10 Common Ways You Distort Your Career

career distortions

We’ve all heard that the internet—and social media especially—have led to procrastination. It just keeps getting easier to waste time each and every day. And, even worse, the advent of Klout and other ways to measure online influence have given rise to this new breed of hyperactive social networkers and self-proclaimed marketers who, despite posting hundreds of times a day in hopes of gaming some meaningless score, create very little and maybe even nothing at all of value. But who am I to judge how one person lives his life? Some people like to listen or share, while others look to create or write.

The problem is that reality for many has become blurred.

career distortions

So in case you happen to be one of these people, hopefully this can set you straight before you embarrass yourself in that next job interview!

The Blogger

Just because you post a few funny cat pics on Tumblr doesn’t make you a blogger. Actual bloggers don’t really do it on Tumblr, but rather they use the service as an extension of their self-hosted blog’s social network. Also, real bloggers write about informative and relevant things at least once in a while, which isn’t the same as posting silly photos all day on social networks!

The Musician

Since the invention of YouTube, millions of people have proclaimed themselves to be musicians. I know you’ve seen some painful videos by now from one of your buddies butchering some poor guitar!

The Artist

It’s great that you love art, but selling a bracelet on Etsy a few years ago doesn’t make you an artist . To be an artist, you need to regularly create art.

The Entrepreneur

So you’ve come up with an idea for the next Facebook, huh? Good. Now make the next Facebook a reality. Many have ventured into the shark infested waters of creating a startup, but most never return. 95% of startups fail within the first 5 years. Entrepreneurs are the 5% who’ve actually made it to the other side.

The Writer

If you’d rather browse the internet all day at Starbucks than write, you might as well just become a barista. Just because you’ve been scribbling away on that first novel the last couple of years doesn’t make you a writer either. Writers publish!

The Marketer

So you’ve finally heard about Facebook and Twitter and started an account? Congratulations! But somehow two days later you’re already a social media superhero and maverick marketeer, or at least you are in your bio.

The Webmaster

Even though your 3-page site is still standing from 2009 on page 20 of relevant Google searches, you’re not exactly a master of the web and “SEO Ninja” quite yet.

The Freelancer

Just because you’ve been free from any real employment for the last several years, doesn’t mean you really freelance. Freelancers actually have clients that pay them to do things!

The Day Trader

Are you working with over 25K in the market? If not, then what you’re doing isn’t actually day trading but rather burning up your portfolio funds on transaction fees every time some talking head on CNBC puts out a buy signal (just a little too late). Besides the SEC has rules in place for day trading, which limits your transactions each day if working with less than 25K equity in the market.

The Photographer

And, most importantly, posting pictures of every meal you eat and sunset you watch on Instagram doesn’t make you a photographer! Any fool with a smartphone these days can snap a photo. Knowing the finer details about cameras, angles and lighting would help if you’re serious about a career in photography.

If you’d like to take the next step in advancing your career, the bottom line is stop talking about what you do and start actually doing it!

comic via poorlydrawnlines

Daniel Zeevi

By Daniel Zeevi

Daniel is a social network architect, web developer, infographic designer, writer, speaker and founder of DashBurst. Full-time futurist and part-time content curator, always on the hunt for disruptive new technology, creative art and web humor.

5 comments

  1. Wonders if some number among the examples given might move from distorted career identification to actual producers if the tools and systems used to produce said content where constructed in such a way as to remove as many barriers to production as possible?
    On second thought that might simply unleash a avalanche of poor quality content upon the world?(Wait has this happend already?)
    lol:)

  2. Just because I write a comment here and there, it doesn’t mean that I’m a top commenter from some TV channel or radio station 🙂

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