Why having a "financial compass" will set you up for success

So, I saw this video the other day, and it was a girl in, like, NYC or something, career girly.

And she said that she received the most, like, life-changing career advice ever a few years ago.

And that was to rather than trying to have a map of where you are going, you need to have a compass.

So rather than having this really kind of like end destination and a plan of how you're gonna get there, or a really rigid plan of like, I'll do this and then this and then this, and then I'll get to this spot.

Sorry for that little hiccup that I just [laughs] had while, while trying to talk there.

I was like, "Oh, where can I cut this to re-record?" And it's just not really working.

But rather than having a map or a key set of steps, you need to have a compass.

And the point of this was to, I guess, replace that traditional career advice, like, that's a bit outdated for our generation of like, I will ladder climb, and then I will do this and this and this, with a more modern approach, which is like, here is my values, here is what I wanna be doing, here is what matters to me, and I am gonna use that to assess different options that I come up with along the way.

Now, this on a career level is, I think, stellar advice, particularly if you work in the private sector, particularly if you work in, like, the creative industry or an industry that is regularly changing.

So I guess tech would also be included in that now, or, well, with AI, pretty much every industry.

But if you are kind of anything outside of systems where you have sort of, uh, progression that will happen regardless of, of, you know, what you do with it, it's really helpful to have this kind of compass approach, right? Because there are jobs that 10 years ago didn't exist.

So if you're going, "Oh, I'm gonna do this and then that, and then I'll be able to do that," in certain industries, that just isn't gonna work, right? And that is something that I've definitely taken on throughout my career of starting off having absolutely no idea what I wanted to do or what I should do next, and trying to apply for jobs, but not being really sure where they were gonna lead to if I was even lucky enough to get an interview, let alone the job.

And looking at where I am now, I just could never have mapped my way here.

Because all of the things that I've done have been somewhat, I suppose, curly, bit of a wiggly career line.

And also, you know, I couldn't have planned to do these kinds of things because a lot of the time, the path that you might take is an opportunity that comes to you out of the blue, or it is something where something goes to plan and therefore you're able to leverage that.

But you couldn't really have taken the risks by putting all of your eggs in that basket for something to go to plan.

For example, yeah, I might have said, "Oh, I'm gonna work for myself." That's more of a compass decision rather than a map decision, which would've been, like, trying to map to where I exactly am now.

And it's like, well, I couldn't have said, "Oh, I'm gonna grow my social media and then monetize that social media, and that's gonna be like 30% of my business, and then I'm also gonna consult on the side and do my freelancing work." That just...

You know, that wouldn't have worked [laughs] because I wouldn't have been able to necessarily guarantee that that was a viable path at that time.

So that's kind of the difference there in like a career sense, and that's like a whole kind of like mini [laughs] episode if we wanna talk about that at some point.