How to change your working life...
Observations on work and change...
Last week I hosted a Changes scheduled chat here on Substack themed around change and work.
The chat was inspired by this note from Allegra Chapman, in which she described her husband leaving his office job to be a plumber and how many other men he met on his training course who had left their office jobs to retrain too. She asked
“I'm wondering if there is a shift happening. Are more people wanting to work with their hands? To get back to making rather than consuming? To be connected to the fabric of life - plugged in to what makes our lives function - rather than separated from it all?”
Four years ago I performed a very public pivot from my job in national radio broadcasting to novel writing. I have learnt so much along the way about how a big work change feels; how it can initially shake but ultimately solidify your sense of identity, your values, your connection to yourself. Having been asked about it in every interview since, I know that there is endless curiosity around how to do it effectively.
So I took the theme of ‘job changes and how we have navigate them’ to the Changes subscribers - It was a meaty topic with much to offer. I’ve compiled a list of learnings from our discussion below.
If you would like to subscribe to Changes and to join in and initiate threads in our chat groups then you can do so here…
OBSERVATIONS ON CHANGE IN OUR WORKING LIVES.
The biggest prohibitor of change in the workplace is money and financial security. .
To make a change demands serious mental energy, financial means, courage, support and mentorship and advice from peers.
The current economic climate is making people question the validity of being captive to their jobs.
Subscribers spoke of craving personal fulfilment and meaning in their working lives.
More subscribers are choosing to work with their hands or to work in a more ethical way that makes them feel like they are genuinely working towards the common good.
The opposing experience from some subscribers is that the combination of austerity and Brexit has created an undertone of uncertainty which encourages risk averse attitudes. Some subscribers spoke of how their jobs provided anchors for them in a world that is so in flux. They found comfort and stability in going back to the same job every day.
The UK and Ireland stand out for our severe attitudes to work. Our subscribers who live in Denmark and the Netherlands describe the different attitudes to work there;
“People don’t define themselves by work. There’s much less pressure to achieve - hierarchies are much flatter.”
There was a collective sense of guilt and inadequacy for not having ‘impressive’ careers. Even when people love what they do.
Lots of people lamented freelance life and how that seems to come with the flogging of one’s self and service on social media. Is it possible to succeed without it?
There is a strong and collective hatred of Linkedin!
BEFORE A CHANGE.
When you are stuck in a rut in your job, there is a sense of actively ignoring who you are every day you wake up and go to work.
Intuition is a huge factor when it comes to enacting change in your career. There is a sense of having to really self-excavate, to ask oneself over and over again, What do I want?
Sometimes when you are on the hamster wheel of a busy job, it feels impossible to find the time to figure out just how to break away from the cycle you are in. You have to consciously create space and protect that space in the same way you would treat an important work meeting.
The fear of the unknown is a powerful and paralysing force that inhibits change. When you do the same job for decades, stepping away can feel terrifying, not necessarily because you love it, but because you’ve lived it for so long. Subscriber Rosie said
‘Fear is a strong adhesive’.
It’s useful to have foresight into how a job change will affect your lifestyle. When it comes to the money part, one of our subscribers asked themselves ‘what I can live without and what I can absolutely not!’.
Job change doesn’t have to be a big dramatic pivot. It should happen at one’s own pace, over years if necessary, in order to feel safe enough to carry it out.
Jobs don’t have to be forever. One of our regulars just accepted a job in an industry she doesn’t really want to work in because it’s well paid and provides great pension contributions. We talked about how when you look at a job like this as finite then everything about it becomes easier.
RETRAINING
Retraining is costly. Time is also costly. To leave a job and start again at entry level means having a pot of money set aside to tide you over until you can start earning again.
A lot of people choose to retrain while still working, which can be really full on but can provide real clarity. You will experience in real time how each job makes you feel, right up close to each other.
As well as a whole lot of security and support, leaving a job and retraining in another vocation takes humility.
One of our subscribers told us about the Lifelong Learning Entitlement - a way to re-use your under grad student loans to study later in life.
A monthly career coach can change your working life so profoundly and is a really solid investment. Subscriber Aoife said, “It’s incredible how someone’s else’s clarity on YOUR situation in your work can benefit you.”
CONCLUSIONS
Whether it’s corporeal, psychological or circumstantial change, our lives never stop evolving. It makes sense that our job choices should evolve too.
There’s a sense among subscribers that we are conditioned to believe that a ‘proper career’ involves decades of working in the same field. But the ability to learn new skills and activate different parts of our brains in different ways is a real strength.
One subscriber described how her self worth was so tied up in academic achievement, first in school, then in uni, and how those skills were easily transferable to the corporate world. When she took that structure of success away it was extremely confronting but ultimately liberating.
Adjacent to academic achievement is the pervasive idea of self worth being tied up in status and salary. Unlearning this is a huge and profound change.
We are trained to see success in a vertical hierarchy - climbing up a ladder instead of in a more rounded way. Success can be the fullness of life beyond work, or fitting work around one’s life instead of life around one’s work.
Ultimately changing jobs is betting on yourself. If you feel stuck or unfulfilled, if you have stopped learning, if you are going through the motions, if you have the means and you can see a clear path out, then take the leap. Lean into change. Make it work for you.
Thanks so much for reading. Have you changed your job or are you in the process of switching careers? What are your motivations? If you’ve done it how was your experience? I’d love to hear from you in the comments…
I retrained to be a social worker nearly nine years ago. I found my office job very toxic. I randomly applied for a step up to social work training course, challenged other applicants on assessment day as they were v rude to each other and in my feedback said I had no chance of getting a place. Well I did. My job is challenging but when I can help to empower others it makes my day. I feel you get to a point in your life where you can’t just be a lego piece. Life is too short. You need to do something that helps keep your sanity.
I might be in this boat having recently been made redundant from a corporate job and at 55 wondering who would pay for tacit experience when they can hire cheaper graduates and use AI instead. I am not sure what will happen next but I am equally terrified and excited about not being on the hamster wheel for a little bit at least, maybe longer if the job market is as rubbish as everyone is saying. I went to an executive training workshop yesterday and there were 80 Gen Xers in the room and I think I was the only one who didn't have the fear. Maybe I'm being too much of a Pollyanna but I hope whatever happens next is the right thing 🤞