10 Career Habits to Master

From getting your finances under control to forming foundations for professional success, getting solid career habits under your belt is the key to long-term success.

Getting these 10 habits into your everyday career experiences will set you up for continued growth in your work world.

1. Step out of your comfort zone

While it might seem counterintuitive, but the early stages of your career (or even when you’ve are established in a career) is a good time to take a risk. Everything is about learning, and you have so much space to make mistakes and get right back up and start over.

A ‘comfort zone’ busting habit can be something small but should become part of your routine. Think about pushing yourself to do one ‘stretch thing’ a week and jot a reminder in your calendar to keep yourself accountable. This can be any number of things, raising your views and ideas in a meeting where you would normally sit silent, trying out a new teaching method or resource, or engaging in a completely new activity and let people get the chance to see you from a different perspective.

Get comfortable doing the things that make you uncomfortable.

2. Make the most of your Sundays*

‘Mondays’ get a lot of air-time as the day we need to in command of, but how you habitually tackle your Sunday also sets you up for a week of success. If Sundays have always felt like 100 percent ‘weekend’ time, start committing to carving out just an hour or two in the late afternoon to do things that tee you up for a productive work week. This can be lesson planning, scheduling workouts or meal prepping lunches to help ensure you’ve got your wellness goals mapped out to be your best productive being. When you’ve mastered that, tack on another hour to invest in some professional development goals. Read industry journals that you normally haven’t, take an online class to beef up your technical skills or tackle a new podcast series. Getting into the habit of seeing at least a little of Sunday as part of your work week sets you up to ease into a great Monday and week ahead.

*In the UAE this is relevant to Saturday and Sunday …

3. Give and take constructive feedback

Taking constructive feedback gracefully demonstrates maturity and the ability to grow professionally. You’ll also be practicing your own leadership skills if you work on how you deliver feedback to colleagues. The best employees are those that make a team’s success their responsibility, and take it upon themselves to shape the output of a group with constructive feedback.

Did a colleague knock it out of the park on a presentation? Then let them know … it’s always good to hear someone saying something impressive about what you’ve been working on. Struggling to get along with a colleague over a deadline? Go and talk to them, it is easier to do this before the deadline has passed. Being able to articulate and resolve challenging relationships in a team environment is one of the best skills you can develop in your career.

4. Negotiate like a boss

We hear a lot about negotiations being attached to our salary, but in reality, it’s a skill that you’ll need to apply throughout a myriad of work situations. For example, when your department is given a big project, you’ll often be negotiating who is going to take on what work, or what are reasonable timelines. You can learn how to negotiate, and be sure that you are applying this skill to your entire compensation at a job, not just your salary!

5. Network with an executive mindset

Networking with an executive mindset means that you are connecting with people with the intent of a long-term relationship. Early in our careers, networking is touted as the essential way to learn the ropes and get exposed to great job opportunities. While true, you start developing a whole different level of networking sophistication when you can thoughtfully maintain a network as well as think about how you can pay it forward. Get into the habit of keeping in touch with connections by flagging articles you think they may find interesting or catching up over coffee, especially when you don’t have a particular career need in mind.