It is hard to boost a career without the three main components of your career character. Many people will try to level up their careers by taking new courses, being more intentional about networking, and changing their behaviours at work (or while looking for work).
These are all useful and positive ways to boost your career. But there are three main skills, I want to call them the preliminaries, that will make those other actions more impactful on your career.
What are the three main components that support a career up-levelling?
The three main components of a career up-levelling are:
- Concentration
- Equanimity
- Knowing your career story
If you have these three components, especially during a career transition, the rest of your actions will have more impact. In this article, I’ll dig into the first component — concentration and give you a guided practice to work with.
Why is concentration important to up-level your career?
Has this ever happened to you? You go into a meeting, and you know a promotion is possible. Perhaps you rehearse what you’ll say in advance. You choose the right outfit, professional, but not too trying. You have a possible job title in mind, a succession plan if needed, and you know your salary expectations.
But when you get into the meeting, your mind gets pulled into a conversation, an inner doubt, and before you realize it, you’ve lost the script and intention.
That is a sign of low concentration.
Concentration is the ability to focus on what you want to focus on when you want to focus on it. Most career flops happen because you didn’t pay attention to signals in the room, people, or the situation. This happens most often in high-pressure situations, such as job interviews or career development conversations.
How to develop concentration skills
You can build concentration skills through a myriad of techniques. But a quite famous and systematic way to develop concentration is meditation. I personally encourage people to use mindfulness to build concentration because it’s been studied extensively and comes with extra benefits: it provides relief, helps you know yourself better, and can help you perform artfully. That’s a lot of impact with only one exercise.
I recorded a guided meditation that I’ve been working with for the past week, which has been useful for slowing the mind. This technique of extending the outbreath is taught at Harada Roshi’s temple (known as the master’s master) in Japan. At that temple, they teach you to extend the outbreath for a minute, but to begin, try extending it as long as you can. No need to strive for a minute.
Guided Practice (8 minutes long)
How this works
This practice works in two ways. You are first asked to focus on inhaling naturally and noticing how low/deep the inbreath goes. This is your first focal point. You notice this spot and label it “feel.” This helps you notice what you’re noticing in real time. It also encourages you to appreciate what already is. You already have breath. You’re working with what is.
You then exhale the breath through the mouth in an extended way. Working to change the breath helps you to concentrate on it. It’s also a bit playful to make a long vocal exhale.
Repeat this sequence for 8 minutes.
Do this meditation daily for one week. Write about your experience in a journal or notes app. Pay attention if you start to notice increased focus in your work and when listening to others. This is a signal that your concentration is improving.
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