Graduate Development Programs

Life After College: Get More From Your New Career

It is only natural when you are entering a new period of your life that you will encounter a clash of priorities. Your graduate position will impose new demands on your time will leave you asking “how could I possibly fit it all into my life?”

The initial buzz of meeting 200 new friends and a regular paycheque hitting my bank balance had me accepting every work related social invitation. Drinks after work, lunch with friends everyday, getting to know my departmental colleagues and working the occasional late all the while trying to maintain some semblance of normality in my personal life.

Of course new demands require significant changes to your life. After all beginning your career is a major moment in your life, so some adjusting is to be expected. Waking up each morning at a time when you would otherwise be coming home from a good night out will take some getting used to. Needless to say, those days will either be behind you or strictly confined to weekends.

Setting your priorities will help you sort out the necessary from the “nice to do”. Identify the activities that are important to your wellbeing and overall development, then allocate a time and place for them. Everything else can fit around these. If you need to make an exception then ensure it doesn’t permanently displace your routine.

Before I started my career, I used to workout from Monday – Thursday. This suited me because it allowed plenty of time for my part-time job on the weekend and socialising with friends.

When I started my career on the Graduate Program, I found it difficult to maintain this routine as I would often get home too late or be too tired to workout. So I shifted things around to days when I had greater flexibility to begin my gym routine on Friday evening and finished on Monday.

This allowed me to fit in 2 workouts anytime during the weekend without any difficulty. If work commitments compromised my ability to workout on Friday or Monday, then I had the rest of the week to make it up.

Work means different things to different people. For some, it provides a great deal of fulfilment in their lives and they’re quite happy to devote more time to it. For others, it’s simply a means to an end.

Most graduates have a healthy appetite for work and a strong work ethic, so a few late nights are acceptable to them if it ensures an opportunity to learn and help them advance their career prospects.

The culture in most companies is that you are hired to get the job done. Period! Whatever it takes, however long it takes; you get the job done. This will no doubt take up some late nights and depending on the nature of your work or project deadline, your weekends are not off limits either.

First of all, decide if this is an acceptable encroachment on your personal time.

Just remember that there are limits to everything and burning the candle at both ends will take its toll. No promotion, no amount of money is worth pursuing at the expense of your health. So by all means go out there and show them what you’ve got, just remember to recharge your batteries.

There are many aspects to maintaining a balanced life and the specific activities will vary for each person. As a graduate, you may want to test the boundaries of what you are able to handle in terms of workload and hours in the office. That’s fine, but don’t become a martyr. Nobody regrets not working enough on their deathbed.

A general approach that works for me is to fit in multiple non-work activities during the week covering the following lifestyle pillars:

-    Social: take the time to connect with those most important to you.
-    Intellectual: satisfy your curiosity. It could mean watching a documentary online, reading a book, article or learning something new.
-    Physical: take a walk, go to the gym, yoga, pilates, bike rides etc just get your heart rate up. Indoor rock climbing is a great socially inclusive and physical activity. Indoor team sports are also a great way to schedule something fun, social and physical into your week.
-    Emotional: take the time to develop your emotional wellbeing. Acknowledge how you felt during the week at certain key moments and ask yourself why?
-    Spiritual: this can mean many things to people. It can include re-connecting with your religious beliefs (if you hold any) to furthering your understanding of your place in your world.

It would be ideal to do something for each of these everyday, though this is not always practical. Just don’t let too much time pass before you get in tune.

In the next post, we will go through the core lifestyle pillars that will give you a competitive advantage and make the leap from the Graduate Program to the Career Fast Track. Make sure you don’t miss out! Remember to subscribe by clicking here.