The Occupational Adventure (tm)

Career change quiz

mapmaker.curtrosengren.com

Are you a passion superstar, or is it time to abandon ship in your current career? Find out in my quick and easy career change quiz.

I first blogged about this quiz on New Year's Day last year. After nearly a year and a half, I figure it's probably time to spread the word about it again.

Enjoy!

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst (sm)

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

Will you be happy in five years?

mapmaker.curtrosengren.com

Want a simple litmus test for whether it's time to explore a career change? Ask yourself this question:

"Will I be happy five years from now?"

Five years from now, can you see yourself being happy with where the path you're on takes you? If the answer is no, it's time to think seriously about change.

If you can't see yourself being happy five years from now, not committing to change is the same as saying, "I commit to being unhappy."  There's no sugar-coating that. If you can see that you're on the wrong path, and you opt to stay on that path, your situation in the future is entirely your own doing.

Nothing is going to improve unless you take action to make it happen. If you can see that you're on the wrong path, odds are good that five years further down that same path won't make it better. In fact, it will probably make it worse.

You'll note I'm not talking about immediate, right-now career change (unless that works for you). The truth is that for most people substantial career change is a multi-year process, from the first glimmer of exploration to the nuts and bolts of making it happen. Change that isn't possible right now is often possible over time.

I'm talking about stepping up and doing something. Admitting that things are out of wack, and accepting that it's not going to get right unless you start taking steps to do something about it. Your career change might be a dramatic big plunge, or it might happen incrementally over the next four years.

The key is not accepting the inertia of the wrong path. If you can't see yourself as happy in the future based on the path you're on, jump the rut and starting taking steps right now to change your future.

It's as simple as that.

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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

To thrive, embrace change

Change can be scary. The uncertainty inherent in change can make us want to dig in our heels and scream, "No way!" And yet the alternative to a life without change is stagnation.

Patricia Dingh at The Circle Project offers a great perspective on it.

If you want to kill imagination, it is an easy process of reduction. Simply hunker down, grab on to what you know, and make more rules. Then convince yourself that your dreams aren’t safe and that change will be deadly. Finally, press your imagination into the service of your fear. That always does the trick.

She uses the story of Sisyphus to illustrate the dangers of clinging to the safety of certainty, and the rewards of embracing the risk of the unknown. Read her post for the full picture, but here's her point in a nutshell.

Sisyphus’ story, when told in full, is a guide to the virtuous circle. It demonstrates an expansive way of being. He chose growth over stasis, change coming when he embraced the unknown and stepped towards difference, discomfort and uncertainty. He let go of win/lose thinking and entered into an infinite game where the goal isn’t to win, but to learn. He engaged with the gods, relinquished control, and entered a place he’d never been, knowing he would become something beyond his wildest imagining. Sisyphus lived and thrived as a king for many years after opening that padlock precisely because he walked into his discomfort and fear.

[via Chris Bailey at The Alchemy of Soulful Work, by way of 37 Days]

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst (sm)

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

Four key questions to ask before your next career move

Dick Richards has a new book coming out called Is Your Genius At Work? 4 Key Questions To Ask Before Your Next Career Move (available in November). He just put a pdf of Chapter 1 online to give you a sneak peak.

The four key questions are:

1. What is your genius?

Once you acknowledge that you do or may have a genius, the next
step is to recognize its unique qualities.

2. Is your genius at work?

This question has two meanings: Is your genius working in the
way that it should? and Can you bring your genius to whatever
work you are doing?

3. What is your purpose?

Your purpose is a specific external expression of your genius. It is
the earthly reason your genius exists.

4. Is your genius on purpose?

Satisfaction, productivity, and success in your work arise to the
extent that the work allows you to bring the energy of your genius
to the fulfillment of your life’s purpose.

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst (sm)

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

Using the internet to research a new career

When you're exploring new career possibilities, eventually you reach the point where it's time to start getting an in-depth picture of the paths you are considering. Doing some internet research is a great way to start.

This site focuses on using the internet to research scholarly topics, but the ideas presented work equally well for researching careers. It's a good place to start if you aren't already practiced in the art of effectively finding the goldmine of information available out there (and it has some good ideas even if you are).

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst (sm)

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

Career change: What are your options?

When you think career change, what comes to mind? If you're like most people, you think of a big, dramatic, sever-all-ties-with-your-professional-past, overnight change.

That kind of change works for some, but for many it's not feasible. So what are your options if you can't simply jump ship and do something new?

1) Look for ways to change the work you're doing. Even small adjustments can make a difference. Do the self-exploration to develop your Passion Core and use the insights to help you bring more of what lights you up into your current work. Share your Passion Core with your boss so he/she can help you move in that direction.

2) Identify where you want to go. This article will give you a good overview of using your Passion Core and The Occupational Adventure Guide model to figure that out (better yet, you could work with me directly).

3) Adjust your time frame and plan accordingly. Just because something can't be done today doesn't mean it can't ever be done. Resist the urge to paint the future with today's reality.

Look at the things getting in your way - responsibilities, finances, experience, etc. - and ask, "If I can't now, when could I? How?" What is impossible, unlikely, or just too scary today might be completely within the realm of possibility five years from now if you begin taking action today. Plan ahead and start making decisions with your end goal in mind.

4) Take a dual track. While you continue on your current path, identify parallel steps you can take that will move you in the direction you want to go. For example, that could be networking and building the relationships you need, developing an expertise, taking classes, etc.

5) Create a framework to help keep you on track. The challenge will be keeping your focus on the goal and consistently taking action for the long term. Figure out what helps you stay on track and incorporate that into your approach. Create a schedule. Bring friends and colleagues into your process to help keep you motivated and accountable. Hire a coach. Map out a plan with steps to take and milestones.

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Curt Rosengren

Passion Catalyst  ^SM

Career passion e-books

NPR's Take Two: Career change stories

Over on the Worthwhile blog, Kate Yandoh points to a great NPR series called Take Two that takes a look at people who have changed careers to pursue their passions. I'm a big fan of both the learning and inspiration that other people's stories offer. Check it out!

Curt Rosengren

Passion Catalyst  ^SM

Career passion e-books

Changing jobs vs. changing your job

It's not always necessary to make a wholesale change to find more satisfaction in the work you do. This article suggests some ideas for how to change your job instead. The author says he has learned "not to underestimate the power of creativity and commitment in shaping your daily work."

He suggests:

* Put yourself in a position where you're more likely to be at the right place at the right time (e.g., express an interest in a direction you would like to go so if the opportunity opens up, the powers that be will be aware of it).

* Find pet projects. Look for opportunities to pile more of the things you really want to be doing onto your plate.

* Write your own reality. Identify something you would like to do, make a solid case for how it would benefit the company/organization, and pitch the idea.

He wraps up the article with an interesting perspective:

So how can you go about reshaping your work?

Whether you realize it or not, you probably are already shaping your job. If you volunteer for tasks you like, you gain self-esteem and company praise. Conversely, if you fail to volunteer for new tasks or fail to come up with new ideas yourself, you have limited how your employer sees you. You have, in essence, not only failed to think outside the box, you have boxed yourself in by limiting your job satisfaction and career potential.

To break out of your mold, you need to ask yourself what exactly it is that you want to do. It does not matter what field you are in - journalism, insurance, accounting. Something attracted you to the business. Get back in touch with that, and creative ideas will follow. Then all you have to do is sell your employer on letting you make the improvements or changes.

Curt Rosengren
Passion Catalyst ^SM

Job-jumping genes

OK, so this is only loosely related to career passion, but it was just too interesting not to post...

An article in Psychology Today asks, "Is there a job-jumping gene?"

Using genetic data and questionnaires from 2401 pairs of identical and fraternal twins, University of Minnesota researcher Brian McCall, Ph.D., calculated the siblings' job satisfaction levels, their work values (such as whether they enjoyed challeges), and the frequency with which they switched jobs and fields. Genetic factors, McCall reports in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, explained a third of the twins' job changes and 26 percent of their career changes Even when work values and job satisfaction were accounted for, one in five job changes and 15 percent of career switches were attributed to genetic factors.

While McCall believes this study is a promising first step in determining how biology affects job permanence, he notes that the job data recorded for each subject didn't distinguish between voluntary and involuntary departures. So it's unclear whether genes influence the tendency to quit jobs--or a talent for getting fired.

Curt Rosengren
Passion Catalyst ^SM

Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra

It's not often that I read a career book and find myself compelled to highlight it from cover to cover, but that's exactly what I did with Herminia Ibarra's excellent book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. I highly recommend it.

The basic idea behind the book is that the standard model of self-exploration, deciding where you want to go, and establishing a plan to make it happen simply isn't in line with how we really work as human beings.

The reality, according to Ibarra, is that our awareness and understanding of where we need to go is an iterative process. She says:

"We learn who we are - in practice, not in theory - by testing reality, not by looking inside. We discover the true possibilities by doing - trying out new activities, reaching out to new groups, finding new role models, and reworking our story as we tell it to those around us. What we want clarifies with experience and validation from others along the way.

...To launch ourselves anew, we need to get out of our heads. We need to act.

While I don't agree with her minimization of the role of self-exploration - I think it's a crucial step - I completely agree with her notion that often that the full picture can only come from ongoing action and exploration.

I'll be posting more thoughts from Ibarra's book in days to come.

Curt Rosengren
Passion Catalyst ^SM