Earlier this month in a post called What Matters Most, I wrote about the importance of people understanding and acting upon their values to achieve career success and satisfaction. This has been brilliantly exemplified this week by Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan winning this year’s Man Booker Prize  for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North.  The novel took 12 years to write which Flanagan says he was driven to complete:

 My father was a Japanese prisoner of war. He was on the Death Railway. And I guess I grew up, as did my five siblings, as children of the Death Railway. And we carried in consequence many incommunicable things. 

And I realised at a certain point if I was to continue writing, I would have to write this book. I don’t think I particularly wanted to write it but I understood it was the book I had to write in order to keep on writing.

I wrote five different novels over 12 years. Each one was a failure, and then I realised that my father was growing old and frail, and for no logical reason it mattered to me to finish the book before he died.

Source: ABC AM

Your particular career values provide the compass to guide your career choice and direction and they are important to check in on now and again. This is why today I am excited to launch the Career Values Card Sort – a quick, fun and easy activity to help you understand your values. CareerActually is happy to make this freely-accessible for anyone to use and apply to their careers at any time.

Click here to get started.  I will be excited to hear your feedback!

Until next time … go well

Carole