When it comes to making a career change, the commonly held view is that small steps are the best way forward.Small steps are great because they reduce overwhelm and counteract that awful feeling of paralysis. It is true that tiny actions over time can add up to a big result.
Take learning a language for example. I have lived in Beijing for nearly 4 years now and am constantly berating myself for my lack of progress with Chinese characters. If I had set myself a tiny goal of learning one character a day, by now I would know nearly 1500 of the wretched things – which, according to google, is enough to understand 94% of most Chinese texts. So I believe in the power of the small step approach, and I frequently advocate it. The problem is, I’m not very good at it. And I reckon some of you reading this may feel the same way.
Two ways to remove a band-aid
“There are two ways to remove a band-aid. Quickly and painfully, or slowly and painfully.”
John Wood, whose charity Room to Read has set up over 2,000 schools and libraries across Asia and Africa, says the best advice he was ever given was to think of his former comfortable but unfulfilling job as a band-aid. He had a choice. Remove the plaster quickly by resigning from his high flying career at Microsoft and devoting himself to his start up charity full time. Or remove it slowly by steadily building the charity up alongside his job. John Wood chose the former. It made sense for him, partly because he could – he had savings – and partly because his all-consuming Microsoft career would have left scarce time for other activities. Small steps weren’t really that practical. But I think personality plays as an important part as circumstances. I haven’t met John Wood, but in his book Leaving Microsoft to Change The World, he comes across as a “just do it,” big picture, impatient-for-results kind of guy. I think he’d have torn that plaster off quickly almost whatever the circumstances.
(Do read his book by the way – a very honest and utterly absorbing account of how he changed not just his career but his whole life).
When to just go for it
If you’re currently taking small steps, and know that you are making progress – no matter how slow – do keep at it
The small steps approach, in my view, only needs reconsidering when:
* You’re forever thinking about taking small steps, but you never actually commit to them for any consistent period of time
* You are taking steps, but you’re not really getting anywhere. It’s easy to indulge in “safe” steps that don’t take us out of our comfort zone but then don’t really make any headway either. Surfing the net endlessly “researching our career change” is a classic example.
It’s this latter scenario that I think is the most dangerous. We can spend months, even years, kidding ourselves that we’re working on our career change, when what we really need to do is take a deep breath, and pull that plaster off in one go.
Sometimes, we do need to make the bold move:
* Resign our jobs without a new one to go to
* Take a flyer on a new business idea
* Move to the other side of the world
Everything in us (and surely, all our friends of family around us) will scream that we are crazy.
But a funny thing happens once we’ve done the seemingly crazy thing. From the other side, it doesn’t look so mad after all. The world doesn’t spin off its axis in astonishment. After a week or so of flurried phone calls, our friends get used to our changed circumstances. Best of all, as a former client of mine said, “once we commit, the universe really does conspire to help us.”
I can’t promise that your dream career will suddenly get handed to you on a plate. And obviously, there is bold and there is stupid. Please don’t resign your job if you have no financial cushion whatsoever and a family to support. But take a leap and you will find that courses…work opportunities…useful contacts, all come out of the woodwork to support you.
Most important of all, you’ll have sent yourself a signal that you trust in yourself and your ability to survive – and flourish – in a different kind of life.
Sarah Cooper is a career and lifestyle coach who specialises in working with creative or socially-minded people who want to put their passions at the heart of what they do. Prior to qualifying as a coach, Sarah worked as a solicitor before moving to the voluntary sector, where she held senior marketing roles at two of the UK's leading charities.
You can sign up to Sarah's FREE 5 part e-course Finding Freedom By Doing What You Love at www.nomoredreadingmondays.com.
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