Margaret Spence wraps her 30-day career challenge with one core lesson: learn to say no. Over-commitment to meetings and networking drains time from what actually moves you forward. Make a 90-day plan starting January 1, get clear on what you want, and join her new twice-monthly Career Conversations Zoom calls for ongoing guidance.
Day 30 of the 30/30 Career Transformation Challenge. Can you believe that we are at the end? I almost feel like I'm going to be missing out on all these videos for the last 30 days. Thank you for joining me. My name is Margaret Spence and I'm the founder of the Employee to CEO Project and the 10X Leadership Academy for Women. It's been a absolutely wonderful 30 days asking you bold questions to help you rethink, reinvigorate, retune, set new goals for your career. I trust that you've enjoyed the journey, and I'd love to see you continue asking yourself bold questions long after the challenge is over. Today's bold question: What is essential to your career development? What are the essential tools that must be in place for you to develop in your career? Here's a, a key fact. Sometimes we need to learn how to say no. We need to learn to not say yes to everything. You cannot serve everyone. You cannot make everyone happy. As you're developing yourself and developing your career and moving towards your goals, it's essential that you understand when to say yes and when to say no. No is often hard because we worry that when we say no to something, we might've missed a great opportunity, or we worry that by saying no to an opportunity that presents itself, the person who's offering us the opportunity will not come back to offer us another opportunity. I would say to you, take a different approach. Weigh what you say yes to and be conscious when you need to say no. Be clear about what is a yes and be really, really clear about what should be a no. You can get so caught up in busy work, in things that really mean nothing to the grand scheme of your career. It's the busyness. It's the things we use to fill our time, but what we're filling our time with is not moving us towards our goal. You have to understand that time is the essence of your ability to move forward. Time is what you learn that is the most important part of advancing your career. You don't want to spend your time working on things that don't benefit or advance or move you towards your goal. Yes, you need to attend meetings. Yes, you need to be a part of your team. Yes, you need to be contributing, but sometimes what you're saying yes to really provides no advantage to you. Those could be the extra, extracurricular activity, the networking events. It could be the group events. It could be things that are taking you away from working in your career and working on your career. So be conscious of what you are accepting, and what you need to be rejecting. So the bigger question is, where do we go from here? What's next for you? You've asked yourself these 30 bold questions. What's next? What are you going to do a month from now, 60 days from now, 90 days from now? What are you going to do starting January 1st to advance your career? It's important that you take a deep look at where you're going, why you're going there, what you're seeking. The great Sufi mystic says, "What you are seeking is seeking you." But it's important for us to understand what we're looking for and be able to identify it when we see it. Now, I told everyone that I had a big, bold announcement at the end of the 30-day challenge. I'm going to continue the challenge, but in a different way. I've started Career Conversations, which we're going to have twice a month, an open mic phone call via Zoom meeting where you can call in and discuss your career questions. You can post your questions, you can ask for guidance, you can connect with people who may be having the same issues that you are. So stay tuned for Career Connections, which is the next version of the 30-day challenge. Thank you again for joining me on the 30-day challenge. It's been so empowering and so amazing to know that we've had 17,000 people view the videos. That's about 500 people a day. I am so happy with this outcome. So stay tuned. Continue to connect, and I will be posting more videos as time goes along. Take care. Bye.
