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Thinking about career progression can be a daunting prospect, especially when you’re busy in your current job. So many actions to take, and that’s once you’ve actually figured out where you wanna be. It’s easy to get lost in high-input tasks that have little reward.
In a recent International Women’s Day event we sponsored with Triangirls and Coding Black Females, Cleo Senior User Researcher, Ria Jesrani, hosted a simple yet stellar workshop on how to take the small steps that can have the biggest impact in your career. Grab your notebook, or make a copy of this handy worksheet, and let’s get started.
Complete this sentence: In six months, I will have…
We know - even this is scary. But, if the answer is I will have a clue what I want to do, great! You might also want to develop a skill, build your network or change jobs. Don’t overthink it, go with whatever feels right.
Ask why
Why do you want to have achieved that? What’s driving that desire? Try to frame this in a positive way:
❌ I’m not a good presenter
âś… I want to be a great presenter
Ask why again
This will identify your root driver. If your original goal isn’t met by the answer to your second why, you should revisit your original goal. Here’s Ria’s personal example:
Goal: I want to get into user research
Why? I want to spend more time in interviews
Why again? I want more interaction with other people
For those design research nerds, Ria is using the double diamond approach here to ensure that you’re focusing on the right thing before running with solutions.
What’s stopping you from achieving that goal right now? List them out. They might be look like this:
Which of these do you have control over right now? If there’s anything here that you don’t have control over, and can’t fix quickly, forget about them for now. You of course have the ability to move mountains if you put your mind to it, but when you’re getting started then it’s usually easier to start small, so that’s why we’re only focusing on blockers that we can control for now.
Now, what’s the biggest blocker? Or the one you want to tackle first? Highlight that. Now, we’re getting somewhere.
Here’s the juicy bit! List out some small and easy actions that you could take if that blocker wasn’t holding you back. Here’s Ria’s real life blocker and some actions to get the ball rolling:
Blocker:
They said no and I don’t know why
Actions:
Finally, highlight two of the smallest actions, the ones that you could easily start doing tomorrow. For Ria, these were:
This was the first step to getting Ria on the path of becoming a User Researcher, and damn are we glad that she did! We hope this framework will break down what can be a scary process and get you on your right path!
Lockdown changed us in many ways. Some of us run now, others live off of TikTok food hacks. One or two of us have vouched to never leave the house again. One thing that the pandemic will have changed in all of us though, is our spending. Here are the personality types we see coming out of the woodwork post-lockdown. Tag yourself.
Cleo’s data doesn’t lie
To celebrate reaching 1,000,000 users we decided to clear someone’s overdraft. Here’s the moment John got all his debt wiped. Thanks to everyone who participated, everyone who came to meet us, and every single person now talking to Cleo across the UK, USA and Canada.
