Is Your Career Heading in the Right Direction?
In this article, initially published on HBR.org, Julia Milner, Professor at EDHEC, advocates the need for regular ‘career detox’, taking a step back from oneself and one's career decisions and directions.
As we transition from one season to the next, we should all be checking in on ourselves and how we feel at work to identify the areas where we can make a positive change. This might include adding something new to our routines or throwing away old habits that are no longer serving us.
I call this practice a “career detox” and encourage my clients to do it at least once a quarter. Throughout my years of coaching executives, consulting with organizations, and teaching business students, I’ve found that it helps people at every level flourish and sidestep the all-too-common experience of burnout.
The first step involves turning inward and asking yourself a series of reflective questions focused on whether you’re still happy with your current path. The second step is all about naming your values, and the third is about aligning what you’ve learned to your career.
You, too, can use this three-step practice to figure out what you might need to add or subtract from your work life right now.
1. Ask: How am I doing?
Most of us are conditioned to constantly ask others how they’re doing. But how often do we ask this of ourselves? Career satisfaction starts with self-leadership and self-awareness, as no one can advocate for your success and happiness better than you.
To start, set aside just 15 minutes to reflect on your feelings, thinking, and energy levels. I recommend writing down your answers to the following questions to keep track of what you learn.
How are you feeling?
At this stage of your life, and in this moment, how are you doing emotionally? Take stock of this last season at work and try to connect the dots of ups and downs. Do you feel generally satisfied? Bored and restless? Stressed or overworked? Have you had more good days than bad, or bad than good?
The goal here is to identify whether you’re content with your emotional state. The goal isn’t to be happy all the time, but rather, to look for patterns that you want to keep or change. So, be honest with yourself and note if something is off. Any and every emotion is valid as long as it’s true to your experience.
At this point, you can also commit to tracking your feelings on a regular basis to see what brings you happiness and what takes it away. Some of my clients work with a positive mood organizer throughout the year: a place — like a Word document, mood board, or notebook — where they collect positive feedback and comments, or write down joyful moments at work. During reflection time, it helps them look back and remember their wins. You can use this same method to document your losses, negative experiences, or things you’d like to change.
What has occupied my thinking this quarter?
Reflect on the different ways you’ve used your time and energy. What have you given the most attention? Were you focused on a particular project or goal? Did things feel stagnant or overly busy? Were there any issues or challenges you ruminated on? Sometimes it also helps to look at what you didn’t give much brain space to, but wish you could have focused on more.
Was I energized by my work — including tasks, interactions, and goals — most days or not?
Look at what you wrote down when reflecting on your feelings and thoughts. How do your answers connect to the actual work you were doing? In general, was it more energizing and positive for your well-being or was it draining and bad for your mental health? Your energy is arguably one of your most important currencies. While you don’t have to love your job every day, it should fulfill you more than it drains you — at least if the goal is to avoid stress and burnout.
Ask yourself:
- Was I excited by my work, or did I wake up each morning dreading the day ahead?
- How did that impact the feelings and thoughts I’ve had this past quarter?
For example, let’s say you’ve identified that, this past quarter, you felt stressed most days and gave much of your mental energy to a particular project. In this step, you might come to the realization that you were stressed by this project because it drained you rather than energized you. This could be due to a variety of reasons. Perhaps the project didn’t align with your long-term goals, interests, or passions. Maybe you were forced to collaborate with colleagues whose work styles clashed with your own. Or maybe your core responsibilities no longer align with your values.
Let’s take a closer look at your values to identify whether they’ve changed over the past season.
2. Reassess: Have my values evolved, and how?
Your values are what drive you and matter to you most. They’re often the “why” behind your actions. They could include family, friendship, adventure, or justice. In the context of work, your values might include leadership, transparency, sustainable business practices, a strong community, or sense of meaning, among others. Often, our passions and interests are tied to our values — we feel energized by certain things because they align with who we are, and therefore, fulfill us.
For example, if you value sustainable business practices, you may be passionate about ESG-focused initiatives and find those projects energizing at work. If you value a strong work community, collaborating with colleagues who are interested in building deep connections likely feels more fulfilling to you than colleagues who prefer to work alone. If you value family and have a job that feels boring but has great work-life balance, you might not be energized by the work itself, but by the great benefits it offers.
That said, it’s natural for your values to evolve or change over time as you gain more life experience and learn more about what you want for yourself now and in the future. That’s why it’s good to check in.
Ask yourself:
- What’s most important to me at work? (Try to think of a few single words; for example: trust, compassion, sustainability, growth, balance.)
- Has this always been true, or has it changed in the last quarter? (You may discover that some things have become more or less important to you at this point in your life.)
- Looking at my current values, what do those words mean to me? (While values often take the form of big words — success, ambition, fairness — think about how you wish those words would manifest in your everyday job.)
- How do my values actually show up — or not show up — at work? (Are your values truly reflected in your professional relationships, your responsibilities, or your company culture?)
Whatever your values might be, answering these questions can help you figure out what you need to add or subtract from your career to better align your work with the things that drive you.
3. Detox: What can I change?
Now it’s time to apply what you’ve learned to your current situation. What can you change now that you’ve gained more insight into what you want, and don’t want, at work? I’ve found it’s useful to organize this information in the following ways...
