How can I manage my career?
Key Learnings
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Setting a clear and precise objective helps you to concentrate your efforts and gets you heading in the right direction.
Divide your goals by time slots: (a) lifetime goals; (b) career goals; (c) season goals.
By making better use of your time, you can achieve your goals much more easily.
Prioritise tasks based on importance and urgency and remove non-essential activities.
Making good choices is crucial for success as much of your earning potential is related to your reputation on and off-the-court.
Only use the advice of others to inform your decision-making process – don’t rely on it as the sole basis for your final decision. You are ultimately responsible for the decisions you make.
Networking is the art of building alliances and can help you get a job, find a sponsor, make new friends, get new ideas, etc.
Preparing for your professional life after basketball is just as important as your current career on-the-court.
During your basketball career, you can invest in your development through part-time education.

Types of goals

You can set goals for almost everything. The best is to divide them by time slots:

  • Season goals (Short-Term)
    Your short-term goals, or seasonal goals, should help you achieve your career goals. For example, to play for your National Team you may need to be the best defensive player of the season, improve your shooting percentages, etc. Create a 1-year plan, 6-month plan, 1-month plan, and even 1-week plan to progressively achieving smaller goals. It might be useful to create a daily To-Do List of things that you should do today to improve and reach that season goal.
  • Career goals (Mid-Term)
    These could include your whole career, or a shorter period (e.g. 5 years). It could be things such as playing for your National Team, for a certain club or league, being the best shooter, or becoming the player with most 3-pointers in the history. Whatever career goal you set, make sure to work towards it.
  • Lifetime goals (Long-Term)
    What would you like to achieve in life? Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.

 

Consider the following categories:

    • Career (post basketball): what would you like to be after playing basketball? Would you need to have educational background to achieve it? What steps should you take today to achieve that job tomorrow?
    • Financial: how much do you want to earn and by what stage? Try to relate it to “Career”.
    • Education: is there any knowledge that you would like to acquire in life?
    • Family: do you want to be a parent? By which age? How do you want to be seen by your children?
    • Physical: how do you want to look like at age 60? How can you achieve that goal?…