The third and final article in the series is called Picture The Ideal First Month on Your Next Job. If you complete all three exercises, you'll have a good blueprint or strategic vision for your future. Look here for instructions about how to complete this three-part exercise.

How Is A Career Like A Custom Home?
Building an ideal career is like building a custom home, one you've designed that fits you perfectly. Almost everyone who builds a custom home is wild about it. They love the style, size, layout, and interior finishes.

Likewise, in the perfect career you like everything involved: the company, product line, people, customers, and location. Naturally, this is only an ideal. Few homes or careers achieve 100% perfection. But many are 95% perfect, and that's much better than a 40% fit. The first and most important step in planning your career is to create a blueprint of what the ideal looks like.

Too narrow a job

M&A job with no direct reports

Self-confident

Knowledgeable

Uniform, fair standards

Cold calls or high rejection

Employment Contract

Sabbatical after five years

Major Medical Equal to Current Policy

As you see, this list is fanciful, not 100% realistic. To say "I want to invent the rules as I go" is a stretch. No job gives 100% freedom to invent one's own path-not even self-employment. But it's the concept that's important. What the author is saying is that she wants more freedom rather than less. And corporations vary widely in their ability to tolerate mavericks. This person may belong in a small, entrepreneurial, free-wheeling company.

Must-haves are very important. They are absolute requirements. While you may give up some of your "wants," must-haves are essential and cannot be compromised.

Think about column five: "Things that would be FUN, but possibly frivolous." This is where your creativity should kick in. Don't let this "Career Decision Matrix" become boring, or one-dimensional. Pick some fun stuff. Go ahead, give yourself a raise, or high-speed Internet access, a screamer-of-a-laptop, a health club membership, a window view of the ocean, or frequent international travel.

It's important to make every entry specific, not vague. "WANT more time with my children" is not as useful as "WANT 2 hours per week to play softball with teenage son." "$85,000 per year" is better than "a high salary." Avoid phrases like, "I DON'T WANT a long commute." Instead, say "DON'T WANT to drive more than 30 minutes each way." Think of the Architect and the Custom Home analogy: "Lots of windows," is much less useful than "four 3x4' arched windows in the den."

You'll notice that some entries are one word, others are lengthy phrases. Be spontaneous. Write whatever comes to mind without judging or second-guessing yourself, even if some entries seem stupid, odd, or inconsistent. Attempt to turn off your self-critic.

This is not a 15-minute project. It's a refrigerator exercise, one you tape onto the refrigerator and revisit from time to time, over the course of several days or weeks. This process is important because it helps you focus. It's also important while interviewing, because job opportunities tend to look like apples, oranges, and bananas-very different. That's what sometimes makes choosing the best of several offers so hard. Accepting one offer and rejecting the rest can be one of the most painful experiences of a career. Because what if you choose wrong?