How to Carve Out Time for a Monumental Career Change

Posted on May 30, 2017 by Rachel Hill, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Two things that make career change a scary, (but also interesting, worthwhile and amazing) journey are:

1. Its complex. There are many things to consider like other people (family), a busy schedule (you are working right now right?), you may need time to learn something new.
2. It takes guts. It takes a willingness to step outside what is secure and comfortable, take on risks and be ready to commit to seeing the journey through.
Some years ago, I was considering and researching a monumental career change: to move from front line Executive Assistant into Management. My reasons for doing this were two-fold:

I had achieved everything I could in my current career as an executive assistant. I was looking for a new path that would open up new challenges for me.

1. I knew that along with a career in management, came the opportunity to increase my income more than four times what I was currently earning.
2. During my research I realised I would need credibility before anyone would seriously consider me for a management position. I needed some serious up-skilling and retraining. That meant going back to study.

Working through the decisions as you decide on your course of action in your career change
My options were:

- to leave my job and become a full time student,
- cut my hours so that I could work part-time and study part time or
- work full time and study part time or
- work full time and study full time.

At the time, I was married and the primary earner for our family, the mother of a 2 year old child and I had the usual financial obligations that go along with owning my own home. I couldn’t afford a salary drop; I needed time for my relationship and my family. How could I even contemplate study?

Yet I knew that staying put meant a lack lustre future ahead of me. I needed to make the change. Trying to do it without some kind of certification or qualification would make the leap an impossible challenge.

I settled on option 4 and made the commitment to studying for the Executive Masters of Business Administration. Massey University had begun a new type of distance learning; where the fees were higher but the courses were run with lecturers delivering courses in person, in various cities throughout the country and on the weekends. In other words, the University came to the students.

They were targeting people just like myself who wanted to study but couldn’t afford the time or the salary sacrifice to leave their jobs and become a full-time, on-campus, student. The course was equivalent to full time and the requirement was 20 hours study a week, fortnightly weekend all day lectures and a stiff entry fee that guaranteed all I had to do was study for two and a half years.

My next challenge was how to balance a full time masters level degree course with all my other obligations.

The answer was simple.

I began by dividing up my day into time blocks identifying where to focus my attention and energy – mornings for family, hours of work, hours of study.

Then I looked at what a typical week would look like and divided up the week into blocks that enabled work, study, relationship, family and me time – date night, study group, child time.

Next, I took a year planner blocking out the time to be devoted to study (weekends for lectures and weekends for leisure) and work (40 hours per week) as well as blocks (annual breaks) for relaxation – either for family, relationship or myself.

So, effectively, I had different and overlapping lenses through which I could look at any given time period and know where I was going to focus my attention and energy.

The key to succeeding with this time blocking strategy was to create some fundamental "rules of the game”.

Here’s what I came up with:

- Design the plan together with my partner and family so that we all agreed with the approach and support each other in the implementation of the plan.
- The designation for each time allocation was not negotiable except for a life or death emergency. That is, if the time was allocated for relaxation then that is what would happen. No excuses. This was true for all areas of focus.
- Every long weekend was extended by two days either side to ensure the family would have regular, quality time to spend together. My commitment to relaxation was that I would leave the books behind and focus on being present with my partner and my child having fun.
- Each year a period of three weeks were blocked out for family time and vacation and this was also not negotiable.
- Planning the detail of what each time block contained was a just-in-time approach.
- Collaborate on your career change

Studying like this for over two years, although quite rigid and inflexible, meant that I was able to work at a high level of productivity whilst ensuring there was a balance with work, study and life. My relationship thrived, I spent frequent quality time with my son, I could focus on my work when required and yet I also achieved one of my biggest career transformations.

And good results followed …

Three years after beginning study, I was able to secure my first management position and step onto the first rung on a career ladder that was not only incredibly interesting and challenging, but also very lucrative for me and my family.

I realized I was more capable than I thought I was. The process of acquiring new skills and knowledge as I gained my degree and my new career, gave me confidence that I could succeed at this goal and laid a foundation of resourcefulness that I have been able to call on over and over again.

Since that time, I have applied this technique to many other goals and projects and it has been instrumental in my success with my passion for house remodelling and transforming my career into coaching and mentoring others who want to find work they love.

I have also discovered a similar approach …

It transpires that this approach has been written about in the Pomodoro Technique, which is free, and if you want to learn more about it you can do so by searching on it.

This technique applies the approach to shorter periods of time such as 25 minutes whilst my approach is for larger blocks of time – hours, days, weeks and months. Either way It is a way of structuring time and chunking goals to create focus, improve productivity and achieve balance.

However, I recommend adopting my approach only for the time that you are focussed on and working toward achieving a big goal.

Key things to take away from this story for your career change…

Working in this manner requires development of resilience, determination to succeed, an ability to live in the present whilst keeping your eye on the goal and mindfulness. Once I had my degree, I was able to introduce more flexibility back into my life and that was a welcome change.

Here are the lessons …

- Identify YOUR drivers for change
- Think about the impact on those around you and involve them in developing the plan so they can be supportive
- Work out what skills or training you need to acquire and where to go to get them
- Find out what kind of commitment you are going to need to make
- Structure time to work on progressing towards the goal
- Consider all of the demands of life that require your attention
- Cut out the things that you don’t need be doing
- Come up with your rules of the game
- Own it. Make rules that will work for you

Questions for you …

What goals do you have that you are putting off because you don’t have the time? What other skills do you need to develop to make this shift? How would you change things now that you know about time blocking?

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