Many American workers are thinking about a career change right now. Whether that’s shifting to an entirely new field or changing roles within an existing one, reinventing your career often requires a roadmap.
Lack of time or insufficient finances, along with family obligations, all can make looking for new career paths challenging and even risky.
The good news is reinventing your career doesn’t have to be stressful. It can also be a fun, safe and exhilarating time of discovery.
Seek Paths For Career Change
When you want a change in your career but don’t know exactly what that means, don’t wait for a bolt of inspiration to hit you, says Herminia Ibarra. She’s an authority on career transitions and a professor at London Business School.
We have many possible “career selves” inside us. “It’s much more effective to start with a long and usually divergent list of possibilities that you can explore and learn more about,” she said.
Do not think of this as a lack focus or self-knowledge, Ibarra adds. It just means you’re in learning and discovery mode — and that’s perfectly fine.
Define Your Own Goal For Career Change
To find what is next for you in your career, start by identifying your career non-negotiables and corresponding measures of success, says Merideth Mehlberg. She’s the CEO of the Merideth Mehlberg Group, which provides executive and career coaching.
Mehlberg, who wrote “Your Finest Work: Career Fulfillment in a Complicated World,” advises you to start by journaling answers to key questions, such as: “What do I want from this next phase of my career?” or “What do I welcome more of?” You might also ask yourself, “What do I want less of?” or “What type of outcomes do I want to make possible with work?”
Next, identify your top five values, she says. For example, if “meaningful work” is one of your most prized values, define what you consider meaningful with examples.
“With these points clarified, you’ll more easily spot and be able to step into day-to-day opportunities to have more of what you want and less of what you don’t,” Mehlberg said.
Act And Dabble
By far the biggest mistake people make when trying to change careers is to delay taking the first step until they have settled on a firm destination, said Ibarra, author of “Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career.”
“We learn about ourselves by doing, by testing concrete possibilities,” she said. “And few of us change careers from one day to the next. We don’t, as a rule, leap into the unknown.”
Build a new working identity by trying outside projects, she says. This means launching extracurricular ventures that allow us to test possible options for ourselves without compromising current jobs.
Identify projects, side hustles, moonlighting gigs and pro bono roles that can help you get a feel for a new line of work or style of working, she says.
“Try to do these as parallel paths so that you can experiment seriously without making a commitment,” Ibarra said. “Try to have at least two of these experiments going at any time so you can compare and contrast.”
Stay Fresh To Navigate Career Change
Burnout is pervasive these days. If you are feeling exhausted, like you cannot take on even one more task, know you are not alone, Mehlberg says.
“Many people find that when they try to make a positive change in their career, they are not able to muster the effort, time or energy to be successful,” she said. “I call this running on empty.”
Transformation takes effort, and when you are physically and emotionally tapped, you need to build your sense of stamina to navigate it.
How do you do this? By acknowledging that you have a limited supply of energy to devote to each day; when the energy is gone, you are done. Recognizing your limits and honoring them helps you in reinventing your career. Less is sometimes more.
“Figure out where your attention and effort currently go and make shifts in your schedule and workload to match your available energy,” Mehlberg said.
