5 Ways You’re Wrecking Your Career

No career is bulletproof. It doesn’t matter if you’re the boss or the intern, it’s easy to fall off the right track and jeopardize your position by making poor decisions.

You might be here one day, gone the next. It happens all the time. But there are good reasons why it happens.

Fortunately for all of us, career breakers come on slow and have little to do with day-to-day accountability. More often then not, a real career breaker will start off with a serious slump and get worse over time. It might slip by unnoticed for weeks, even months before you realize something’s wrong. These are five signs you might be setting yourself up for long-term disappointment, frustration and negativity:

1. You’re rusty:You let your skills dry up and now you are outmoded by the new guy or a flashy piece of tech. Continuous learning used to be a way of life, but recently you’ve settled into quiet redundancy.
2. You’re too comfortable: You assume you’re invincible. You think things will stay the same (and try to keep them that way). You shun creative criticism and never challenge yourself with new ideas. The longer you stay at a company, the more likely you are to succumb to this.
3. You’re burnt out: Just thinking about your job fatigues you – physically and intellectually. CareerBuilder just performed a survey that looked at employee’s stress levels. The results confirmed that 77 percent of workers say they are sometimes or always burned out in their jobs. So most people are burned out – chances are you are too.
4. You never take any credit: You forget to keep track of your accomplishments. It seems like you don’t care and your outdated resume shows it.
5. You take all the credit:You’re not a team player anymore.You act as if you’re job owes you something and you play the bad guy around your peers.

If any of these symptoms sound like you, then it might be time for some serious self-reflection. Sometimes the best move is to surround yourself with a fresh environment or even a complete career change.

If one or two reasons sound like you, it might be time to do something a little different (take a class, take a vacation, ask for a different assignment, etc…) If three or more sound like you, it’s time for either a new job or a new career – polish off that resume, buy a new suit, and start hitting the interview circuit proactively.