Dan Richards is a serial founder and former public company CEO, and an award-winning member of the marketing faculty at the Rotman School of Management, where he oversees the credit course associated with MBA student internships.
As we enter the new year, many will opt for resolutions around exercise, diet and weight loss, while others will resolve to read more or to control the time fixated on their phones. If you follow through on them, all of these resolutions can pay dividends.
But if your goal is to progress on the job, there’s one resolution that can help fuel your career progress more than any other – and that’s to spend 15 minutes each week on a learning journal that highlights what you learned in the past seven days.
Early in your career, you have three primary goals:
- Build your reputation as a strong contributor by showing initiative and being reliable in delivering work on time and to a high standard
- Expand your network both inside and outside your organization
- Maximize how much you learn.
Peter Drucker, considered the father of modern management, wrote “Learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change.” While continuing to learn will be important throughout your career, in the early stages it’s among your top goals. The learning journal, which focuses on the week that was and sets learning goals for the week ahead, is one way to make that happen.
Setting learning goals
To maximize learning, you can’t leave it to chance – you need to be proactive in pinpointing learning priorities. This process starts at the beginning of the year by setting learning goals for the coming 12 months.
As an example, late last year I met with a former student who joined a leading consulting firm in the fall of 2021 so was just past her second anniversary. Here were her learning goals for this past year:
- Deepen my understanding of the company’s goals and my knowledge of its key competitors
- Improve my proficiency with Excel and the programming language Python
- Develop my skills in presenting
- Spend 10 minutes each morning with a daily newsletter on artificial intelligence to keep me abreast of important developments in this area.
Schedule a weekly check in
Once you’ve set your goals, identify 15 minutes a week to track progress and plan your learning for the week ahead. After all, making resolutions without a plan to implement them is like resolving to read two books a month and stopping at clicking buy on Amazon. The contents of those books won’t make it from the night table by osmosis. You need to carve out time for reading.
If you’re committed to learning, go to your weekly calendar and block off 15 minutes at the same time each week. That time block can take place at the end of the week on Friday afternoon on in advance of the coming week on Sunday evening or early Monday morning.
Making your learning journal happen
Use an annual, quarterly, monthly and weekly cadence:
- At the start of the year:
Set aside 30 minutes to identify the learning goals that will have the biggest impact on your career. As part of that you could ask your manager for thoughts about the key areas for learning that they would focus on in your situation.
With your 12 month learning goals in mind, book 30 minutes at the start of each quarter. During that time, identify your progress in achieving your learning goals and highlight the goals to focus on in the next 90 days.
At the start of each month, look back through your learning journal, focusing on what you learned. Doing that will keep the progress you’re making top of mind and help fuel your motivation to continue with this exercise.
When you sit down each week with your learning journal, go through your calendar to identify what you learned in the past seven days. Be as specific as possible. Then, using your quarterly learning goals as a framework, write down one or two things you want to learn in the coming week.
I recently sat down with the former student who I met with last year. She shared the positive impact of taking time each week to review what she’d learned in the past seven days and setting learning goals for the week ahead. As a result, she’d make good progress on all her learning goals and was working on setting new ones for 2025.
This weekly commitment of 15 minutes can be the single most powerful investment you make to advance your career. For more on accelerating your learning journey, read Learning to Learn and Making Learning a Part of Everyday Work.
This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about the world of work. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab and guidelines for how to contribute to the column here.
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