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Work Fit
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Conditions you work well in, held against the work you are considering.
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Tool 47 · Develop yourself
Has the right work changed, even if the job has not?
A guided 20 to 24 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. This exercise never asks what you would love to do. It works from occasions when the work went well and what the conditions were.
What are you good at and finished with?
Nobody will offer you a way out of your own competence. You have to say it yourself.
Conditions travel. Job titles do not. Write the specification before you go looking.
What you'll look at
- 01Two occasions
- 02The conditions
- 03What you have gone off
- 04What has changed
A note from Mark
People are much more consistent than they think, but not in the way they expect. Not consistent in sector or job title. Consistent in conditions. Some people need to see the end of the thing they are making. Some people need to be left alone. Some need a room to work in. Those patterns hold across thirty years and three industries.
So I would not ask what you want to do. I would ask about a specific time the work went well and then take the conditions apart. Two or three of those and the specification writes itself.
Read my full view ↓
The uncomfortable question is what you are good at and no longer want. Competence outlasts appetite by a decade and it pays well, which is why so many people are stuck doing something they are excellent at and quietly finished with. Nobody offers you a way out of your own strengths.
And I would be careful about the leap. Most of the time the conditions somebody needs are available closer to home than they assume, and testing beats deciding. Do a small piece of it before you spend two years and your savings finding out.
What you'll get
This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.
01
Conditions that recur
02
Problems you are drawn to
03
What you have gone off
04
A specification
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.
See everything included ↓
- 01What you came here with
- 02Where you have actually performed well
- 03The conditions that recur
- 04The problems you are drawn to
- 05What you no longer want
- 06What has changed since you last chose
- 07Your constraints
- 08The characteristics of work that fit you now
- 09Possible directions
- 10The rival reading
- 11What deserves protecting
- 12The credible alternative
- 13What this exercise cannot decide
- 14What remains unresolved
- 15Where this goes next
When you finish
Bring it back to your tree.
Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.
At the end, the conversation asks how Work and purpose feels for you right now, in your own words. It also asks what, if anything, would feel different. Nothing changes on your tree unless you say it changes.
The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.
- Session
- Date
- The part of life this belongs to
- How you described it
- What would feel different
- What we found
- The alternative we tested
- What deserves protecting
- What should change, if anything
- Next actions
- What to notice or find out
- What remains unresolved
What now?
01 · Save it
Occasions where you performed well and why.
02 · Test it
Talk to two people doing the work you are curious about. Ask what a bad week looks like.
See more ↓
What I would do
- 01
Work from occasions, not from ambitions.
- 02
Look for the conditions that recur, not the job titles.
- 03
Describe the problems you like as problems, not as sectors.
- 04
Treat your constraints as part of the design.
- 05
Test a direction cheaply before you commit to it.
Test it
- 01
When did the work last go genuinely well, and what were the conditions?
- 02
What are you good at and no longer want to do?
- 03
What has changed since you last chose deliberately?
The alternative
The expected conclusion is that a different career is required. Two alternatives are commonly stronger. The characteristics may be entirely available inside the current field, sometimes inside the current employer and a change of shape is cheaper and faster than a change of industry. Or the fit may be perfectly good and the constraint has changed instead, in which case the work is about hours, travel or money rather than about the work itself. There is also the case where somebody is being paid well for something they went off five years ago, which is a fit problem masquerading as a motivation problem.
Think about this
- A specific week when the work went well, and why it did.
- How much of the work you like to own outright.
- Whether you prefer fixing, building, tending or explaining.
- What you are good at and have gone off.
- What has changed in your life since you last chose.
Take this to Ask Mark
You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.
This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.
Take this to Ask Mark →Put this into practice
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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.
Read more ↗
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Recommended by the TAIU community
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Next tool
What am I actually good at?
If you need the evidence for what you are actually good at
Before you start
Reading, if you would rather understand the question first.
Further thinking
Motivation Through the Design of Work
Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham
Career Construction Theory and Practice
Mark Savickas
A Theory of Work Role Transitions
Nigel Nicholson
See the thinking ↓
Article
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.
Article
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.
Article
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.
Book
Working Identity
Herminia Ibarra
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.