The paranoid’s approach to career management

Do the following until your worst fears are confirmed:

1. Test your market value
   • All good: Go to 5. Trouble ahead: Go to 2.
2. Guess what the market wants
   • Do you think the market needs you, a better you, or a different you?
3. Test your hypothesis
   • Spot on: Go to 4. Whoops: Go to 2.
4. Acquire the new skills and experiences
   • Develop your service ethic.
   • Build your brand.
   • Bring your creativity to the fore.
   • Expect to be doing the ‘hard yards’ right up to the finish line.
5. Wait one month then go to 1.

It’s not that everyone is out to get you, but you are on your own from an economic perspective. Forget the career ladder. Forget the career. And treat winking robots in toy shop windows with deep suspicion.