Job productivity vs career productivity

This is a secret nobody told you, yet it can actually guide your career most strategically.

It's about productivity. Usually, it refers to "job productivity" and has to do with how much output you can generate within an hour.

But job productivity has little to do with career productivity. Job productivity helps to build the wealth of your employer (or shareholders, if it's a publicly traded company).

Career productivity is measured differently. It could be the number of connections you have in your industry, or the number of postings you wrote on your career blog, or the quality of the relationship you have with your headhunter. Notice that these career productivity metrics are of no interest whatsoever to your employer.

Successful people usually monitor their career productivity very carefully. If they are confident, they will even ask their employer to provide tools and resources that will improve their career productivity.