3.1 Your priorities and decisions so far
This is an activity that you partly design yourself because time has been allowed this week for you to:
- complete or revise work from previous weeks that is on your priority list
- review all your thoughts in your notebook and to draw out any key decisions you have made along the way.
Activity 3 Revisions and decisions time
For activities that you wish to complete or revise (which you identified in Activity 2), you should return to the relevant section of your notebook and do the work there.
Once you are ready to review your notes and draw out your decisions, list them in your notebook under the heading ‘My decisions so far …’
Decisions might sound a strong word, and you may not yet feel wholly committed to some of the ideas you have had so far. This is fine. You are looking for the areas in which your thinking is pretty clear. For example, you want to work part time, or you wish to stay in your current career but perhaps move employer, or your next step is to find voluntary work that allows you to develop your interests in some way.
When you are ready to review your notes and draw out your ‘decisions’, make sure you record them in your notebook.
The following topics might prompt your thoughts, but do not feel constrained by them.
You may have made decisions about:
- yourself and what motivates you
- how you might be holding yourself back
- what changes you might need to make to pursue your aspirations
- the type of work you want to do – and where
- the kind of career you want
- the working pattern that best suits you
- the skills or knowledge you might need to acquire
- personal contacts you want to talk to
- jobs or work you want to actively seek soon
- new contacts you want to build.
Comment
You may well be surprised by the amount of ground you have covered over the last seven weeks, and also the number of decisions you have made already. That is just great! You should feel a real sense of achievement, however long your list is in answer to this activity. After all, making a decision to rule something out is just as important as identifying a potential new career path.
Having reviewed what you have done over the past few weeks, and taken a bit of time to sharpen your ideas where needed, you are now in a good position to think about what you want to take forward into an action plan. The next section takes you through this in a structured way.