Dr. Laurence Shatkin just posted a tweet about a four (4) page PDF entitled "Career planning the second time around" which is pages 12-15 of the Summer 2009 • Occupational Outlook Quarterly.

I mention it here because the article emphasizes the need to "know yourself" through self-assessment and reflection. "Knowing yourself" is not only important the "second time around", it is also important everytime you either think you are about to have, are in the middle of one, or have just come through a transition. (http://lifeworkps.com/transitions)

But most career changers need to assess themselves, especially their skills and interests. “Self-awareness is critical, but it’s not much appreciated or understood,” says Jansen. “It’s important in identifying what you want to do, what your skills are, and what you don’t—and do—like about your current occupation.”

Self-assessment can be a difficult process because it involves identifying personal flaws as well as strengths, and failures as well as successes. “It’s a big stumbling block, because many people are resistant to the process,” says New York career counselor Angel Román. Like it or not, though, career changers need to consider their values, skills, and interests.

Self-assessment is step 2 of the career/lifework planning process. Reflection is step 6.

As you read the article and review the steps of the career/lifework planning process, you should be thinking about where you will record/collect the data, information and knowledge about yourself. Consider your blog and create a post like mine that I call "My LifeWork Planning Portal". It is the MOST important post in my blog. It shoudl be in yours as well.

Click on the tag "know yourself" below to see other post.

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I stay focused on and connected to my LifeWork by ...

1. ... reminders from my 43things account
2. ... maintaining a very short list of the key words that describe my LifeWork, and
   
3. ... creating a Google alert (GA) for variations of the key words in that list. I will get emails when someone writes about my key words. Here is a list of my GAs, and
   
4. ... finding Wikipedia articles about aspects my LifeWork (like career development, etc) and adding them to my Wikipedia watchlist, then making a note in my calendar to review my watchlist periodically, and
   
5. ... periodically sending out short notes (Tweets are a maximum of 140 characters) to my several networks.

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Click your browser's BACK/Return arrow to return to the post that brought you here, or return to ...

• My LifeWork Portal

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This post will contain links to other posts which will provide text for each of my sections in my VisualCV at http://www.visualcv.com/petehubbard

1. My Resume
2. My ...
3. My ...

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Click your browser's BACK/Return arrow to return to the post that brought you here, or return to ...

• My Resume(s) --> My Job Search Plan --> My LifeWork Plans --> My LifeWork Portal

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When you have a thought that you want to preserve, journal it ("ink it" either on paper or computer) then "link it" so you can easily find it again.¹ 

Journaling captures your thoughts so they become real for you and so you can review them later and reflect upon what is important to you before, now and maybe in the future.

But you must be able to find related thoughts so it is equally important that you "link" your thoughts via tags, and hyperlinks in your blog and indices and table of contents in either your blog or your paper journal.  

Click on the "journaling" tag below for more posts about this important topic.

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¹ I got the idea for the phrase "Think it, ink it, link it" from a similar phrase "Think it, ink it" from these pages in the Higher Awareness website.

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Gail passed away peacefully this morning, April 26, 2009, at 6:10.

She was fighting congestion during the night and the antibiotics did not help. She was unconscious and unresponsive when she died, so I will conclude that she was not in pain or distress and did not suffer. (Certainly the way I wish to go.)

She had decided to donate her body for education purposes¹ and after a year or two I will receive her cremated remains.

Gail did not want a service or any special treatment. I was going to help her compose her obituary, but we never got started. So I will devote this post ( http://lifeworkps.com/hubbard/weblog/3965.html ) on my personal blog to collecting our thoughts about Gail.

This will be a work-in-progress, so please bookmark and return often to see how it develops. Please help me by sending me a note with anything you wish me to add or correct.

Gail Elizabeth Hubbard 10/16/1944 – 4/26/2009

Gail was born October 19, 1944, in Brunswick, Maine, the second of five children of Harrison Weston and Elizabeth Swanton Hubbard (both deceased). Gail is survived by her son Mark Aaron Solook, his wife Becky and their daughter Blake Solook of Alvin, Texas; her older brother Harrison Peter Hubbard and three (3) younger brothers John, James and Joseph Hubbard, five step-brothers and sisters (Mike, Jan, Kitty, Ruth and Bill Jolly), several cousins -- including Sue Hartman in Cumberland Center, Maine; members of the Carl Bartlett "Bart" Swanton family in Maine; and Gustavo Rivera, MD, a long-time friend now working at NIH.

Gail lived in Red Bank, NJ; Sturbridge, MA; and Jamesburg, NJ, until she met and married John Solook, whom she later divorced. ... She graduated from Douglass College in New Brunswick, NJ, with a BA degree in library science, and taught [ junior high ?] mathematics [ in Connecticut ? ] for a short time. Gail loved to sing whether with a choir² or as a soloist; had a delightful sense of humor; and cherished time spent in the past 8 years on the Maine coast at Mere Point, near Brunswick.

Gail’s greatest accomplishment in her final ten (10) years was the creation and maintenance of two Yahoo support groups³ (mailing lists) dedicated to one of the several diseases she suffered. Her proudest moment was when she was able to convince a group of doctors to reference her groups at a conference.

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¹Humanity Gifts Registrar (HGR) has selected Temple Medical School in Philadelphia to receive Gail's gift of her body.

²While at college (Pete at Rutgers, New Brunswick), Gail and Pete sang in the community college and shared a profoundly moving experience singing Brahm's German Requiem at the request of Eugene Ormandy (Philadeplhia Orchestra) in the Philadelphia Concert Hall a week after President Kennedy was assasinated. The program was videotaped and shown to the world.

³Panniculitis Support group at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/panniculitis/ and the InternationalMesentericPanniculitisSociety.  Please read this eulogy post from one of the many friends Gail had nurtured in these support groups. There are several others in the Messages section that you may wish to read.

 

Many LifeWork Planning Services (LWPS) posts and LWPS Google Templates (GTs) are incomplete and subject to (significant) change.

1. Some hyperlinks do not work because I wanted them to be placeholders
2. Some active hyperlinks connect to posts that I have just started and need more work, or to the wrong post because I wasn't paying attention 
   
3. Some paragraphs, sentences or phrases don't make sense because I just wanted to record a thought and either got distracted or didn't want to take the time (at that time) to clean them up or elaborate on them  
4. Some GTs are almost empty because I just wanted to get the template URL

I've chosen to publish these incomplete posts and templates because ...

1. I don't know when I will ever be able to "perfect"all of the post and documents. (As I said on the home page,  - - - THIS PLATFORM IS A WORK IN PROGRESS (about 30% done) FOR DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES - - -
   Sections are disorganized, some links are dead, words are mispelled, etc..
   Even though I work on it almost daily, it will be a long time before it is complete.)
2. I believe that if you were able to find me, you are smart enough to get a sense of my intention (for a post or template) and to run with it - your way.

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pete@lifeworkps.com

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Even this Status of LWPS as of 12/2009 is out of date.

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As an aid to help you quickly return to the precise location within a post, I will place a "#" in the beginning of a line and make it a hyperlink (permalink) for that line.

When you click a "#", look at  the tag (after the "#") that appears after the URL (link) in your browser's address box.

That tag will change for each new "#" you click.

When you choose a line you want to return to later, you can  ...

1. bookmark that URL/link so you return to that precise line, or you can 
2. COPY that URL/link and PASTE it into ...
   
   1. a note or calendar item, or
   2. ??
      

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There are thousands of resources devoted to some aspect of career development, planning and/or job search, and you are probably asking "Where do I start?". The answer depends upon where you are at this moment and how much time, energy and interest you have.

1. If you have little time and need a job right now, then you'll will need to start your job search. Check out this section of the Riley Guide and get a copy of Richard Bolles' "What Color Is Your Parachute?" and read Chapter 1 "The Five Best Ways to Hunt for a Job (and the Five Worst)". I'll be adding more resources here.
2. If you have time, energy and interest and want to be more certain about what kind of work you want, you should start here to obtain an in-depth self-understanding about your work needs and interests.
3. If you have more time, energy and interest and want to discover the work you were meant to do, start here.

.... more later ....

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At his first address to a joint session of Congress on February 24th, 2009, President Obama said "... every American will need to get more than a high school diploma.  And dropping out of high school is no longer an option.  It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country – and this country needs and values the talents of every American." (Speech)

You may know someone who is (or might be) struggling with staying in school and who might be persuaded to continue with their education, if they heard a convincing argument.

I'll be adding links to this post that should be useful to them.

1. Google "Education pays"
   1. "Education pays in higher earnings and lower unemployment rates" - Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
   2. Figure 2: Median Annual Earnings by Level of Education and Age, 2005 - Edccollegeboard.com
   3. Google spreadsheet I created and you can use to compare lifetime earnings based upon your education level.
      
2. (Send me (pete@lifeworkps.com) additional links to add to this list.)

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The "What you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) visual editor we use on LWPS has many "edit icons" above the "Post body" which greatly improves your "edit experience".

Some MAC users do not see them.

The following MAC users can see these icons.

1. Sally Gelardin use OS X.4.11
   

If you use a MAC, please add a comment stating if you can/cannot view teh icosn and what OS you are using. Thanks.

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