Building a successful career starts with you.

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day demands of your current job and lose sight of the big picture, but with a typical career spanning 50 years or more, you do so at your own peril. It's up to you to chart your own course to professional success.

If you read nothing else on effectively managing your career, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you develop yourself, make the right career moves, navigate inevitable detours and disruptions, and turn your professional dreams into reality.

This book will inspire you to:

• Identify and leverage your strengths
• Cultivate the curiosity, skills, and knowledge you need to maintain your professional relevance far into the future
• Navigate messy job transitions gracefully
• Build and sustain a network that supports and encourages your growth
• Restore meaning and passion to your work
• Bounce back from career setbacks big and small
• Reinvent yourself, even in tough times

HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an everchanging business environment.