Charting A Course.

My friend Maria is a dynamo. When she’s not serving organic meals, whipping up gorgeous curtains, or running many, many miles, she is plotting her triumphant return to the workforce.

Like me, Maria plans to go back to work when her youngest child is in school full-time, but she isn’t sure what path to pursue. With so many ideas buzzing in her head, she decided to corral them into a single chart to help her focus.

Maria listed her passions (such as child nutrition), skill sets (I know she’s a marketing phenom), and lifestyle requirements (home from work when school ends). She keeps this document on her computer desktop and modifies it as the thoughts come. Slowly but surely, she is creating a vision for her ideal job.

I’ve started a “focus chart” as well. Mine contains all my half-baked business ideas alongside my skills and wants. So far it’s not pointing in any coherent direction. But I’m hoping that if I keep at it, my focus chart will live up to its name.

-Michele Golden, The Reluctant Momtrepreneur