Build Your Career Master Plan With A Mind Map

A career plan is a map that guides you to where you really want to go professionally. While there are several approaches to career planning and mapping your way to your next job, a mind map is an excellent tool for brainstorming and organising your career ideas — especially if you’re not sure yet what you want to do.

As Farnoosh writes on the Prolific Living blog, mind maps help you visually and textually organise your thoughts in a way that gives you a structure, linking related concepts. You can use a mind map to brainstorm and discover your career purpose.

This example includes what Farnoosh calls the “foundational pillars” of your career plan — things you need to explore and answer to find your ideal career and plan where you want to go. They include:

  • Current job or role
  • Career goals and dreams (short and long term)
  • You’re big why: Why you want to do the work
  • Core values: Values you’re not willing to compromise on, such as flexibility or integrity
  • Limits and boundaries: What you’re not willing to do or whom you wouldn’t want to work with
  • Top strengths
  • Desired strengths
  • Education investment in yourself: What you’re willing to invest for yourself and career
  • Execution strategies: What you might do to accomplish your plan
  • Role models
  • Ideal client or company
  • Ideal professional self: Describe how you want to see yourself and been seen as professionally

As you fill out the answers to these, no doubt other branches and levels will surface, creating a wide web of ideas and helping you get a clearer picture of not only where you want to go but also perhaps how to get there.

Original Article by Melanie Pinola
www.lifehacker.com.au