How to Create Space for Career Growth

If you are a high achiever, you crave continual growth. To grow, though, you need time and space to focus on that growth. As we get better at our jobs, people ask us to do more of what we are good at, making it hard to create the space we need to grow. In this post, I share some techniques you can use to create space for career growth.

I have experienced two significant growth spurts in my career. The first happened when I was kicking butt delivering as a product manager. I was launching features, talking to customers, and making sure everything was in tip-top shape. To get to the next level, I had to become more of a thought leader. I needed to develop a strategy and story about how and where my business was going. The second growth spurt happened when I stepped into a new role with greater focus on engineering. In both of these situations, the demands of my day-to-day job did not allow me to focus on career growth. I had to make space to foster that growth.

How to create space for career growth:

Document how you spend your time: You can’t create space without knowing how you spend your time. I started by sending a weekly email to myself that detailed how I was spending my time. The email included meetings, emails, project work, and conversations. In this step, focus on gathering information and not on making changes.