How to begin to escape from your career rut
For many of us the first half of our career flies by at great speed with plenty of hard work and often little planning.
But what happens when your career trajectory flattens, the work becomes easy and dull or “ground hog day” is a term that describes your working day rather than a funny 1993 Bill Murray movie?
Sounds to me like you’re in a career rut that will take some manoeuvring to escape from.
If you’re on the hunt for some starter points to kick-start your career transformation, here are three activities that you can begin on the way home today.
1. Design a very specific answer to this question: What magic do you have to offer the world?
Eh?
By ‘magic’ I mean, what specific, unique skills do you have to offer the world? I assure you I have not under-estimated how difficult this question is to answer.
If you’ve spent 15/20 years in a career that you “fell into”, this will be much more difficult for you than for others who might have tried a couple of different lines of work in the first half of their career.
If you’ve been in finance, law, engineering, sales, marketing or IT for a couple of decades, you may struggle with the specifics of what key, specific skills you have to offer the world.
One way to start to answer this very hard question is to answer two easier sub-questions:
What activities are you doing when you lose track of time?
What do you love doing so much that you would do it for free?
If you really, really think about these two questions for the length of your commute today, I guarantee you will have triggered a thought process which is the first starting point of your career transformation.
2. Write another very specific list: What do you want from your future work life?
On that long commute home, don’t listen to your favourite podcast, don’t read the news and don’t play that game on your phone to distract you from how annoyed you were by something at work today.
Instead, design your future perfect work.
You might not yet know the exact style of that work but you can define your preferences for some of the key elements.
Have a think about your ideals around
weekly work-life balance,
time spent face-to-face with humans versus on tele/video conferences,
thinking time,
amount and type of travel,
size of team,
sole versus team work balance,
commute,
quality and style of feedback,
requirement for corporate presentations/board meetings,
team management style,
company culture,
salary,
feel of work environment,
amount of holiday,
freedom to make decisions,
support to make decisions etc.
HINT: Most of my clients have amazing difficulty with designing their perfect work and find it easier to define what they don’t want. Give that a try if it sounds easier.
3. Evaluate your current role
Consider your current role.
Is it using the skills that you really, really enjoy using?
Is your current role fulfilling many of your ideal preferences for future work?
If the answer to either of these questions is no, you might want to consider making some changes.
If the answer to both questions is no, you might want to start considering a career overhaul. Book a free 30min call with me this week - I’ll promise to give you at least two personalised recommendations to get you moving.
If you liked this, you might like this:
Changing career in my 40s, was it worth it? (Downloadable career assessment sheet)
To learn more about escaping your own career rut go to www.midlifeunstuck.com, sign up to my newsletter and contact me directly at lucia@midlifeunstuck.com.
