Driving and your career

Driving home today the thought occurred to me that a career path is a lot like rush hour traffic in Birmingham. Just bear with me here, it made sense driving home.

Traffic in Birmingham during rush hour is stop and go, stop and go and so on. Merging is hell; people are in your way, some let you over and some don’t so sometimes you have to make your own way. You get behind people in the fast lane that just can’t or won’t go as fast as you want to go. So to get where you want to go at the speed you want to go, you pass them. People in Birmingham are incapable of maintaining a consistent speed up a mountain so they slow down until the drive is downhill and then they speed up.

Now here’s how I relate this to a career path.

Merging is your entry onto a career path. There are people travelling on the same path that will try to get in your way, hold you back or push you behind them for whatever reason. Some people, good leaders or mentors, will help on to the path and point you in the right direction. Road rage gets you nowhere, same for getting angry at these people. As much as you’d like to scream at them, give them the one finger salute and cut them off, don’t do it because it doesn’t accomplish anything; they might be the new CEO or your next boss.

Once you get on your path, the obstacles in your way can be bountiful (slow traffic keep right please). If you are on the fast track (left lane) speeding your way to the top, you are going to be forced to pass people that are in your way. These people you’ll pass may be your boss, coworkers or friends and they may not always be happy to see you speed by.

What got me truly thinking about this was the mountain. Think of the mountain as difficulties, bad economy, layoffs or whatever major difficulties present themselves in your career. Many people remain on cruise control. Traveling up the mountain is when you want to press the accelerator, kick your transmission into overdrive and conquer that hill just like you conquered merging into the field.

Whether your mountain to conquer is looking for a new job, battling an overbearing boss or layoffs, you don’t need to become complacent and travel on cruise control because life isn’t easy at those moments. You should be working harder, interviewing when possible, networking and polishing your interviewing skills. This is the time to see what you’re made of; can you can handle the hard times, or the congested traffic.

Once you conquer your mountain in overdrive while everyone else is on cruise control, the sense of accomplishment will be worth the extra effort and you’ll enjoy those future twists and turns with delight because you know “I can do this, I can conquer any mountain or obstacle in my path”.