We’ve all heard the predictions about what’s coming next:
- Jobs are going to be wiped out due to the rise of AI.
- Jobs that don’t exist today are the jobs that will be actually be in demand tomorrow.
- The rise of automation in recruiting will make it even more difficult for you to get your resume in front of a real person.
Pack on
- The ongoing battles between remote, hybrid and onsite requirements.
- The recent ban on non-compete agreements in the U.S. (side note: this will likely evolve before it’s effective)
- The sheer volume of applicants for a leadership position
…and the list goes on.
After we listen to talkers talk about their predictions,
Many people will get certified in the brand-new-shiny thing.
Some will consider changing industries.
Others will double down on their experience even if it no longer fuels their fire.
Some of these calculations may be right and many will be wrong. They will absolutely change as more information is made available.
What these predictions can’t forecast is what it all means to you and your loved ones.
If you want to stop feeling like you’re getting hit over the head with every headline and hit “pause” on the worries continually buzzing around your ears, you will need to focus on the simple, unchangeable truths that keep us grounded.
I will shout this from the mountain tops (or from my computer)
Navigating out of the mid-career fog isn’t going to come from anyone but you.
- Your goals
- Your dreams
- Your desires
- Your definition of success
During the days of my talent acquisition leadership career,
I often considered how to solve problems in the right order.
The order of the problem solving is just as important as solving the right problems.
After my corporate career, I took the leap into business ownership and I had to learn the value of not prioritizing other people’s ideas over my own.
Thoughts like:
“they are more successful than me, they must know more than I do”
“they seem to have this figured out, I should do what they say”
Did nothing to lift my own fog.
I realized that in order to solve the right problems in the right order, I had to stop squelching my own points of view. And be willing to sit still and listen to my deep-seated ambitions and beliefs.
Not easy for doers,
But, doable? YES!
How to solve the right problems in the right order.
If you’d prefer a clear career path, a fog-free road instead of a hazy horizon, just for a time, just for a little bit, stop listening to other people’s perspectives.
Your biggest advantage is knowing what you want to do next.
I’ve discovered that the clearer I am about where I want to go, the easier it is to get there.
To borrow from the world-renown author and leadership speaker, Stephen Covey: begin with the end in mind.
It boils down this:
Thinking ahead about how you would like something to turn out before you get started.
To my fellow doers, this means that we can be more effective and efficient (two words I LOVE) by pausing for a bit and not relying fully on our ability to get it done, think and react on the fly and make it happen because that’s what we do.
If you believe
Your career is a product of your decisions
and
Your success didn’t happen by accident
If you agree with these two statements, then you can effectively navigate out of the fog.
Because once you’ve decided where you want to go, you can use your efforts and energy, which you’ve got in spades, to support your journey.
.
When getting yourself out of the fog, the most important and first question is, what do you want to do next?
As a corporate recruiting leader, I would sit down 1-on-1 with team members on a regular basis. Periodically, I’d ask them what they wanted to do next. I was well aware that the majority of them would not stay in the talent acquisition space as they progressed in their career. Recruiting is an intense field requiring the juggling of multiple priorities, tight deadlines and the constant pressure of finding the right candidates.
The most common answer was, “I don’t know.”
I’d like to think that I had earned their trust so my team members would be honest with me in those private discussions, and many of them were, even if they were surprised at first that I was genuinely interested in helping them figure out what they wanted to do next.
This highlights a reality of the fog: it’s a tough question to answer.
We’re trying to filter through all of the harsh realities and overwhelming number of predictions and balance our lived experiences against what may still be possible.
I have found that spending a little time in your own imagination unlocks a path that you may have never thought possible or makes clear that you’ve been on the right path all along, but you took a side path.
Oh, and here’s the best part, if you aren’t sure where you want to go next, you can use all that doing energy to explore what next looks like.
Maybe you’re like a lovely friend of mine who is a lawyer turned bagel consultant, or the delightful Ina Garten, who analyzed nuclear policy before famously opening her small gourmet food store.
Or, maybe it’s something less life-altering.
Deciding to solve the right problems in the right order and in a defined period of time to discover what you want to do next will clear the path for mid-career fog faster and more effectively than 10,000 predictions ever could.
Get out there.
You’ve got this.