Continuing with Continuing Professional Development
Since I left library school over 2 months ago I’ve become stuck in a rut of bad time management, disappearing motivation and suffered a lack of ideas and inspiration which have impacted on my attempts (or severe lack of attempts) at continuing professional development.
I can reel off many excuses to explain my slack attitude…
- New job – I’m now 7 weeks into my new job, it’s been a stressful, exhausting but really good fun. I’m finally starting to settle in and get used to the routine but the long days and lack of lazy days is taking its toll. I had planned to get lots of blogging and reading done in my lunch breaks, as I’ve done in other jobs but lunch time has turned into the time to be sociable in the canteen.
- New city – Moving to a new house, in a new city, with new housemates that were complete strangers from the internet has also been stressful and tiring. I’m finding I have less time in the evenings to concentrate on professional development as I’m trying to spend time with my housemates, which normally involves lounging in front of the tv.
- Too many weekends away – Once again my life follows the routine of work hard during the week and play hard over the weekend. This is not helpful for having spare time for professional development.
I can’t see any of the above changing any time soon so I need to find a way of ensuring I keep on top of blogs and current awareness and all that professional development jazz…otherwise before I know it 2012 will be here and I won’t have clue where my career is going, what is going on in the sector or what anyone else is doing.
So here is my continuing with continuing professional development to do list:
- Finish #cpd233. I’m not going to abandon ship because I started it and will finish it.
- Set aside one lunch break and one evening each week to read around the LIS literature and blog.
- Overhaul my CV and reflect on what new skills and knowledge have been gained from my current job.
- Come up with career goals and work towards achieving them.
- Set in motion the process for publishing an article from my dissertation now that I know I have a good enough mark to consider letting people read about my research.
I’m interested in how others who have long commutes to work (I walk 35-40 mins each way so can’t even get stuff done on the way!), busy social lives or mad housing situations manage to find time for continuing professional development?
Really interesting post: I’ve gone through phases of feeling the same since finishing library school. I think cpd23 helped me to some extent as it was a scheduled weekly project so I felt I *had* to do it. Also I joined the Career Development Group committee in London, which has defined meetings and events so it’s easier to do in some respects than general reading.
I try and read stuff at lunchtime as we don’t have a canteen so I just sit at my desk. I like the idea of setting a time for cpd like a lunchtime or evening. It’s hard though – I want to keep up but I like spending time with my friends and I’m obsessed with going to the theatre which takes up most of my time!
Same here. I mainly use my lunch and tea breaks to catch up on stuff, but I am also allowed time during work to keep informed (as long as it doesn’t interfere with my work commitments) and was given time to do #cpd23. It might be worth bringing up in a one-to-one with your boss that you want to ensure that you know what’ s going on in the profession. They might be more open to giving you time to do just that than you think, as it benefits them to have a well-informed and networked colleague.
I had somehow become unsubscribed to your blog so I’ve only just read this, but it seems your situation is very similar to mine. I leave the house at 7am and get back at 7pm so in the evenings the last thing I want to do is sit down and blog, and even if I did want to I doubt I’d have the time. I tend to try and sneak in a few minutes here and there while at work reading about the big library issues on Google Reader, and I’ve decided that reading a professional publication such as The School Librarian is a legitimate use of my time so I make no excuses about reading that sort of thing during working hours.
I think your to-do list is very useful and it’s reminded me that I should update my CV before I forget what I’ve done in the first six weeks of my job. My next big thing is to find an event that I can feasibly attend and really get started on building my network of school librarians.
I’ve failed at ticking much off on my to do list so far…
I think I’m going to need to revert back to my library school ways and invest in a giant whiteboard for my room so the to do list is always visible when I’m home. It seems if I can’t physically see what I need to be getting done written down in front of me then I won’t ever get round to doing it.
Reading literature related to your work/sector is definitely a valuable use of any spare moments during the working day. I’m having a quiet day in the office today so will use the time to get some reading done to help build up my knowledge of the media sector.