Even if you're just learning to walk, next steps aren't that hard. The execution part may be, but the actual decision-making process? Not so much.

This morning, I sat on a course selection panel helping first-year students at my business school think about what classes to take next year. We gushed about professors we love and classes that were valuable until one student asked "well, when should I tke these classes?"

Which brought up an interesting sentiment. We may know what's good for us professionally--a job that would be good experience, a class that will help us progress in our jobs--but knowing and doing are two very different things. In consulting, there are about a million cliched terms (can anyone say synergy?) But some of them are actually broadly applicable, as hard as that might be to believe. And gap analysis is one of them.

Before you think I'm about to go all-out academic on you, stop for a minute and take stock of exactly where you are in your career, job, education, etc. Let's say you have some idea of where to go next, and you're aware of the gaping hole you have to fill to get there. But do you know when and how? That's gap analysis.

Which brings me back to the questioning student and to your career (that's right, you behind the computer screen reading). How are you going to get where you're going? Plane? Train? Automobile? For the curious student, it's a question of planning. She's about to search for a summer internship, so of a collection of classes that will all be beneficial to her learning, what would be most valuable to her in preparation for the internship? What would give her the most ammunition in an interview or prepare her most effectively to succeed?

For the job-weary among us, it's the same thing. There may be hundreds of jobs that will fill the gaping hole, but will they get you where you want to go? It's easy to revel in the short term, but you have to ask yourself if the short-term is actually on the route you want to travel. Is it hard? Yep. There's no career Mapquest, but you can find the best route if you stop and take the time.

- Susan Strayer is an HR and business professional, and former recruiter and hiring manager who has worked with hundreds of Fortune 500 companies. She is the author of The Right Job, Right Now due out in December 2006 from St. Martin's Press.