The one fallacy that keeps people stuck when they’re making a career transition
You don’t need to prepare more. You need to pivot faster.
Most people who come talk to me are in the middle of some kind of career transition.
Maybe they’re trying to get clarity on what they want to do next.
Maybe they’re already looking for a new job, or they’re just starting a new one.
Maybe they want to move into a new industry or function altogether.
Maybe they’re considering launching their own business.
Or maybe they just want to overhaul the way they approach their job — being more effective, landing that promotion, and cutting out the daily stress and anxiety.
No matter what kind of transition people are making…
There’s one fallacy that I see popping up again and again.
A fallacy that feels very seductive…
That will feel like the right thing to do…
But if you listen to its siren song, it will only keep you stuck.
Here’s the fallacy—
In order to make their transition successful, people think they need to prepare more.
When actually, they need to pivot faster.
Your brain will tell you that the best use of your time is planning and preparing.
Your brain will tell you to spend hours (if not days or weeks)…
Developing the perfect script for your job interview, to guarantee that you get the job.
Looking for the perfect roadmap for your career transition, to ensure you land in the best place for you.
Researching the perfect morning routine, to ensure you’ll be productive during the day.
Building the perfect schedule for your sabbatical, guaranteed to cure your burnout.
Reading up on the perfect blueprint to launch your startup so it’ll become it a unicorn.
Your brain thinks that the plan will give you security.
If someone can just give you the exact words to say, the exact steps to follow, the exact time blocks for your calendar…
Then you can put your head down, execute, and be guaranteed success.
But here’s what really happens.
You make the perfect plan…
And then, inevitably, something goes off track.
And your brain gets very freaked out.
It says, “This was the perfect plan! It was supposed to save us and guarantee success!!”
And then your brain insists that you drop everything, go back to the drawing board, and spend lots of time making a new “perfect plan.”
It will say, “Stop all action! Pull back the troops! We have to retreat into the cave and think very hard, until we’ve come up with the NEW plan that will save us.”
And this is what keeps you stuck.
Endless planning, very little action.
Because the truth is…
The answer isn’t in the plan.
Security isn’t in the plan.
Clarity isn’t in the plan.
Clarity, security, “the answer” – they’re all in the pivots.
The plan is just a starting point — a rough first draft that is almost guaranteed to be wrong because you make it when have the least information that you’re going to have at any point in your journey.
The real work begins when the plan falls apart — and you understand WHY it fell apart, so you can make your first pivot.
And then the first pivot falls apart — and you understand WHY it fell apart, so you can make your second pivot.
And then the second pivot falls apart — and you understand WHY it fell apart, so you can make your third pivot.
You don’t need the perfect script for your job interview.
You just need to say something.
And see how it lands.
Then try saying something else.
And see how it lands.
You don’t need the perfect roadmap for your career transition.
You just need one idea for what you could do next.
Run a small experiment to test it. (I have a whole series on quick and easy career experiments.)
See what you learn.
Have another idea. Run a small experiment to test it. See what you learn.
You don’t need the perfect morning routine.
You don’t need the perfect schedule for your sabbatical.
You don’t need the perfect blueprint to launch your startup.
You just need to get started with something — anything!
You don’t even have to believe it’ll work.
In fact, you can do something that you’re pretty sure ISN’T going to work!
I spent a lot of my holiday break making grand plans, for my business, for my health, for my personal life…
And even as I was making them, I was 60% sure that they weren’t going to work.
I could sense that they were too ambitious, that I wasn’t going to have the time and energy to execute them, and I even suspected that some of them were approaching the problem in the wrong way.
You know what I DIDN’T do?
Put all those resolutions on pause and give myself another month of planning time.
You know what I DID do?
I got started anyway.
And guess what? My resolutions ARE failing, as I expected.
It’s only the first full week of January, and they are crumbling way faster than I expected.
And I’m learning a TON from the specifics of the failures.
And it is informing my next pivot beautifully.
I, like an absolute nerd, am literally so excited to make the next version of the plan.
These learnings are GOLD. Version 2 is materializing in front of my eyes, and I can’t wait to put it into action.
(And to have that fail. And then build version 3. And have THAT fail. And build version 4. Etc :)
If you’re in the middle of a career transition…
You don’t need to prepare more, plan more, research more, or strategize more.
You need to get started and pivot fast.
Because security isn’t in the plan.
Security is in YOU — the person who is more than capable of analyzing what isn’t working and making a small adjustment for next time, again and again, until you get it done.
I suggest you have a thought partner while you do this.
Someone who works with people in career transitions every single day and has seen this rodeo dozens of times before.
Some who can keep you accountable to planning just the right amount and then getting started.
Someone who can help you analyze your failures and make the next pivot.
And most importantly, someone who can pull your brain out of insecurity and fight-or-flight and put it back into security and flow.
Because that’s what’s really going to get you there — your unique genius, your Secure High Performer self, your state of flow.
So come talk to me today, and let’s get started.
What my clients have to say…
“Pretty immediately, I was able to break through the decision of whether or not to leave my job.
I was able to see: Staying at my job is hard. Looking for a job is also hard. Which hard do I want to sign up for? Because being here in limbo is not productive.
I was also able to rewrite the story of what had happened at my current job in a way that gave me more confidence and started to untangle some of the emotional turmoil I had with that.
And then I recruited for and got my next job and got comfortable moving forward with that as my next step.”
—Client | Early-Stage Tech Startup Director turned Design Consultant
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! :)
As part of my mission to share coaching tools as widely as possible, my newsletter is completely paywall free and available to all.
You can support this publication (and make my day!) by subscribing and sharing it with anyone you think would find it helpful. Thank you for being here :)
💻 Website | 📸 Instagram | 👩🏻💻LinkedIn | 🎧 Podcast | 💌 Newsletter | 👋🏽 Free resources