Put this into practice

TRY · 12 MIN

Work Fit

TAIU

Conditions you work well in, held against the work you are considering.

Matches conditions you work well in against the work you are considering.

LEARN · FREE SERVICE

National Careers Service

Department for Education

Free, impartial, and more useful than most paid career content.

Free careers advice in England, including skills assessments and a telephone adviser.

READ · BOOK

Working Identity

Herminia Ibarra

Read this if you have been reflecting on the same possible change for two years and have never once tried a small version of it.

Ibarra followed people through major career and identity change and found that almost none of them thought their way to an answer first. They acted first, in small reversible experiments, and their sense of who they were caught up afterwards. It is the strongest available argument against sitting still until you feel certain.

READ · RESEARCH

A Theory of Work Role Transitions

Nigel Nicholson

Nicholson sets out when a person adjusts to a new role and when they reshape the role instead. Useful for working out which kind of move you are actually capable of making.

READ · RESEARCH

Career Construction Theory and Practice

Mark Savickas

Savickas treats a working life as a story a person is building rather than a set of traits to be matched to job titles. It changes what question you ask first.

READ · RESEARCH

Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work

Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton

Evidence that people reshape the same job substantially without changing the job title. Worth reading before concluding the only route is out.

READ · RESEARCH

Motivation Through the Design of Work

Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham

Five characteristics of work that predict whether somebody thrives in it: variety, identity, significance, autonomy and feedback. A specification you can carry between industries.