There is a frustrating part about your career that nobody really explains to you early enough: most of the work you do today will not pay you back today. In fact, some of the most important things you do for your career may not show up for six months, a year, or even longer. That can make it incredibly difficult to know whether what you're doing is actually working.
You send the networking message, and nothing happens. You start writing online, and nobody seems to care. You take the class, learn the new skill, build the relationship, volunteer for the project, or spend time helping someone without asking for anything in return, and there is no immediate reward attached to any of it. There is no little notification that pops up and says, "Congratulations, this conversation will lead to a job offer 14 months from now."
That is the problem. Your career is filled with lagging indicators. We want immediate feedback because immediate feedback makes us feel like we're making progress. Salespeople can look at revenue. Athletes can look at the scoreboard. Businesses can look at their numbers. Careers are much messier. You can be doing everything right and still have very little evidence that any of it is working.
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Networking is probably the easiest example. Most people network when they need something, which is exactly when networking is the least effective. The better version happens months or years before you ever need the relationship. You meet someone, stay in touch, help them when you can, congratulate them when something goes well, and slowly build trust. Then one random Tuesday, they hear about an opportunity and think of you. From the outside, it looks like you got lucky. You know there were 27 little interactions before that moment.
Reputation works the same way. You don't build a great reputation by crushing one presentation or having one great quarter. You build it by showing up prepared over and over again. You answer the email. You follow through. You do what you said you were going to do. You help people. You handle difficult moments well. None of those things individually feel career-changing, but eventually people start saying your name in rooms you aren't sitting in.
Writing has probably taught me this lesson better than anything else. You can write something today that gets very little attention, and six months from now someone can find it, send it to somebody else, and suddenly it creates an opportunity you never expected. The same thing happens with a LinkedIn post, a podcast appearance, a presentation, or even a conversation you barely remember having. The work stays out there quietly doing its job long after you've moved on to something else.
This is also why people quit too early. They start doing the right things, don't see an immediate result, and assume the strategy isn't working. They stop reaching out. They stop learning. They stop writing. They stop building relationships. They stop putting themselves in rooms where something might happen. The irony is that they may have been much closer to the payoff than they realized.
Career momentum often looks incredibly boring while you're building it.
You have to get comfortable doing work that has no immediate applause attached to it. Read the book. Take the meeting. Send the message. Help the person. Learn the skill. Build the relationship. Share the idea. Keep doing those things even when there is no obvious reward sitting on the other side. Career momentum often looks incredibly boring while you're building it.
Then one day, things start happening all at once. Someone calls you about a role. Another person asks you to consult. Somebody you met two years ago introduces you to someone important. A piece of content opens a door. Suddenly it feels like your career changed overnight. It didn't. You are just finally seeing the results of work you started months or years ago. The best time to create the opportunities you'll want six months from now is today.