Professional Development

Weekly Challenge: Carry Out One Inspiration

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Last week we discussed inspiring someone.  But inspiration can't do much unless you carry it out.

It's easy to get inspired, but too often it fades away in time.  We forget, we get busy, or worse we get lazy.

Following up on inspiration is a habit – and a skill – that has to be developed, maintained, and improved.  You have to make an effort, often a conscious one, to develop the ability to make ideas real.

So your goal this week is to take one piece of inspiration, either one you had recently or one you get this week – and make it real.

Write a column or a blog post.  Do that waiting piece of art.  Research that college you considered going to.  Something, anything, pick one thing this week that you're inspired to do and go and do it.

Come to think of it, maybe you could make a habit of this . . .

– Steven Savage

The Other Side Of Career Planning

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If it hasn't been apparent from eighteen months of writing about it, I'm very big on career planning.  I'm all for the organized life plan, the schedule, the milestones everything.  I don't think it's because I'm a Project Manager – though the experience probably doesn't hurt.

We all know why we're supposed to plan our careers:

  • It helps us get things done.
  • It helps us set and reach goals.
  • It lets us evaluate and measure progress.
  • Our lack of organization doesn't drive our friends and family nuts.

In that list, and in most of our minds, there is one thing missing about just why we plan our careers and indeed our lives.

That is because our plans also tell us what we're not doing.

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Weekly Challenge: Inspire

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Ready for your weekly Geek Career Challenge?  Well it's here anyway.

It's hard at times for even the most imaginative of us to find new ideas.  It can be for a story, a database structure, or a marketing plan – we're just tapped out.  We all know too well those moments where inspiration leaves us, even in mundane tasks.

I find that inspiration works best when shared.  We know the power of sharing ideas and brainstorming together as we've experienced it many times in our lives – even when we may forget it.  Sharing ideas brings about new ones.

We can forget the importance of sharing ideas and inspiring each other when we, ourselves, are out of ideas.  Being out of ideas, we crave inspiration or even a good suggestion that might lead to fresh, fiery inspiration. Wanting this, we can get selfish and forget others have the same issues – and miss our chance to inspire them, and thus be inspired in turn.

So your goal for this week is to help someone who needs inspiration.

Look for someone who needs ideas, needs to bounce something off of you, has their imagination paralyzed by exhaustion or confusion or just plain no ideas.  When you find this person (or people), go out of their way to help inspire them by listening, or brainstorming with them or just making a suggestion.  As you make your efforts, go out of your way to do what you can to help get their minds moving.

When you inspire others, you can get inspired in turn, and encourage them to inspire even more people.  Make your contribution to keep brainstorming going in the world.

– Steven Savage