You have to wonder sometimes, I spend way too much time reading articles on LinkedIn about career growth, personal brand, drive to succeed and so on.
Now that we’re in the dog days of summer, our teenagers have landed themselves jobs. Mr Back-from-University proudly told me he dialed the phone 200 times the other day. One of the kid’s friends works at Jiffy Lube, another one just started work at Tim Hortons and gets coffee, donuts and bagels free on his shift and 30% off the rest of the time and my daughter is currently wearing a hijab at an East Indian catering company (they kept forgetting her hair net which of course is required for food hygiene standards because all the women wear hijabs so decided that a hijab is the easiest way to remember to cover her hair).
So this week I started looking at ambition and what it is. So here’s my deep thought of the day. If your sole ambition is to make money, what’s wrong with that? Many people in many jobs don’t have the ‘luxury” of working on career development, they’re too busy paying the bills.
Maybe I watched a bit too much of the DNC last week, this certainly isn’t intended as a political post though.
But again, what’s the big deal. My career goals this week revolve around doing as little as possible in order to enjoy the beautiful weather.
Next week my career goals revolve around closing a few sales and trying to beat my son’s record for number of calls (NOT!!!!).
I don’t anticipate any navel gazing at my personal brand, corporate brand (although you will notice a very nice looking new logo ad web site so I’m a bit of a hypocrite there), career growth or any of the other topics that we see on LinkedIn such as:
- The 19 things that successful people do while brushing their teeth
- Why a loaf of bread can be the best thing since sliced bread
- Tips for opening a business in Sierra Leone
- Is there a correlation between height and success?
Back to the kids.
Their sole focus right now is to make money, that remains the focus of many people but that message appears lost among the blog writers on LinkedIn as we seek the meaning of life.
Honestly, one of the few reasons that I saw this as a topic for a post is because I’m shallow, I don’t have the ambition or foresight to plan for a career.
Maybe it’s time for a few of us to embrace our inner shallowness.
