Not everyone has a clear career planning. Even though lots of people might think about it sometime, but most of them do not have a clear idea. They think it here and there, now and then, and finally just live with a inexplicit planning.
Most career planning strategies may fall into the following two basic patterns: bottom-up and top-down.
First, I would like to talk about bottom-up career planning a little before talking more about top-down. Bottom-up career planning is the way you figure out how you can do best based on what career building blocks you already possess. It is considered low-level and objective method of planning.
For example, you already learn to drive (might back in school time or in past few years ), you think that being a taxi drivers will earn you enough money, so you choose taxi driver as your job. Another example, you already know how to develop a computer game, so you are more intended to take computer game developer as your job. You search game company and write your resume showing that you are qualified for computer game developer. For this kind of career planning, you are asking yourself, "what kind of job should I get" or "what kind of job am I qualified to do".
Bottom-up career planning is almost the de facto standard. Especially when people want to make serious planning, they always use bottom-up way. It make planning looks practical and reasonable. And they and their friends may accept it quite easily. And their career will also looks much under control.
And now, I would like to talk the other way, or the opposite way, top-down career planning. Top-down career planning is that you figure out who you really want to be, from the deepest heart, and then try to find out the best way to make yourself there. It's considered as subjective method for planning.
The most important procedure is to find out the true self of yourself. If you are living unconsciously, you might not knowing what you really want. You may over-think that money is important, salary is important, car or house is important. So you need trying to listen to your heart beat silently and find out what make you feel really happy or interested. You need to make sure that you can express the value, the character and the attributes that you want to provide for the whole life or for at a decade. Only you find out the true self, you can tell what is the top.After you know true self, you can begin to planning your best way to reach there.
For this top-down career planning, what you are asking is "Who am I really" or "How can I best share my core, innate value with the world". Top-down planning is less common than the bottom-up planning. It usually be used on those niche fields, like art, music or drama. But being less used does not mean that it does not fit you. If you want to reach your core being, you might do so.
In fact, people uses top-down thinking on reflection of values or spirit. And working for assignment will also be in such pattern.
So which strategy should you use to planning your career? Top-down or bottom-up?
Bottom-up career planning starts with the practical, low-level, physical aspects of a career. It regards things like salary, qualifications, security, perks, and potential for advancement as the most important elements to get right. Once you have those things in place, it’s up to you to do the best you can to enjoy it.
Top-down career planning starts with the high-level, spiritual and emotional aspects of a career. It regards creative self-expression as the most important element to get right. Once you have an outlet for creatively expressing the real you, you then work through the practical issues of developing your skills and generating income to meet your physical needs.
Both strategies have their strengths and weaknesses, so a balanced approach seems wise. I wouldn’t recommend applying both strategies with equal weight, however. I think the best career planning combo would be about 80% top-down and 20% bottom-up.
What would this 80-20 combo look like? It means that you’d invest the bulk of your career planning efforts into figuring out who you really are, getting in touch with your core values, and deciding what it is you really want to express to the world. The result of that would basically be a statement of purpose that deeply resonates with you. Once you have this, you’re really 80% of the way there.
If you put bottom-up planning ahead of top-down planning, you’re putting the cart before the horse. That approach just won’t yield the right level of clarity. It’s not a good way to consciously build a fulfilling career. It’s like looking at the ground to explore the stars.
Your optimal career is simply this: Share the real you with the physical world through the process of creative self-expression. In order to do that, however, you must first discover the real you. So be your true self and make a top-down career planning.