Things don’t always go as planned, especially when it comes to our careers. We can be more strategic and intentional about our futures by using a “career guide,” which is meant to challenge you to think critically about what you want and where you should focus your energy. It has four parts:

• Identify your career traps: Are you continually striving to meet others’ expectations? Has being busy become a part of your identity? It often takes a crisis for us to stop, reflect, and recognize the career traps that might be tripping us up. To avoid these traps you need to be able to identify them and make deliberate trade-offs to do things that add meaning.
• Define your purpose: Your purpose is the reason you do what you do. Once you know your purpose, you can be more intentional about dropping the habits that don’t serve you and doing things that bring you closer to it.
• Document your unique skills: Take some time to identify unique skills or your Unique Selling Point (USP) — the things that, combined, make you better than your competition and would make any hiring manager pick you. You can use it as an elevator pitch for prospective employers and also add it to your resume or LinkedIn profile.
• Seize opportunities: This doesn’t mean saying yes to everything that comes your way. Be strategic and consider how the opportunity aligns with your purpose, goals, current skills, and the skills you need to build to get to where you want to go.