Career Sustainability: 3 Essential Pillars

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Career Development  

Some time back I wrote about 4 Ways Your PM Career Sustainability Can Go Wrong. In the article, I introduce the concept of career sustainability and the importance of running as if you were in a marathon versus a sprint. The article focused on four fictional but realistic characters:

1. The Staunch Waterfall Advocate (Stan)
2. The 24/7 PM (Trish)
3. The CEO (Jerry)
4. The Shrewd Salesperson (Alex)

Each of the characters had some successes, but also had some blind spots that impacted their sustainability in their respective jobs:

• Stan with sustainable skills
• Trish with sustainable lifestyle
• Jerry with sustainable relationships
• Alex with sustainable stewardship

I’m a strong advocate of career sustainability. I believe that skills, lifestyle, relationships, and stewardship are key drivers to help you as a professional be more consistently effective and content in your work and play lives. To that end, what follows is a four-part series focused on each driver:

1. Sustainable Skills
2. Sustainable Lifestyle
3. Sustainable Relationships
4. Sustainable Stewardship

Let’s kick things off with the first driver.

Sustainable Skills
I started playing the drums in the fourth grade. Each week, I went to my group lesson with Mr. Crumrine carrying my sticks, drum pad, and Alfred’s Drum Method Book for Beginners.

We would work on the rudiments&…

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