2021 was not the easiest year for the world, but personally it was a good one in many ways. Career I hit the one year mark at DuckDuckGo (more on that in: 1 Year @ DuckDuckGo), and got promoted for the second time ever in my career (my last job didn’t have promotions). A lot […]
Since 2017, I’ve been posting a photo every day to Instagram and photo.cate.blog. I kept that up last year, posting 361 photos in total. In 2021, the aesthetic monotony of pandemic life really started to get to me and this was probably the hardest this project has ever felt. I think part of the appeal […]
In 2021, I committed to publishing each Monday. Aside from a couple of narrow misses in October, I kept at it, making 52 posts over the year, up from 20 in 2020 (I wrote more about what this looked like in my retrospective: The Year of Habits). I had 4 articles on LeadDev. I sent […]
This time a year ago, I felt like my creativity had died of COVID. Died of boredom. Died of exhaustion. Suffocated under the weight of… everything. In the struggle of this, I felt caught between the should of, I should be able to do this, and the recognition that the world was on fire. I […]
Step 1: Review Being the DRI of Your Career Expecting More from Your Career (and Less from Your Job) The Rent Versus Buy of Career Growth How to DRI Your Professional Development Coachability++ DRI Your Support System 5 Signs It’s Time to Quit Your Job Step 2: Plan Assess if it’s time to quit (this […]
All year I’ve been doing the Positive Intelligence app program. Every day there’s a focus (not always different, they rotate) with multiple prompts spaced through the day to meditate on. Some days it’s the exact thing I need, and others it’s not, but the one that always, always, lands is the one about “choose the […]
I feel like I’ve spent much of this pandemic digging out of a case of burnout, watching people burn out around me, trying to get ahead of things, trying to inch up from zero but never really feeling like I make it that far. I think it’s understandable that people are burning out, left, right […]
By now, we’ve all heard of the great resignation. Over the past 18 months or so, many people have had more time to think about what they want from their jobs, and the kind of conditions they are willing to accept. Of course, the great resignation often glosses over the number of people who died […]
As the DRI of your career, you need to build your support system – this is so you get the support you need even as things change around you (or don’t go the way you want). Build your support system. I firmly believe that we should get different things from different people – from our […]
If you’re the DRI of your career, obviously that also makes you – not your manager – the DRI of your professional development. Own your professional development. Your professional development budget is what your employer gives you to invest in your career – take advantage of it. What you decide to invest on top of […]