The daily grind can easily feel like just that – a grind. It’s easy to lose sight of how your current job fits into your broader career aspirations. Connecting your everyday tasks to your long-term career goals isn’t always obvious. Beyond simply defining your career path and identifying your passions, the real challenge lies in figuring out the what, when, and how of daily execution to move you closer to those aspirations.
Countless systems promise to keep you on track, from time management methodologies to intricate project analysis frameworks and elaborate goal-setting systems like OKRs and SMART goals. The sheer volume of options can be overwhelming. This “paradox of choice” can actually hinder progress, as choosing and implementing the right system becomes another task in itself.
While I don’t claim to have a perfect, universal solution, I want to share a set of tools that I’ve found invaluable in my career. These tools have helped individuals on my teams gain a clearer understanding of their roles, become more engaged, and ultimately, more effective professionals. These are, in my experience, essential tools in my career that have fostered growth and success.
The Career Growth Circle: Skills and Influence
Visualize your career as a series of expanding spheres of influence. This perspective allows you to set meaningful development goals that evolve as you gain experience and expertise.
For professionals just starting out, the primary focus should be on building a robust fundamental skill set. This often happens in tandem with initial project assignments. The aim is to develop your core competencies and problem-solving abilities, refining existing skills while acquiring new ones. In larger organizations, you’ll likely benefit from senior leadership or mentorship, guiding you through the intricacies of your role and providing valuable feedback. Peer collaboration within a team of colleagues also contributes significantly to honing your craft. If you’re in a smaller company, consider engaging with external communities like Creative Mornings or professional organizations such as AIGA, UXPA, IAI, or SIGCHI. These connections offer exposure to peers and diverse perspectives, enriching your early career development.
As you accumulate experience, continuous investment in core skills remains crucial. However, your focus should shift toward a blend of deeper subject matter expertise and a broader, more strategic perspective. Project work will still consume a significant portion of your time, but often at a more integrated, system-wide level. You’ll be involved in individual features while also understanding how they interconnect within a larger ecosystem to create cohesive products and tool suites.
From a skill development standpoint, I encourage my team members to identify opportunities to enhance collective performance – to make us all better, faster, and smarter. We call these “Give Back” projects. These initiatives can take various forms. Some team members develop internal training programs, evaluate and recommend new prototyping tools, or propose process improvements for design and delivery workflows. Others champion internal consistency, maintaining style guides or coordinating internal design reviews. We also have team members partnering with research and product teams on early-stage exploratory investigations, proactively identifying and articulating customer pain points. These “Give Back” projects are vital tools in my career, allowing for continuous learning and team improvement.
Upon reaching a senior leadership level, your focus expands significantly, emphasizing external influence and communication. This might involve shaping high-level company design strategy, participating in industry conferences, delivering keynote speeches, or publishing thought leadership content. For example, our Senior Manager coordinates our design “brand” touchpoints across various platforms, including Medium, Dribbble, Vimeo, our Groupon Design Union site, and our Twitter presence. These broader influence activities become key tools in my career at a senior level.
Key Lesson: Start by focusing on yourself – your core skills and capabilities. Then, progressively expand your impact and influence over time. This circle framework is one of the most valuable tools in my career for visualizing and planning professional growth.
The Effort Allocation Rectangle: Individual Goals
The rectangle framework helps visualize how to allocate your time and energy across different types of work. While specific allocations will vary depending on your role and seniority, the underlying structure remains relevant for everyone on a team. Goals are structured around three core themes:
- Project Work (~60% of effort): Directly tied to Product OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). This is the core of your role, contributing to company-wide goals.
- Give-back Work (10–30% of effort): Linked to Design Team OKRs. These efforts contribute to the team’s overall improvement and knowledge sharing.
- Personal Development Efforts (10–30% of effort): Aligned with ongoing career conversations and aspirations. This dedicated time fosters skill enhancement and long-term career growth.
I find this framework particularly effective because it achieves three crucial objectives:
- Strategic Time Allocation: It compels you to think beyond the immediate demands of daily projects and consider how your time is distributed across different areas of professional growth.
- Manager Alignment: It facilitates alignment with your manager on a longer-term career development plan, ensuring both of you are on the same page regarding your growth trajectory.
- Dedicated Development Time: It provides explicit permission and accountability to invest time and effort in non-project-specific activities. This is especially critical for skill-building tasks that often get deprioritized when project deadlines loom. This structured allocation of effort is one of the most practical tools in my career for managing time effectively and ensuring balanced professional development.
Key Lesson: By proactively setting goals and aligning them with your manager, you can more effectively carve out time to invest in both your team and yourself. Adopt a long-term perspective on your career, recognizing that flexibility varies across different periods. Be mindful of the “all project work, all the time” trap, which can hinder long-term growth.
The Eisenhower Matrix Square: Prioritization
We are constantly bombarded with tasks vying for our immediate attention. In the midst of this influx, it can be challenging to discern the true impact of each effort. The Eisenhower Matrix, also known as the Urgent-Important Matrix, is a powerful tool for effective prioritization. It helps categorize tasks based on their urgency and importance.
The matrix distinguishes between:
- Important: Tasks that contribute to your long-term goals and values. Importance remains constant regardless of deadlines.
- Urgent: Tasks with time-sensitive deadlines or immediate consequences. Urgency is time-bound and diminishes once the deadline passes.
The Eisenhower Matrix guides action based on these categories:
- Quadrant 1 (Urgent & Important): These are critical tasks that require immediate attention. Do these tasks immediately and personally.
- Quadrant 2 (Not Urgent & Important): These are strategic tasks crucial for long-term success. Schedule these tasks with a due date and do them personally.
- Quadrant 3 (Urgent & Not Important): These tasks often involve distractions or requests from others that don’t align with your priorities. Delegate these tasks if possible; otherwise, fit them in as time permits.
- Quadrant 4 (Not Urgent & Not Important): These are time-wasting activities that should be eliminated. Drop these tasks.
Often, others may present their “Quadrant 1” or “Quadrant 2” requests to you, accompanied by social pressure to prioritize them. However, their urgency doesn’t automatically translate to your urgency. The most effective approach is to be transparent about your own prioritization framework and communicate clearly when they can expect a response. Especially early in your career, when you are focused on building core skills (“inner Circle”), leverage your leadership to help prioritize your workload and deflect tasks that fall outside your immediate sphere of impact. Mastering the Eisenhower Matrix is one of the most impactful tools in my career for managing workload and focusing on what truly matters.
Key Lesson: Clearly differentiate between urgent and important tasks. Focus your energy on activities that are truly important for your goals. Communicate honestly with colleagues if you cannot immediately address their requests. Utilize leadership support to prioritize effectively and manage workload.
The Alignment Triangle: Achieving Shared Understanding
Based on work with Frank Siccone
We all encounter “that one project” – the one where you and a key stakeholder seem perpetually at odds. Every decision becomes a point of contention, leading to frustration and stalled progress.
The Alignment Triangle provides a pathway to navigate these challenging situations and foster collaboration. When disagreements arise regarding the how of a project – the tactics, design choices, or specific implementation details – it often stems from a lack of shared understanding at a deeper level. Tactics are the day-to-day decisions: Color A versus Color B? Which icon is most appropriate? Standard pattern or custom solution? These are frequent sources of conflict.
Resolving tactical disagreements requires achieving alignment on a shared understanding of the project’s objectives – the what. Objectives define the core solution to a specific problem or need. If you believe a product’s primary objective is to streamline user registration, while a colleague believes it’s to be visually striking and mobile-first, the tactical disagreements are symptomatic of a deeper misalignment. Once both parties agree on the core objectives, conversations about the how – the tactics – become much more productive and straightforward.
If consensus on project objectives remains elusive, elevate the conversation to the mission level – the why behind the project. While mission statements can sometimes feel abstract, engaging in a genuine discussion about the fundamental need for the work can yield significant benefits. Establishing a common understanding of the project’s purpose creates a shared foundation upon which objectives and tactics can be more easily developed and agreed upon.
Finally, if even mission alignment proves difficult, step back further to the vision level – the overarching company vision and the fundamental reason for the organization’s existence. Connecting the project back to the broader organizational vision can provide crucial context and shared purpose, facilitating alignment at all levels. This hierarchical approach – starting with tactics and ascending to objectives, mission, and vision – is one of the most effective communication tools in my career for resolving conflict and fostering collaboration.
Key Lesson: When project execution disagreements arise (how), ascend the triangle – to what (objectives) and then to why (mission) – until you find a point of shared understanding. Use this shared foundation to guide tactical decisions that work for everyone involved.
A career unfolds over decades, and work constitutes a significant portion of our lives. These four frameworks – the Circle, Rectangle, Square, and Triangle – provide a concise, visual shorthand for you, your team, or your manager to engage in deeper, more meaningful conversations about your roles and projects. Ultimately, the goal is to connect daily work to the larger question of “What do I want to be when I grow up?” These tools in my career have been instrumental in shaping my professional journey and the journeys of those I’ve worked with.
Andrew Sandler is the Director of Product Design for the Groupon Merchant experience.
Originally posted on our Groupon Design Union blog on Medium
