The quiet harvest: a simple practice to ground your next career move

When we are on the verge of a new professional chapter, the lack of certainty often sends our minds spinning straight into the future, frantically trying to map out exactly where we are heading next.

However, this future-tripping can lead us to pivot from a place of anxiety rather than a solid foundation.

To build a foundation that can hold both the life you are living today and the one you envision for tomorrow, you first need to integrate your most recent chapter. All the experiences, lessons, and skills you’ve gained need time to land. In a way, you have to collect the harvest before you can venture out and sow the seeds for your next cycle of growth.

What is the "quiet harvest"?

What does it actually mean to collect the harvest professionally? We often immediately think of external markers: a glowing performance assessment, the hit KPIs, an extended contract, a pay raise, or the next rung on the career ladder.

Sometimes, though, the harvest is a quieter one.

It is the intentional step back to consciously look at all you have done and the capabilities you have acquired along the way. From my perspective, this internal step is the far more powerful one. It is how we integrate our experiences and develop a true, felt sense of achievement.

I often encourage myself, my coachees and mentees to practice explicitly naming these newly built skills. This grounds you in who you have actually become. And trust me, once you can clearly recognize a capability in yourself, you naturally start opening doors to new opportunities simply because you are finally able to see them.

From task to true skill: How it works

So, how do I actually go about this? I look at the practical tasks I have completed and translate them into the wider skill sets they represent.

Here are a few examples from my current placement at C40 Cities:

• The task: Grant budget management, resource & task allocation across project partners, and process setup.

• The translation: Structured organization & complex project management.

• The task: onboarding new and existing staff within a project, regular check-ins within the wider team, sub-teams and individual staff to allow for guidance without micro-managing, engage in mentorship program.

• The translation: People leadership, empowerment & coaching.

And because growth happens everywhere, here is an example from my personal life:

• The task: traveled with my own surfboard to Sri Lanka, scouted locations, and managed to find waves that were challenging yet manageable.

• The translation: Independent free surfer 🏄‍♀️

How to give this practice a go

If you want to anchor your own foundation before your next move, try this:

• Do it with pen and paper: There is something grounding about physically writing it out.

• Try it yourself before asking the bots: If you struggle to translate your tasks into wider categories, you can use AI to support you. Beware, though: the insights you derive yourself will be much more powerful and memorable (speaking from experience!). So really give it a try before outsourcing your brain to Chatty.

• Borrow a sounding board: Do this with someone else who can hold the space for you while you explore your inner landscape.

A gentle reminder

Now, you might be thinking, "Well, by that logic, I can make a high-level professional skill out of every little thing I do - from cleaning the car to submitting my travel expenses!"

That isn't quite the point, and don't worry, life will provide plenty of moments to keep you humble 😉

But for all of us who have a tendency to make ourselves small rather than shining brightly in the middle of our careers, this is your invitation to finally tap yourself on the shoulder. Allow yourself to actually bear the fruits of your effort, engagement, and motivation.

Ready to collect your harvest?