PRODUCTIVITY

How to Recognize When It’s Time to Quit Your Sucky Job and Start Building Your Dream Career

Your current position may not survive the inevitable transitions of life

I have a client with a prestigious and high-paying job who’s transitioning to a completely different kind of work. And in the process, he’s finding satisfaction and meaning from his work — and his life. This is his story.

(Author’s note: I’ve changed the name of my client to protect his identity, but his circumstances are true.)

John always wanted to be an electrical engineer.

He built radios in high school and obtained an amateur ham radio license at sixteen. He saw his future clearly — working as a lead engineer on high-tech design projects for the aerospace industry.

Fourteen years later, John is now a respected and successful engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He works on complex robotic projects and his contributions are often mentioned in trade journals. He’s built a personal reputation as one of the best in his field, and occasionally receives offers from competitive aerospace companies.

In short, his future is secure. He’s earned the respect of his peers, as well as the privilege to set his own work schedule — within reason. He’s on the fast track to being promoted to division manager, along with a commensurate boost in pay.

By all accounts, John should be happy.

He’s successful, working in his chosen industry, and is recognized as one of the best in his field. But John isn’t happy. In fact, for the last few years, he’s been living with the nagging thought that there has to be something better — a job with less pressure, less responsibility.

Overwhelmed with the responsibilities of his position, he’s become obsessed — almost paranoid — knowing his work has to be correct. If he overlooks a critical component and doesn’t provide necessary function redundancy, or doesn’t catch a mistake made by others, people could die. And he lives with that pressure constantly.

In addition to the critical need to confirm the accuracy of his work, he’s reached a point in his career where many of his duties are focused on directing and supervising others — something he’d hoped he would grow to enjoy.

But in reality, his job has become an albatross of anxiety-ridden responsibility that keeps him in a constant state of worry.

For several years, John has dreamed of doing something different. He’s often caught himself thinking back to his early dreams of being an engineer and wonders how he could have been so naïve.

Here’s a summary of what I told him . . .

It’s called a career path for a reason.

It starts upon entry into the profession and continues to evolve — often into unknown and unexplored territory. It’s meant to be a fluid, developing journey, one that often ends up in a very different place than we could have ever imagined.

In our youth, we often mistake our goals as contingencies for living a happy, satisfying life. But expectations are not a destination.

Yes, we dream, plan, and work toward accomplishing our highest priority objectives. We’re motivated by the end game. And we believe that once we “arrive,” we’ll be set for life. So we do the work, make the sacrifice, and we look forward to enjoying the rewards of our persistence and determination.

But John wasn’t convinced.

He countered with pure logic: “I’ve invested so much of my career, my life, into a profession that others would jump at the chance to do. So many people have told me how much they envy my position. I’m involved in the space program, doing what others perceive as important work, and I’m making a personal contribution.”

I realized that John was struggling with more than perspective. He finally admitted he was reluctant to leave his current career because he couldn’t resolve the sunk cost of investing fourteen years of his life into what was supposed to be his dream job.

“How am I supposed to just walk away and start over?”

His question was a tough one.

For John, breaking his professional continuity was a huge stumbling block. It meant abandoning the prestige and recognition he had worked so hard to achieve — especially as he considered exchanging it for an uncertain future.

John’s dilemma is a common one. We all want to think our previous professional path will positively influence our future. We take pride in building on our past momentum, knowing that the prominence and authority we gain today will make a difference tomorrow.

But that kind of mindset — telling ourselves we must stay on our original course to accomplish an earlier goal — can keep us stuck in a career that we’ve outgrown . . . a career that no longer gives us a sense of satisfaction or adds meaning to our lives.

John knows that. He also knows his comfort zone and his acceptable stress level does not allow him to simply walk away from the financial stability his job provides — not without first taking the necessary steps to make a relatively seamless transition to another career.

His need for a sense of perceived security meant there would be no dramatic exits, no rash or impulsive decisions, such as marching into his supervisor’s office and surprising her with his letter of resignation.

Yes, John wants to change his career, but he still relies on — and trusts — his analytical nature.

It served him well in the past, and he sees no reason to abandon his familiar tools of reason, logic, and pragmatism. That meant his transition would have to be done as a series of small steps, each one building on feedback obtained from previous actions.

Otherwise — in John’s words — “It would be like throwing my entire life up into the air and hoping the pieces fall back into place in the way I want them to . . . and life doesn’t work that way.”

What’s John doing now?

At first, he spent a couple of months investigating new interests. In the process, he re-examined some of the core concepts that originally motivated him to pursue a career in engineering. As a result, he discovered he’d completed that part of the journey. He realized it was time to move on, to make a transition from a career that was perfect fourteen years ago, to one that’s more appropriate for the person he had become.

Sure, he could have talked himself into staying with JPL. But that would mean trying to balance the stress and constant worry of his current position with the perks of a high income and the prestige of his association with the space program. And regardless of how many times he compared the pros and cons, he always came to the same conclusion: “No amount of money or recognition is worth forcing myself to do a job that is ultimately wrong for me.”

As John continued to scrutinize his reasons for pursuing engineering, he realized he’d always enjoyed working with his hands. He still wanted to build things, but instead of high-tech electronics, he enjoyed running his fingers over a beautifully made coffee table or an oak bookcase.

After a few hours of online research, he realized there was a viable market for hand-made, custom-built furniture. But was laboring for hours on a table leg or a cabinet door really the way he wanted to spend his time?

While the overall concept appealed to him, he wasn’t sure about the day-to-day work.

Instead of going to an office where others treated him with respect and admiration, he would be working alone, his tools and equipment taking the place of his professional relationships.

That sense of being unsure about making such a radical shift in his profession — not knowing if a new career in woodworking will be emotionally, intellectually, and financially satisfying in the long term — keeps him at JPL.

But it didn’t stop him from testing the income potential of his new interest.

First, he turned his garage into a woodworking shop, and he’s developing several designs that can be standardized to reduce production time and maximize profit.

Next, he did extensive market research to determine the demand for high-end furnishings, including the highest price-point each piece can be sold for. And soon, he’ll have a website where customers can order furniture in their choice of design and finish. He’s also preparing to offer cabinetry for custom homes — to take advantage of the real estate boom.

What about his future with JPL?

He’s made a personal commitment to continue working there, but only until he’s duplicated seventy percent of his JPL income. That’s the amount he needs to cover his expenses and make his new business profitable.

In effect, he’s willing to give up thirty percent of his current income to pursue a new profession, because the tradeoff — in personal satisfaction and enjoyment — is worth every penny.

I’ll leave you with this . . .

As we age, our ambitions, goals, and priorities also mature. We change as we gain experience and knowledge — not only about our industry and the day-to-day work, but also about ourselves.

The job we thought would be the end-all-and-be-all career choice becomes boring and predictable. Yes, at first, it was exciting. Acquiring that first job brought prestige, identity, and that sense of “having it made.”

But over time, the repetitive nature of the work, the ancillary responsibilities, and dealing with the bureaucracy of organizational politics can take its toll.

Career dissatisfaction can result from changing life events, personal evolution, or the mere passage of time.

And the sooner we recognize the cause, and make the necessary adjustments, the less time we’ll waste regretting how long we continued to put up with a job that ultimately could not survive the inevitable transitions of life.

© 2021 Roger Reid. All Rights Reserved.

Roger A. Reid, Ph.D. is the author Better Mondays and Speak Up

Roger A. Reid, Ph.D. is the host of Success Point 360 Podcast and author of Better Mondays and Speak Up. A certified NLP trainer with degrees in engineering and business, Roger offers tips and strategies for achieving higher levels of career success and personal fulfillment in the real world.