A few weeks ago I asked my daughter to take the car she drives all over town to get the tires rotated. This is a simple procedure, and helpful to lengthen the life of tires… and I’m now bought into the idea that we need to do this. I’m also bought into the idea that she should do it, and learn about vehicle maintenance by doing it.
So, she comes back to me and says that the tire tech said the two front tires needed to be changed, and that they they were running thin… I was kind of ticked (not at her) because these are less than a year old. Even though they have a warranty that should cover them for years, I’m sure the tire people would say “well, sorry, but the alignment is off, and you haven’t rotated them lately… so it’s really all on you.”
I was not excited about spending a couple hundred dollars to get new tires. I was not excited about the time it would take to do this (I didn’t trust the salespeople with my daughter, who has never bought tires before). And frankly, I just wasn’t finding the time to get this task done. The car doesn’t spend much time in the garage, and I have been very busy lately.
Last week my wife called me from school, where she was mentoring a class, and my daughter had come for a class… she said that the front tire was leaking air pretty bad. I knew the time had finally come, and I had to table what I was doing and get the front tires replaced.
The thing is, this was admittedly stupid.
I should have taken care of this before… my daughter drives on the highway every evening to go to stuff, and if she had problems on the highway, it would have likely been a blow-out. My mechanic told me that too many accidents are a result of bald tires that blow-out. And the anguish and cost could be much worse than $200.
Long story short, I left work, took care of the tires while they were in school, and we’re all good.
Driving home I was thinking about how I didn’t make the time to fix the tires… there really was just not a good time to do it for me. Just like when we have a job, and we put of career management stuff because we are too busy working, or resting from our work. We neglect it. The timing just doesn’t seem good enough.
And then, if you are like me, you are told that there is no more job, and all you have is time. And then you wish that you would have addressed it earlier… but you were “too busy.”
Let me invite you to rethink what job security is. It might have been a degree and a work ethic back in the 1990’s, but today it is the strength of your network (which is not how big your LinkedIn network is), and what people understand about you.
You can work on that, right now. Today. And tomorrow. And the next day. A little bit every day, whether you are in transition or not.
We were lucky to have avoided a blow-out on the highway. Work on your network and brand, and you might avoid a blow-out in your career.