Is Your Career Path a Staircase or a Circle?

We all have ideas for things we want to improve. Maybe you want to learn about investing so you can manage your finances better. Maybe you want to learn about how to build good fitness habits, so you can stay in shape. Maybe you want to build skills for your career, learn new subjects or otherwise become a smarter, better version of yourself.

Unfortunately, for a lot of people, their process of improvement looks like this:

They start out with some ideas. They get excited for a week or two. Maybe they even take some early steps into doing something about it. But, their enthusiasm wanes and eventually their project gets abandoned and they’re right back where they started. Their path is a circle.

On the other hand you have people whose path of improvement looks like this:

They get an idea. Instead of daydreaming, they construct a specific, short-term project. Once they accomplish that, they move on to a new idea and a new project. Each project builds on the last, expanding options. Before long, they’re getting opportunities to do things they couldn’t have imagined at the start. Their path is a staircase.