Are you ready for the Harvest?

August 31 is a day that signifies a number of things.  While it is the last day of August, it also signifies the ending of the summer and the beginning of the autumn, the fall, the last season of the year.  While I realize that Fall does not officially start until later in the month, I am mentally in the Fall mode now with the coming of September.

Autumn is one of my favorite times for a number of reasons,  One of the key reasons is the start of college football season, but there are a number of other non-sport related issues that take place during this season.  When our country was more of an agrarian-based economy, the fall signified the beginning of the harvest.  I never lived on a farm personally, but I grew up in an area where farms dominated the landscape.  My friends who grew up in farming families worked many hard and long hours during this season to bring in the harvest, the crops they had raised during the spring and summer of the year.  Some years the harvest was bountiful, others it was sparse.  Reasons for a bountiful harvest were controllable on some parts and not controllable on others.  Factors you could control or not control included the following:

I could list other factors, but I believe this helps paint the picture.

Your career and the success or failure of your career to advance is much like the harvest.  The seasons of your career differ, but they are sequential nonetheless and how you perform in one season has a direct influence on how another segment of your career is viewed.  Let’s view a few “career seasons” you may have and how they might affect your harvest:

What you harvest in one season is typically a direct result of how you prepared in the prior season.  To be more specific, what you do in your initial career will have a direct influence on your mid career and so on.

Stephen Covey used the term “Law of the Farm” to describe how to grow and learn.  If you want to succeed in the harvest, you need to prepare adequately in the seasons prior to this harvest.

How are you preparing today for the upcoming harvest?