The 15 Minute Career Rule, How Small Habits Build Career Capital

Issue #20: The simplest way to prepare for your next opportunity before you need it

Here’s the rule that changed how I think about career growth: spend at least 15 minutes each day doing something that your current job does not require, but your future career will reward.

Most people only start thinking seriously about their careers when they need a new job, a promotion, a higher salary or an escape route. Only then do they start to build the skills, relationships, evidence and confidence that they should’ve starter much earlier. All the things that not only increase the chances of landing a job you genuinely want, but the things that allow you to have options.

I’m making sure that I’m building career capital outside of my 9-5, each and everyday – even if that just means reading one article about the evolution of entry-level jobs in the age of AI or asking ChatGPT to analyse and evaluate the potential impact on a role like mine in the background while I complete another task.

In this issue of Entry Point, I’m breaking down:

• Why career growth should not begin with a job search
• What 15 minutes a day adds up to over time
• The four types of career capital worth building
• Exactly what to do during your daily 15–30 minutes
• The simple daily routine that makes it work
• How and why you should audit your career capital

The “I’ll think about my career when I need to” myth

Last year, McKinsey announced that it would cut 10% of its workforce and LinkedIn exec Aneesh Raman warned that AI is replacing the jobs of early-career professionals. Earlier this month, the CEO of Anthropic said that AI could cut half of all entry-level white-collar job within the next 5 years.

Entering the job market and trying to secure an entry-level position is becoming increasingly difficult.

So if you’re a student or a young professional, in the early stages of your career, you have to start thinking and building your career more strategically, early on. You can’t rock up to LinkedIn or Indeed or whatever job listing website you’re using anymore and expect to land a job by sending out a hundred applications. You have to build before to increase your chances of success.

What career capital actually is

Career capital is the culmination of your skills, your network, your reputation and your options. Since all these things take time to develop, career capital is created over time.

Building these things doesn’t happen overnight which is why the small habits – the 15 minutes you take out of your day to message a former professor of yours to ask if they’d like to grab a coffee or the 30 minutes you spend going through the flashcards you created for the new Italian vocabulary you’re learning – are what make a difference.

The proof that 15 minutes compounds

Sure, if you can spend an hour a day practicing a new skill outside of your 9-5 or your university work – like learning about AI and how to use it effectively or researching the different ways that your job could evolve and change in the coming years – that’s great. But not everyone has that kind of time. So if all you’ve got is 15 minutes, then that’s great to.

If we break it down, fifteen minutes a day is:

• 1 hour and 45 minutes each week
• Roughly 7.5 hours each month
• More than 91 hours across a year

Think about what you could accomplish for your career in 90 hours: a complete a professional course or qualification, dozens of useful career conversations, a portfolio of you work. Things that add up.

In reality though, when it comes to building a career, the value is not in accumulating hours. It’s in accumulating assets. One conversation could lead to another introduction. One project can become a portfolio example. One new skill may help you perform better at work, giving you a stronger achievement to discuss in interviews.

That is the career version of compounding: each small action increases the value of the actions that follow it.

Everyone on LinkedIn sees the fancy job title and that really cool promotion. In reality, building a career day to day feels like searching for a job all over again, expect that you aren’t sending job applications or scrolling Indeed. You’re doing small things, each and everyday, repetitive moments that move the needle closer to where you want to be.

The 15-minute career capital menu

I’ve taken the buckets of career capital – skills, network, reputation and options – and created a list of 16 specific things you could do in 15 minutes to start building your career capital.

1. Ask AI what your value is in the marketGive AI an overview of your role, responsibilities, achievements, industry, location and years of experience. Then ask it to assess your current market value, suggest the salary range you might reasonably expect and identify the skills that could make you more valuable. Don’t treat its answer as gospel, but use it as a starting point for your own research. You can run it in the background if it takes longer than 15 minutes.
2. Write down one achievement from your working weekAt the end of the week, write down one thing you did well. It could be a problem you solved, some positive feedback you received, a piece of work you delivered or a moment when you took initiative. Your achievements are much easier to use in an appraisal, interview or job application when you record them as they happen. Record it in your Notes app to keep a log or journal about it in your diary.
3. Update or add one thing to your CVYou don’t need to overhaul your entire CV every time you open it. Add one new responsibility, improve one bullet point or include a recent result. Updating it in small doses is a lot easier than trying to remember two years’ worth of achievements the week you decide to apply for another job.
4. Post one industry insight on LinkedInShare something you’ve noticed, learned or been thinking about in your industry. It doesn’t need to be a groundbreaking prediction or a 1,000-word essay. A useful observation, a lesson from an event or your take on a recent development is enough to start making your knowledge visible.
5. Comment on someone else’s LinkedIn postWriting your own post isn’t the only way to build visibility. Leave a thoughtful comment that adds an example, asks a useful question or offers another perspective. “Great post!” probably isn’t going to start a conversation, but a genuinely interesting contribution might.
6. Reach out to one industry professional or professor that you have spoken to in a whileRelationships need to be maintained, not just collected. Send a short message asking how they are, referencing something you previously discussed or updating them on what you’ve been doing. You don’t need a big reason to reconnect with someone.
7. Read this article: The Career Bets That Compound (And the Ones That Don’t)I loved this article and found it extremely useful to refer back to when I have to make bigger (and also smaller) decisions about my career. It explains why some career decisions continue creating opportunities long after you make them, while others give you little more than a short-term reward. Read it and think about which of your current activities are building skills, relationships, credibility or options that could compound over time.
8. Create a career capital tracker in your Notes appI’ve already alluded to this one in point 2. Open your Notes app or take out a piece of paper and write out four headings: skills, evidence, relationships and visibility. Under each one, keep a running list of what you’re building. Over time, you’ll start to see whether your career capital is actually growing, where you have gaps and what you can do to close those gaps.
9. Write a short case study explaining a problem you solved at workChoose one problem you’ve worked on and explain the situation, what you did and what changed as a result. This turns a vague responsibility into evidence of what you can actually do. It can later become a CV bullet point, interview example, portfolio piece or LinkedIn post.
10. Save a positive message or piece of feedbackScreenshot the nice message from your manager. Save the email from the client who loved your work. Keep a record of the comment someone made about how useful your presentation was. Apart from being nice to revisit on a bad day, these messages are evidence of your strengths and the value you provide. I like to take this one step further sometimes and journal about it, reflect on it.
11. Send one thoughtful message to someone in an interesting role without asking for anythingNot every message needs to include a request for a call, referral or piece of advice. Tell someone you enjoyed an article they wrote, found their career path interesting or appreciated an insight they shared. Building a relationship is a lot easier when your first interaction doesn’t involve asking the other person for a favour. Also, a simple ‘thank you’ can go a long way.
12. Ask a colleague about their career pathAsk someone how they ended up in their current position, what they did before joining the organisation or which experiences helped them progress. You’ll often learn more about the possible routes through an industry from one honest conversation than you will from reading 20 job descriptions. I usually do this over lunch, if I happen to be eating at the same time as someone else in the office.
13. Arrange one coffee conversation for later in the monthChoose someone you’d genuinely enjoy learning from or reconnecting with and put something in the calendar. It could be a colleague, former classmate, professor or person working in your industry. One good conversation a month gives you 12 opportunities a year to deepen your relationships and learn something new.
14. Understand the typical next step from your current positionLook at people who previously held your role and find out what they went on to do. Search LinkedIn, read job descriptions and pay attention to the skills that repeatedly appear in the next level up. You can prepare for your next role much more deliberately once you know what that role is likely to be. Also, I would suggest you factor in AI and how that might change, or not change, things.
15. Write down all your skills (look at your job description) – where are you missing skills and where are you acingPull out your job description and list every skill your role requires. Add the skills you use that aren’t officially written down too. Then mark the areas where you’re already strong, the ones where you need more evidence and the gaps that could eventually limit your progression.
16. Start a list of other organisations you’d be interested in working inYou don’t need to be actively job hunting to know what else is out there. Keep a running list of organisations doing interesting work, people you might want to learn from and roles you could imagine moving into. Career options are easier to create before you urgently need one.

What this looks like in my 9-5

With my 9-5 schedule this looks like 15 minutes on the bus – messaging one person or listening to a podcast in Italian to practice my language listening skills. Sometimes it looks like a 10 minute chat with my colleague during lunch or 20 minutes after work brushing up my CV, adding a couple bullet points or adding links to my work.

I like to dedicate my mornings to my hardest task, so usually these 15-30 minutes I spend on my career progression come later in the day, after work, or during those ‘in between’ moments – on the bus, at lunch, in a waiting room. In the mornings, I prefer to build and work on my projects, like this Substack newsletter which – arguably – is part of my career capital.

Before you do anything, audit your career capital

It’s tempting to read a list like this and immediately decide that you need to learn a new skill, post more on LinkedIn and arrange five coffee chats. But before adding more things to your to-do list, work out where your career capital is currently strongest and where it’s weakest. I recently did this and it really helped me see where I am strongest and where I have gaps I need to fill. I broke down my audit into the four core components of career capital and asked myself a few questions related to each one. I scribbled it all down in my journal.

Skills: What am I genuinely good at? Which skills are becoming more valuable in my industry? What could stop me from progressing into my next role?

Network: Who knows me, trusts me and understands the kind of work I can do? Am I maintaining my existing relationships, or only contacting people when I need something?

Reputation: What am I currently known for? Do I have evidence that I’m good at what I do, or am I relying on people to take my word for it?

Options: If my current job disappeared tomorrow, what could I do next? Which organisations, industries or roles would realistically be open to me?

You might realise that you have strong skills but very little visibility. Or that you know plenty of people but haven’t kept in touch with any of them. Maybe you’ve done brilliant work, but you haven’t recorded the results anywhere, which means you’d struggle to explain your value in an interview.

That’s the point of the audit. It helps you avoid spending your 15 minutes building something you already have plenty of while ignoring the gap that’s actually holding you back.

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Fifteen minutes a day hasn’t transformed my career overnight. But 15 intentional minutes, repeated over months and years, means that I’m actively working on certain skills, building relationships with people who might have an opportunity they can recommend me for in 5 years’ time, and keeping track of evidence I can point to in my next interview.

I’m not waiting until I’m desperate for a new job to start building my next move. I’m starting today. That is the real Entry Point rule.

Source: softsuccessclub.substack.com