We spend over 2000 hours a year in the office and in our workplaces. That’s almost a third of our lifetime!

With this much time being spent in our work life; it’s only fair that the career we spend so much time building flourishes and blossom.

However, despite all the work put in and all the hours spent, a few mistakes and habits can easily wreck your career or even put an end to it.

Today we look at some of these career-ending habits.

Career-ending habits to drop now

Everyone wishes to grow in their career. Most of us even put career advancement as the first resolution when setting New Year’s resolutions.

Building a career takes time and effort. However, all of that can go to waste courtesy of a few bad habits and mistakes in your career.

Some of these habits may be subconscious and you might not even be aware of them, while others may be conscious and full-on intentional.

Luckily, most of these habits can be corrected and hopefully your career can be saved.

Without much further ado, here are 10 career-ending habits to drop to move your career ahead in 2023.

1. Procrastination

Procrastination can have a detrimental effect on your career if left unchecked.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of putting things off until the last minute. The consequences, however, can be severe.

Procrastination can easily lead to missed deadlines, which can damage your reputation as a reliable employee.

It becomes difficult for others to trust you to deliver on your commitments when you’re consistently turning in work late. This may harm your relationship with coworkers and managers, and make it harder to be considered for new projects or promotions.

Procrastination also leads to lower quality work as you’re always rushing to complete a task at the last minute. You may not have the time to give your work the attention it needs.

This can harm your reputation as a competent employee, and impact the quality of work that your team produces.

So, how can you overcome procrastination? To overcome procrastination, break down large tasks into small and achievable activities.

You may also want to eliminate distractions such as your phone while working. Lastly, use a timer and ensure you clock maximum hours on a task to avoid pushing it forward.

2. Showing up late

Showing up late is a sure way to derail your career growth. Not only does it create a bad impression with your colleagues and supervisors, but it can also lead to missed opportunities and lost productivity.

Being consistently late sends the message that you don’t value other people’s time. Your colleagues and supervisors may view you as unreliable and unprofessional.

This has the potential of damaging your relationships with your colleagues and superiors and makes it difficult to collaborate or receive support in the future.

Being late can lead to missed opportunities. If you’re consistently late for meetings, you may miss important information or not be able to contribute fully. You may also miss out on opportunities for promotions, raises, or new projects because you’re not seen as a reliable team member.

3. Rushing Decisions

Rushing decisions can have a detrimental effect on your career. Making hasty decisions without fully considering the potential consequences can put your professional development and advancement at risk.

Rushing decisions can easily lead you to making career ending mistakes. You are more likely to overlook important details or fail to consider all of the relevant factors when you rush decisions.

This can lead to errors or oversights that can damage your professional reputation and impede your progress.

4. A negative attitude

Pessimism can be a career killer. When you approach your work with a negative attitude, it can be hard for others to want to work with you.

Pessimism makes it harder to build relationships with others, which can be essential for career success. A negative attitude can be contagious, and you might occasionally be axed out due to your persistent negative attitude.

Another way that pessimism can ruin a career is by causing you to miss out on opportunities.

When you are constantly looking at the negative side of things, it can be hard to see the positive. This can make it difficult to spot opportunities that might be right in front of you.

5. Perfectionism

As contrary as it may sound, perfectionism may be among the habits that ruin your career. Perfectionism is all about finesse. Finesse requires time and resources which might not be available to all organizations.

Sure, we should all strive to do our best and deliver optimally. However, people aiming for perfect always tend to spend more time on projects. They are in turn less productive and always end up missing deadlines. And that could be a problem when building your career.

6. Being Controlling

This is among the subconscious habits that ruin your career.

Some people are naturally controlling. The leader instinct in them is to give instructions on how processes should flow.

While this is admirable, some people might perceive it as micromanagement and therefore disengage. This then creates a divided team.

7. Being Defensive

Being defensive is one of the sure ways of ruining your career.

Being defensive makes you closed off to feedback and criticism. This prevents you from learning and growing in your career. It also prevents you from receiving valuable guidance from your superiors.

Secondly, being defensive makes you come across as arrogant or unwilling to take responsibility for your actions.

This can damage your professional reputation and make it difficult for you to build relationships with colleagues and clients.

Lastly, being defensive creates a toxic work environment. Defensive people more likely to become argumentative or combative when confronted with criticism or feedback.

This can lead to conflicts and tension in the workplace, which can affect the morale and productivity of everyone involved.

8. Blame Shifting

Blame shifting is the act of deflecting responsibility for mistakes or failures onto others.

While it may seem like a harmless way to avoid negative consequences in the short term, it can be detrimental to your career in the long run.

Blame shifting is a sure way to damage your reputation. It portrays you as unreliable and untrustworthy. You cannot take a bullet for the team.

This can make it difficult for you to form strong relationships with colleagues and managers, which can limit your opportunities for advancement.

Blame shifting also ruins a career is by creating a toxic work environment. It creates a culture of mistrust and finger-pointing. This can make it difficult for team members to work together effectively and can lead to a decline in productivity.

Finally, it may be difficult to secure another job if you are known to always shift blames and create a toxic work environment.

9. Burning Bridges

This is the last nail on your career coffin. Burning bridges is among the top habits that ruin your career.

Networking with industry players is a sure way of advancing your career. You need to continually build relationships with friends in the industry to grow your career.

This makes it easy for you to build your career as you’re always in the ecosystem. You’re in the loop! It’s also easy for you to get new opportunities should you be in need.

To succeed in your career in 2023 and beyond, you must stop the habit of burning bridges and start building long lasting relationships with your colleagues in the industry.

10. Forgetting Self

Most people tend to focus more on building their careers and forget themselves. It is important to attain a proper life-work balance while building your career.

You don’t want to build your career on the expense of your mental health and wellbeing. Ensure you strike a balance in it all. That great career means nothing if you’re not in a stable mental state.

Wrap Up

Everyone wants to build a great career! We will do all we can to succeed in our careers. However, all you’ve built can easily come down crumbling due to some habits.

I hope this article revealed to you some of the subconscious and conscious habits that ruin your career and you know exactly where to change.

Want to accelerate your even career further? We can help with that. We offer expertly curated courses to help you acquire in-demand skills and position yourself as a resource. Check out our application section and let’s get started on building that career!