I’ve been asked a few times recently on what are the “tricks” or “hacks” or whatever to reaching your career potential.  People say it is “effective communication”.  Some say “achieving results”.  Others say “a great network” goes far beyond results.  Others say it’s a “growth mindset”.  And there are a multitude of others that could be considered as well.  Although all of those are all valid and very useful for specific situations, my response is one word: Effort.

It is somewhat covered in a talk I heard from motivational speaker Anthony Robbin’s where he said something to the effect of: People say knowledge is power, but knowledge isn’t power, knowledge is potential power and it’s only with action does it become power.  So knowing how to effectively communicate is different than putting that knowledge into action.  Talking about the importance of a great network is nice, but you need to put into the effort to build the relationships that make up that network.  Even having a growth mindset isn’t helpful unless you put those thoughts into action.

You’ll find that most of the successful people in life got there by putting in the effort.  Even those that seem like overnight successes and seem to do so “effortlessly” now only do so because they have spent an enormous amount of effort previously to build on their failures as well as their successes to get to that point.  Now there’s all the research on deliberative practice in order to achieve your potential, but that’s for another post

So that’s it.  To reach your career potential just put in the effort, and you’ll be well on your way to reaching your career potential!

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