current client crisis to focus on her own future.

But look away we must.

If you’re serious about giving your career the sustained attention it requires, here are three strategies for developing the habit of deep focus:

First, give up the myth of multitasking. It’s not a productivity tool. It’s an excuse for perpetual distraction. Our brain does not conduct its activities simultaneously. It works sequentially. When we think we’re multitasking, we’re actually zigzagging and backtracking between different tasks. This constant “switching,” it turns out, is terribly inefficient and even detrimental to higher-level activities such as strategic thinking. Your career strategy isn’t going to appear in the cracks between phone calls and text messages.

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Contributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart™

I had a client who had started a business that needed a cash infusion. At the same time, recognizing that cash flow was an issue, he started to explore going back in-house (he had been a successful banker before starting his own shop). He needed to position himself as both an entrepreneur and an employee without diluting either focus or confusing his market. How do you position yourself for two different careers?

I see this conundrum more and more. On the entrepreneur/ employee front, more people are starting side businesses or picking up consulting projects. But even when one is committed to traditional employment, jobs are wider in scope and you may find yourself with a role that is a compilation of several different functions. I reconnected with an old hire of mine from my media days, and she was straddling PR and marketing in the same firm. Consequently, she was unsure how to talk about both without diminishing her experience in either.

Positioning is framed by two things: who you are; and what you are targeting. So the above conundrum seems to revolve around the first half – confusion on how to express who you are. But it really is more about the second – describing who you are in the context of your target. If you are sure about your target, you can easily find a way to talk about your two (or more) sides in a way that adds value to your target and therefore makes you the logical choice, not the outlier.

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Contributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart™

I recently led a workshop on Resilience for HR executives at a financial services firm that had recently undergone a major restructuring. One VP asked: “How do you allocate time between your personal and professional goals?”

It’s a fitting question for that particular firm because many of the attendees were juggling several jobs and new roles. There was uncertainty, anxiety, and overall fatigue. Yet, the question is fitting for many executive women who juggle multiple roles all the time. How do you keep track of everything and ensure that nothing gets short shrift?

Drop the guilt. The attendees seemed relieved when I told them to just drop some things for now while the restructuring was at its peak. The reality is that there will be times when your life is one-sided and unbalanced. In the long-term you want to even out those cycles and ensure that you build in breaks to refresh and renew. But in a crunch period, it’s more effective to just accept that you have to let some things slide to incorporate whatever extra responsibility has come onto your plate.

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Contributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart™

As you plan your career, there are so many things you can invest your resources in – taking continuing education courses, working towards a certification or advanced degree, getting involved in a professional group, expanding your network, attending conferences, getting published, looking for better jobs. The decision on whether to choose a continuing education course needs to be weighed against all these other options. It will depend on what you want to get out of the course and your career overall.

Continuing education is good to expand your skill set without the commitment and expense of an all-out certification program or additional degree. You can pick and choose exactly what captures your interest or what you feel will most benefit you right now. Company tuition reimbursement plans are often capped, and continuing education courses can be selected to fall below the maximum. On the other hand, a course here and there will not have the weight of completing a certification or advanced degree. Many companies will reimburse only for full programs, not a select course.

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