Page 16 - The Interconnected Individual: Seizing Opportunity in the Era of AI, Platforms, Apps, and Global Exchanges

CHAPTER 5

How to Navigate

Your Career

“Purpose is a goal toward which we are always working. It is the
forward-pointing arrow that motivates our behavior and serves as
the organizing principle of our lives. Second, purpose involves a
contribution to the world.”
—E.E. Smith 1

• Understand your own values and purpose to reimagine your own life.
• Hard skills are useful; soft skills are essential.
• Recognize market reality: the emergent world of work.
• Know how to ask the right questions for self-guidance.
• Communicating, networking, lifelong learning, and flexibility are
necessary to your success.
• Reimagine career paths.

Values to Guide You: Find Your Authentic Self

Too many of us go from job to job, and fall into a career that seems
“to have happened to us.” Others may have followed a career track, and
succeeded at their jobs, but find they are unfulfilled, stuck, and seeking a
better fit between their values and work.
You can take the entrepreneurial approach to a career just as well as to
a start-up. You can begin with exactly the steps the entrepreneur follows:
a process to identify your own values and how they can align with your

1 E.E. Smith. 2017. The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters (New York,
NY: Crown), p. 78.