5 quick career experiments you could do this week (part 4)
When you’re feeling dissatisfied with your current job…
But you’re not quite sure what you want to do next…
You can feel like you’re going crazy 😵💫
One part of you — we’ll call it Dissatisfied You — says, “We can’t do this anymore.”
Another part of you — we’ll call it Practical You — says, “Okay, but then what ARE we going to do?”
Dissatisfied You says, “I don’t know. I just know it can’t be this.”
Practical You fires back, “You know we have to make money, right? We can’t just quit without a plan.”
Dissatisfied You shouts, “I KNOW we have to make money! But I just don’t want to do this anymore!”
Practical You piles on, “And what about when our friends ask us what we’re doing next. What are we going to say to them?”
Dissatisfied You cries, “I don’t know! Stop putting so much pressure on me! Can we just run away and live on a farm somewhere?? 😭”
Practical You says, “You’re insane!”
Dissatisfied You cries, “I hate you!!”
And in the meantime, you have to keep doing your day job while this internal war rages on inside you.
When you spend all day fighting back and forth with yourself like this…
You don’t make any progress on the problem…
AND you end the day feeling terrible about yourself.
It’s a lose-lose situation, and it keeps you 100% stuck.
Luckily, there’s a simple, easy way you can cut the gordian knot and stop the war within yourself—
Gather more data.
Because the sneaky little assumption that’s causing this internal battle is:
“I need to know what I’m doing next before I can start doing it.”
And when you flip that assumption on its head, everything changes.
What if it’s actually…
“I need to start doing it in order to figure out what I’m doing next.”
I know — it’s kind of a mind-bender :)
But when I say “start doing it” I don’t mean quit your job and move to a farm.
I mean doing small, bounded experiments that let you test out various career paths without fully committing to them.
In this series, we’ve been covering 5 quick and easy career experiments you can do this week to gather more data, gain more clarity, and help the warring factions within you put their weapons down and rally around a common goal.
In the introduction to this series, I told you to pick ONE idea to test.
Last week, we covered…
Experiment 1: Listen to podcasts where people “talk shop” about that industry
Experiment 2: Do coffee chats with people in the industry and get facts, not feelings
Experiment 3: Do the “job interview project”
And today, we’re going to talk about Experiment 4—
Experiment 4: Make a ghost proposal
Here’s what I mean.
Let’s say you want to be a freelance marketing consultant for small businesses.
Have a casual chat with one of your friends who works at a startup or small business.
Don’t grill them about their job. Just ask how things are going.
How did their product launch go?
Are things selling as much as they expected?
What are they worried about?
How are they thinking about what they want to do next?
Just a totally casual conversation where you’re learning a bit more about their business.
And then go home and make a ghost proposal.
IF you were to be their freelance marketing consultant, what’s the project proposal you would draw up for them?
Here’s the best part: You never have to show your friend this proposal.
The goal here is not to sell your friend on working with you.
The goal is for you to get some practice…
Learning about someone’s problem
Thinking about how you might help them solve it
And structuring a proposal for how you could help them
All in an incredibly low-stakes, zero-risk way.
Write the proposal and stick it in a drawer. Nobody needs to see it but you.
But by the time you’ve made the proposal, you’ve gotten to test out the real work you would actually have to do if you were a freelance marketing consultant.
And once the proposal is done, YOU can think about—
What did I like about that? What did I not like about that?
Am I excited to keep going down this path?
Or have I realized this isn’t the job for me?
If you’re thinking about being a dating coach…
Listen to your single friends bitch about dating (which happens at pretty much every gathering of single people).
Then go home and write up a ghost proposal for how you’d help them with your dating coaching.
If you’re thinking about being an interior designer…
Visit one of your friend’s apartments to hang out.
Then go home and write up a ghost proposal for how you’d help them redesign their place.
If you’re thinking about going into partnerships…
Think about one of the brands or products that you’re a big fan of.
Write up a proposal of the partnerships you think they should do and how you would help them land them.
The great thing about ghost proposals is that you never have to show them to anyone.
No pressure. No sales-y feeling. No awkwardness.
Just an honest analysis of how you would use your skillset to help this person.
And a chance for you to see: Hey, would I even want to do that?
Once you start doing these career experiments…
Here’s the next problem you’re going to run into.
“How do I interpret the data that I’ve gathered?”
First off, I just want to tell you—
This is a normal second-level problem to run into.
Sometimes, you do an experiment and the data is ultra-clear and you know exactly what to do next.
And other times, you do an experiment, and you’re like, “Uh……what does this mean? I’m kind of more confused than when I started.”
Nothing is going wrong when this happens.
That’s just the scientific method at work :)
And no matter how confused you feel…
This is a BETTER problem to have than your previous problem of “I don’t know what I want to do next.”
It’s much better to have a bunch of data and not be sure how to interpret it…
Than to have no data and be feeling around in the dark.
Confusion is a step up from up from ignorance.
You ARE making progress, I guarantee it.
So how should you interpret the data?
I can’t give you that kind of custom answer in an email.
But I CAN give you that kind of custom answer if we work together.
Doing the experiment is just the starting point.
Come talk to me, and let’s get you all the way over the finish line.
Let’s find the answer that makes both parts of you…
Dissatisfied You AND Practical You…
Link arms in harmony, sing with happiness, and feel totally aligned with the direction you’re heading in :)
What my clients have to say…
“What I liked about Pooja’s approach was that she tackled everything at the same time, and she provided practical goals, which were really instrumental in changing my thinking.
I had always been a very intellectual person struggling with the practical stuff. And what I liked about her approach was that she gave me practical goals on a weekly basis.”
—Client | Communications Consultant turned Lawyer
Did you know I have a full table of contents, where all my work is categorized by topic, so you can easily find what you need right now? Check it out below! :)
⬅️ Experiment #3 || Experiment #5 ➡️
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