Advice to the burnt out job-seeker

Jan 25, 2024

If you lost or left your job in the past few weeks or months…

And you’ve been searching for your next job for a while…

And you thought you would have found something by now, and you’re getting worried by the string of rejections and missed connections…

And your days are blurring together and you find yourself getting into slumps, feeling more and more confused and stuck…

Let me give you four pieces of advice to help you reconnect to your purpose and start moving forward.

Remember who you are and get back in touch with your identity ⚡️

It’s really easy, when you lose your job, to also lose your sense of identity.

You thought of yourself as [title] at [company] and now you don’t have that anymore (and the attempts to get another [title] at [company] aren’t working), so who are you?

As you watch yourself do more things around the house and take up more school and parenting duties, a voice in your head wonders, “Am I turning into a stay-at-home person?? After how hard I’ve worked and all my qualifications and accomplishments?? AHH!”

But the reality is that your identity wasn’t in the title or the company.

You carry YOU with you everywhere you go, and YOU show up in everything you do.

Let me give you an example.

If you told me to plan a middle school dance, I’d do it in MY way.

My way tends to be:

Gather all the information upfront
Analyze, synthesize, and come to my own conclusion
Make a compelling presentation to convey my findings

I almost always do all the work myself. I tend to approach things like an individual contributor or a craftsman. It almost never occurs to me to delegate things.

If you told someone else to plan a middle school dance, they’d do it in THEIR way.

Their way might be:

List all the tasks to be done
Organize a group of people and delegate things to each person
Check in and manage the group to make sure it all gets done

They might approach things more like a general manager. It would never occur to them to do it all themselves.

All of which is to say—

The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.

The way you do house chores and pack lunches and deal with the drop-off schedule is also the way you approach work problems.

Your identity wasn’t in your job.

Your job was just one place where you expressed your identity, your values, and your unique way of doing things.

And you’re still doing that, all day, every day.

“Work” and “home” are actually fake categories — or at least, unhelpful ones.

A better set of categories is

Things I enjoy because it expresses THIS part of me
Things I enjoy because it expresses THAT part of me
Things I don’t like at all because they goes against THESE values and preferences

Whether those activities happen to be at work or home or school doesn’t matter at all. Every task is an opportunity to rediscover and lean into who you really are.

And as you do this, notice the patterns and themes that emerge.

These are your building blocks for how you like to solve problems, get things done, and create value where there wasn’t any before.

Shape your building blocks into potential opportunities 🧱

As you identify your building blocks, I want you to know…

All your previous roles were just one particular shape that you arranged your building blocks in.

And once you know what those blocks are, you can start thinking about new, different shapes you could arrange them in.

I like to think of this like a product strategy.

You’ve got these blocks.

What can you do with them?

Who has a high-priority problem that would be really well-solved by these blocks?

Let me give you an analogy—

It’s just like when people first developed the blockchain.

You have this technology that operates in a certain way.

And then you ask: “Okay, who needs this? What problem can this technology solve, that people would pay a bunch of money for?”

Maybe retail companies with complex supply chains, who need to keep track of where everything is at all times?

Maybe groups of friends on vacation together, who need to keep track of who’s paying for what and reconcile expenses?

Maybe governments that want to maintain clean records of births, deaths, and name changes to prevent identity theft and fraud?

From the outside, those 3 things might look totally random — different industries, different problems, different kinds of customers.

But there IS a common theme — they’re all different ways to shape blockchain technology into a solution to someone’s problem.

You’re doing the same thing to figure out your next career step, except with YOU and your building blocks.

Don’t stay stuck in the rut of industry and function and “what logically follows” from what you’ve been doing so far.

Break your strengths and skills and experiences down into individual building blocks — and then see what else you can build with them.

You might come up with a bunch of options that look as different from each other as the 3 blockchain use cases above.

But it’s not actually random or scattershot or a “big career pivot.”

It’s just a new arrangement of the same building blocks you’ve had all along.

Run small experiments 🧪

Once you have a couple ideas of what you could shape your building blocks into (that sound FUN and exciting to you)…

The best thing you can do is stop thinking and start running small experiments.

Pick one of your ideas and start actually DOING the thing, in a small, doable way.

Some examples of what I mean—

“I might want to be a fiction writer.” ➡️ Cool, write 1 short story.

“I might want to do independent consulting projects instead of another 9-5 job.” ➡️ Cool, set up 1 small consulting project.

“I might want to run my own ecommerce shop.” ➡️ Cool, do the first step of setting up a shop, which might be identifying 1 product that you would want to sell.

“I might want to pivot to marketing.” ➡️ Cool, most jobs make you do a mini-project as part of their interview process now. Ask around to see what a marketing interview mini-project would be and then do 3 of those yourself.

These kinds of small experiments let you quickly test your hypothesis and figure out whether this new thing is actually a good fit for you, or whether there are unexpected parts of it that you don’t like.

You’d be surprised how LITTLE action you need to take to create WAY more clarity.

And, just as importantly — these small experiments help you get a sense of momentum and forward progress.

“Figure out what I want to do next” is vague and insurmountable.

“Do this one thing” is concrete and doable.

And when you get concrete and doable things DONE every day and every week, you generate energy and momentum that keep you moving forward.

Create external structure to support you through the inevitable bad days 🫂

You WILL go through emotional ups and downs through this process.

There WILL be days when it all seems impossible…

And you feel like you have no idea what you’re doing…

And you just want to give up and go to bed.

Nothing is going wrong when that happens. This is part of the process.

The best thing you can do is to expect this to happen and to create external structure that can support you and keep you moving forward when it does.

That external structure could look like…

A group of friends or community of people that are all doing something similar, and you report your progress and troubleshoot with them on a regular basis

Regular coffee chats with people who are charting similar paths, to inspire you and remind you that what you want is possible

Listening to podcasts with people that inspire you

Having a coach or mentor that you talk to on a regular basis

Staying in touch with hobbies that re-energize you

Whatever it is, put pre-scheduled things on your calendar every few days that have a high chance of giving you a shot of inspiration and purpose.

That way, when the stuck-points and setbacks and “what am I doing again?” inevitably happens…

You’re no more than a day or two away from another booster shot of energy to keep you moving forward.

And if you’re stuck right now, here’s why I want you to come talk to me.

If you’re between jobs, you might be wondering if you can afford coaching.

But the nice thing about a free consult call is that it moves you forward, even if you don’t hire that particular coach.

In a consult call, you get an expert’s perspective on WHY you’re feeling so stuck.

And you get an expert’s game plan for HOW they would get you un-stuck.

You might agree with me — and that diagnosis and game plan alone might be enough to get you moving forward, without ever hiring me.

You might disagree with me — and that spark of disagreement will illuminate YOUR own diagnosis and game plan, and make clear what you have to do next and what resources you need to support you.

You might agree with me but think my price is too high for your budget — in which case, I am happy to refer you to coaches that use my methodology but charge whatever price is comfortable for you right now.

I’ve had all three of these things happen in my consult calls, and I love them all of them.

Because my #1 priority isn’t that you hire me. It’s that you take a step forward.

And all of these are ways that you can use a consult call to take a step forward, even if you decide not to work with me.

So come talk to me today.

Book a free coaching consult

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

Less Stress, More Flow with Pooja V.

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