When It’s Time To Move On In Your Career

Sometimes, you feel it when it’s time to move on. The feeling can come as a sudden flash of insight, or as the acceptance of a lingering feeling that has been creeping up on you. In either case, the scales have been tipped in favor of moving on in your career and change jobs.

The slow fall (neglect)

It’s not a nice thing when you realize that over time, you’ve been feeling worse and worse about your job. Maybe it’s a boring, repetitive function, your colleagues are unsupportive, the atmosphere at work is dreadful, or you find yourself swamped in work you didn’t sign on for and many late hours getting everything done.

Likely this has been going on quite a while, and you’ve been subconsciously rationalizing for yourself why you should stay. After all, people preferring the pain of the known over leaping into the unknown. But at some point the pressure builds up and you find yourself unable to continue. The slow fall is characterized by worsening episodes of passivity, unable to get work done when you need to, leading to a mad rush close to the deadline. You find yourself disinterested in your company and the results of your work, slowly becoming detached and disengaged. For a time you go through the motions and mechanically perform your job, but you feel you don’t have your heart in it, and you dread going to work or to meetings.

Often this is accompanied by periods of high-stress without ability to unwind, depression and self-doubt and perhaps even a burnout.
If you find yourself secretly wishing you’d get fired, just to get this over with, then you have reached the bottom of the well.

Here my advice would be to take a step back and look at your job, and try and remember the last time you enjoyed it. Try and find out what changed, or still is changing, that is causing you to feel negative. Maybe new policies made your life difficult without improving the quality of your work? New management lacking personal interaction making you feel like you’re just a cog in the machine? Were you swamped with tasks from other colleagues that left the company, or reverse, were tasks you enjoyed taken from you and given to someone else?

It might be possible to salvage your job, if you can find out what changed for the worse, and discuss with your manager to improve it. But if those odds are unlikely, it’s best to spend time on finding another job. And this time, knowing what changed and what you did and did not like, you will be better prepared to prevent a repeat.

The straw on the camel’s back (distrust)

Not all negatives come as a slow creep, sometimes we are confronted with them hard and fast. You get a new manager and they tell you to their face they don’t like you. Maybe your coworkers are intolerant to you or bully you. Maybe the company decides to skip out on paying you your bonus or ignore you for promotion while giving preference to a younger, less experienced candidate. Maybe you find your colleagues leaving the company in droves leaving you as the last one of “the old guard”.

Whatever the situation, something changes for the worse, and it immediately confronts you with the feeling that you don’t belong anymore.

The irony of the situation here, compared to the slow fall, is that you were perfectly happy before. Something changed to the negative in one go, and because of that it is all the more startling. If you feel hurt, betrayed and confused then you’ve likely entered this territory. You had plans for the future, even if it just meant keep doing your job until retirement, and know it’s like the floor was dashed out from under you. Feelings of floating, aimlessness and disconnection are a big warning signs, especially if you’ve found yourself wandering around physically dazed.

Often there’s no turning back from the event that broke your trust in the company, and even if you continue on you’ve downgraded your level of loyalty to company. Each successive failure, betrayal or negative consequence will further sink the ship. Here you can tell very clearly which events were responsible for this decline, as you will likely be going over them in your head quite regularly. In the earlier stages there’s still support: “I can’t understand why the company would do this, there must be a mistake”. But at some point this degrades into complete distrust: “That’s another example of their incompetence, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised anymore”. And at that point, your relationship with your company has suffered potentially irreparable damage.

Not only should you be looking for another job, but it would be wise to get out of that situation quickly. Take holiday, sick leave, administrative leave – whatever you need to put time and distance between you and your job. You are not well and you might run the danger of damaging yourself, making it impossible for you to even contemplate a career, changing jobs, or trusting another company. Do something completely different in your days, go out into nature, see new places, try a new hobby – whatever allows you to detach. Once you feel better, look at what you like doing, and what you are looking for in a job and a company. Make those the top priority in your job search.

Growing out of your work clothes (Growth)

The most common way of moving on isn’t by a big-bang change, but by incremental changes. You get a good performance review, an extra task here or there, or are allowed to participate in bigger projects. Every step grows your confidence, expertise, and value in the eyes of the company. The reverse of the slow fall, the slow rise is the most natural way to advance. From junior to medior to senior, you deepen your current role.

But at some point, you find out that you have reached the limit of your job’s possibilities. Maybe there simply is no way up career-wise, or you find that the tasks are getting repetitive. If you’re not content with the depth and reach of your current job, but are lacking in ways to advance, this may be applicable to you. Often this is categorized by vague feelings of unease or dissatisfaction, despite there being no obvious reasons for it. You should be happy by all rights, the pay is fine, the hours acceptable and you feel engaged in your company. And yet you feel that you could (and should!) do more than this.

Maybe you’re browsing job sites “just to find out what’s out there” or to check what other companies have added into your role description that’s not there now. Or, you looked at profiles of people doing your job on Linkedin, trying to find out what they did next to, or after, this job and whether you measure up. You may also feel confused, uncertain how to go from here. You are secure in your job enough to want to “have something like this” but find that whatever’s missing is important enough that you keep mulling about it.

You may be on the cusp of changing from a simple job into a career proper, or perhaps what you do isn’t the issues, but at what level. Here you have ample opportunities to discuss with your manager what options there might be in your company, and be open and flexible about this. Consider for yourself whether you’d like to do your function at a “continent” level rather than in one country, or whether you’d like to manage a team. Perhaps you’ve always wanted to live in a different country, and this is an opportunity to introduce your job at other locations. Or if your role is rather obscure or specialistic, perhaps branching out into being an author, public speaker, or industry leader might give you satisfaction in addition to your current job.

If no such options exist, it may be time to branch out to other companies, or perhaps a different department in the same company. One piece of advice here is to broaden the scope of your skills and grow into them. Perhaps “payroll administration” can be extended to “payroll management” or “HR finances”. This would give you a broader scope to find a new job in, or avenues to educate yourself in while you look.

The ugly duckling (Expectations)

Sometimes you will feel yourself judged professionally based on things that are not your strong point. This is pretty common at the start of one’s career, where you will take a job and find out that you’re just not proficient at it. You get a bad performance review, and it seems like that marks you as a person rather than as an employee. If this repeats itself, it can often lead to the feeling of being incompetent at any job, and then you might downgrade your expectations of your job and the results you contribute. But what always will stand out is that no colleague or manager will make disparaging comments about your personality or work ethic, but always the quality of your work. “You’re a great person, but you never finish anything” or “We love to have you around, but you keep making rookie mistakes” or “We like you, but this is a quota-driven company and if you don’t make the numbers, you don’t make the cut”.

In the story of the ugly duckling, the yellow ducklings make fun of the one black duckling that swims among them. But as they grow up, they grow up to be ducks, and thus match expectations. The black duckling however, turns into a swan instead, exceeding all expectations because of being miscategorized all its life.

When you feel incompetent, and cannot seem to contribute meaningfully in your job, you may simply be in the entirely wrong job. This is where you need help, because you’ve been miscategorized. People saw you for one kind of worker, but you’re a completely different kind. Like being hired for receptionist’s work but actually being excellent at coding, changing jobs isn’t just better for your health and emotions, it may very well improve your paycheck.

If you have this nagging feeling that there must be more to your career, or that you’re not living up to potential, seek out help. Find a job coach, career specialist or change up your life. Try and turn a hobby into a job, or take classes into whatever subjects interest you. The key to overcoming this feeling lies in exploring and expanding yourself. Education, experimentation, exploration – those are the keywords to bring you the answers you seek.

Maybe you can’t finish anything because you have a drive to start new things or improve things that can stand to be made better. Perhaps you can’t do quotas because you genuinely want to help people, and selling them stuff isn’t in your nature – you need to do a job where people need real help. Or you find that rookie mistakes happen because you’re not emotionally involved in your job, and you need to do a job that matters, with societal or personal significance. Only by finding this out can you get on the right track, and find the job that is right for you.

The butterfly effect (Reinvention)

Sometimes the changes isn’t in what you do, but who you are. We act according to our own self-image, but this can be affected and even commandeered by others, leaving us confused and in doubt about our identities. Without a clear sense of who we are and what we want, we can’t make informed decisions and end up in bad jobs, bad relationships and bad habits. Maybe you were always discouraged from trying new things, or your words were always questioned. You might’ve been routinely told that “this is not for you” or “you can’t do this”. And once we hear these things often enough, we tend to believe them. Especially if those words are spoken by people with power and regard, such as parents, teachers and managers.

This may mean you are working well below your ability, or are deferring your decisions to someone else. You may be seen as “unremarkable”, “indecisive” or “not a career person”. Maybe a manager tells you that you are doing a great job, but when it comes to your career you either never get a promotion or find your career goals expressed over many years, as if to hold you close and not actually letting you grow. Maybe promises are broken as “situations change” or they “never said you could do that education”, or you
just have to take their word for it”. As time progresses, personal growth and job opportunities pass you by as you either play it safe or dare not jump into new things. Your career grows stunted, you feel you are running behind the world, and there may be an all-pervasive feeling of something being wrong with your life.

Identity disorders are more common than we’d like to know, often inflicted upon us by people who have power over us, and they can cause permanent scars and motivational issues. If you feel like this, my advice would be to see a psychologist and get a diagnosis made. Commonly known as gaslighting, the act of undermining a person’s independence and self-image is often done by people with narcissistic personalities. Sometimes it may make you feel like you are “not real” or “not in control of your life”. Warning signs include the following:

• Often being told that you are crazy, negative or emotional
• Repetition of telling people something, for them to deny you ever said it
• Repetition of someone telling you that they had already informed you, when they did not
• Someone tells you that you are “always X” when that just doesn’t sound like you at all
• Emails or comments that always seem to skirt the line between casual-friendly and passive-aggressive

Regardless of whether this is a long-term or short-term situation, if it started in your childhood or recently at work, it is something to avoid. Basically, minimizing or even breaking contact with people trying to manipulate and change you is the best thing. Then, once there is distance, you may find yourself capable of breathing freely and taking stock of your situation. Only then can you make proper decisions. And this may be very, very hard if this has been going on for a long time.

Do personality tests, online and through work, maybe through a psychologist, and aggregate the results. Try and compare these findings to what you’ve been told you are and embrace whichever truly feels best to you. You may find yourself torn in between two “yous” but in my opinion it’s best to choose the one you feel best about, not the comfortable or safe choice.

For example, if your personality test shows you are an extravert and like people when everybody always told you that you are an introvert loner, try being an extravert. Talk to people, externalize your emotions – maybe do it on a holiday so you can do it in the safety of not leaving any impressions behind. If this feels good, if this makes you feel more confident and real than before, why not go with it?

This is the hardest form of change, both in identifying it and acting upon it. It may upset a lot in your life, as we’re often liable to choose the safe, status-quo option over the one that will give us the greatest benefit. Consider how many new-years resolutions make it to the end of the year! For this you will need a lot of support, so find out who your real friends and supporters are, and ask them to assist you in being the real you.

The personal epiphany (Motivation)

Our work motivations are many, and they influence how we feel about our daily jobs. We need money to live, sure, but there’s a host of other things we need from our jobs. Once again I point to the (imperfect but very illustrative) Maslow’s hierarchy of needs I discussed previously.

But sometimes we have a tendency to place one need above the others. Like if we have a family, money goes up in ranking because that’s not cheap. Or maybe flexible hours become top-notch because we want to spend time with them. But not always are these reasons logical or well-founded, and sometimes we fool ourselves. We get a job “because of the prestige” or “because of how it looks on our resume” without considering whether we’ll actually be able to do it, or feel happy while doing it.

This might be happening if you feel confident in your job and competence, but are starting to wonder why you’re doing it. You may be pondering other potential careers that “I always wanted to do” or “that I had forgotten about”. Perhaps you wanted to travel, work with animals, become a writer, or changed career to gain entry into a new field and then somehow found yourself stuck in it. Maybe you feel like you’re not in control of what job you do, so much as that you are flowing along on the stream and wait for opportunities to present themselves.

Either way, my advice here would be to sit back and write down all the reasons for having your job. What makes it great? What makes it awful? What opportunities does it present? How does it stand morally? Financially? Do you feel empowered, is that important? Does it give prestige, and do you care? Answer these questions, challenge your thinking. What is the worst that could happen if you lost your job right now? Would you feel devastated? Lost? Liberated? And why?

Imagine the scenarios, and there’s a good chance that an image might pop up of who you want to be, the reasons you want to do your job. And if that’s a job you’re not doing right now, it means it might be time for a change. Maybe you are doing the right job for the wrong reasons, and you need to reconsider some of your choices. It’s never too late to change, or start, a career if this makes you more fulfilled.

Conclusion

These are some of the most common feelings involved when you are reaching the end of the rope when it comes to your current job or company. Sometimes these changes are because of positive things, sometimes negative. But in all cases, they are things you need to face, acknowledge and address. Change is inevitable, but progress is in your own hands.