Any entrepreneur (and any expert on cognition / learning) will tell you that practical knowledge is best developed by doing, not just thinking or planning.
For careers, too, you don’t know what the best plan is until you try.
The Career Planning Process encompasses the stages involved in discovering a career path, including self-assessment, research, experimentation, decision making, job searching, and accepting a job offer. Step 1: Self-Assessment. Careful evaluation of your individual strengths, lifestyle preferences, passions, work style, and financial needs is a vital and often overlooked step in planning your various potential career paths.
Brainstorm possible job options and investigate them thoroughly.
Learn about the descriptions and qualifications for various positions, typical entry points and advancement opportunities, satisfactions, frustrations, and other important facts.
Speak with as many people as possible that are involved in work that is of interest to you to get an insider’s perspective.
Before we begin discussing how to plan a successful retirement, it's important to understand why people need to take retirement into their own hands in the first place. This may seem like a trivial question, but you might be surprised to learn that the key components of retirement planning run contrary to popular belief about the best way to save for the future.