Career Change - Less Thinking, More Doing

Welcome to The Shift, a weekly newsletter where I provide thought-provoking ideas to help you think differently about your career and money.

Last Week + This Week = It’s All Connected

Last week I talked about how recent layoffs remind me of layoffs in the 90s. Read here if you missed it. This week I explore why most of us go about career change the wrong way.

Quick note: If you don’t know already, you guys are my inspiration for writing! Please feel free to send me articles, charts, images, memes, jokes, random thoughts that you think will help inform this newsletter. I’ll always give you a shout out if I use something you share - you’ll see me do it below!

As always, thank you for reading. ❤️ 

Career Shifts All Around

The idea of a career shift isn’t just a whimsical idea.

It’s reality for many.

I can’t tell you how many people I encounter that are going through it. Many are mid-career, but some have 30+ years experience.

So many are taking the leap because they want to. Yet, others are being forced to find new careers as their jobs are being eliminated – industrywide.

Either way, a life of multiple careers is quickly becoming the norm.

To most, that’s crazy and scary. To others it is liberating!

Any way you cut it, it’s a change in the way we work that won’t be avoided.

Dropping a quick book recco here. The next section was inspired by this book.

Anyone going through a transition will find this book helpful. h/t to my awesome reader Matt Z for sending this my way!

You Can’t Use Conventional Methods to Do Unconventional Things

The people that have the most success with career change don’t do it the logical way.

The so-called logical process usually goes like this:

Think about what you want to be next. Research it. Evaluate the pros and cons. Think about how aligns with your purpose. Set some goals. Then make it happen.

Think, then do.

That’s the wrong way.

It doesn’t work because it’s rare to find a path to a new career that follows a straight line.

Plus, a true career shift is an identity shift¹ .

Think about it, like it or not, a third of our lives are spent at work. Which means work is inevitably a part of our identity. It carries weight.  

You don’t change your identity overnight. You also don’t wake up one morning declaring you are going to go from being a doctor to a venture capitalist that day.

It’s a process.

Dip your toes in first and get used to the temperature of the water. Your rate of success is much higher than diving headfirst into ice cold water!  

Believe it or not, a lot of us dip our toes subconsciously.

Every new encounter, new book, educational event, new person we add to our network, has the ability to wake up a sleeping interest inside of all of us.  

True change is on the other side of testing and learning. Experiment. Evolution.

In other words, do first. Think (evaluate) later.

Making That Transition

Four things you’ll need to make the transition:

1. Reach your tipping point.

2. A new community.

3. A new guide.

4. Courage to test the waters.

You know you’re ready for change if you can’t stop asking yourself “do I really want the future I’ve been working toward?”

That’s the point you being to realize the change you need is greater than the job or the place you work.

I had a friend who is a career coach tell me one “Lindsey, people won’t make a career change unless they are fed up!” It made me laugh, but there is research to back this up.  

That said, you rarely give up your current path without having a good idea about what the new path forward will look like. To do that you need to know your options.

That is the hard part. It’s what leaves most of us stuck.

One place to start this journey start is with what you’re interested in or drawn to. But don’t stop there. Get creative, throw everything on the table. Even the “crazy” or “too big to achieve” ideas.

You don’t want to limit yourself in any way.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

Next, find ways to learn about those new careers or to test the waters. Whether it’s through new communities (online or in real life), through education, or doing the job on the side, interacting with new people can be pivotal in unlocking doors.  

This is the doing part.

You will use the skills that you’ve accumulated through your past experiences, while you expand your knowledge into new areas. Learn what you like and don’t like. Then iterate.

Don’t rush the process. Even if it is uncomfortable, it is not forever.

Your identity changes naturally as you start doing and being the new version of you.

Not when you ask for permission to make the change.

Bottom Line

The most fulfilling career transitions are the ones that reshape more than what we do and who we work for.

They are the transitions that truly flip our own internal rules - about how we should act and think in our professional lives - upside down.

That only happens when you are willing to take the risk to make the change.

You reduce the risk by experimenting, learning and testing.

Let’s comfortable with making change.

Let’s make The Shift!

Lindsey

P.S. I’d love it if you’d share this with 1 other person who you think would enjoy it. Thanks a million! 🙏

Sources:

1. Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra.