6 Habits That could hinder progress in your Career

1. Lack of self awareness.You have unidentified blind spots and they are killing your ability to get ahead. Do not feel defeated at the thought of having one yourself as it is peculiar to everyone. Find out how you are being perceived by others. A good place to start is by asking those you work and live with. Assessments are another good tool you can use to get started and coaching is the best way to get results quickly.

2. Refusing feedback.When you do receive feedback, you ignore, get defensive or otherwise completely dismiss it. Especially if you are receiving feedback from people who want to help you. This is death to your career, not to mention to your relationships as well. You should show that you have heard and are giving consideration to what has been said. How do you handle feedback?

3. Doing too much. Not only are we doing too much in our lives overall, we are especially doing too much at work if we refuse to release control. Do you spend time developing others or do you hang onto everything eventually burning out? There is nothing wrong with delegating tasks to other persons when you feel overwhelmed with too much projects.

4. Working on the unimportant. You should have a few key targets for your day. Those are the items on your to-do list that, if you accomplish them, you will consider your day a success. If you are doing anything not related to those items, it’s not important and you need to stop. Break down your to-do lists into smaller tasks. Not every item on your list has the same priority ranking, so do not list them and work on them as if they did.

5. Worrying about the unimportant. Do you worry about what someone thinks? Do you worry about things you have absolutely no control over? Then you may be worrying about the unimportant. All the worry in the world will not advance your career or help your relationships. In fact worrying takes away minutes from your life as you speed through the day in a stressed state of mind.

6. No personal development. Personal development is an absolute must if you want to get ahead not only at work but in life. If you are not developing, you are simply becoming irrelevant. The people that advance are those who constantly add value. You cannot add value if the only conversation you can have is about what you watched on tv last night. Read books, listen to motivational podcasts, get a mentor etc do whatever is necessary to continue your personal development.