Tool 47 · Develop yourself
This exercise never asks what you would love to do. It works from occasions when the work went well and what the conditions were.
A guided 20 to 24 minute conversation using ChatGPT. Free, no account, nothing to sign up to.
01
Copy
Take the TAIU prompt.
02
Paste
Open ChatGPT.
03
Talk
One question at a time.
Copies the TAIU prompt. Paste it into ChatGPT.
You don't need ChatGPT Plus. The free version is fine.
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 explore
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.
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
01
Conditions that recur
02
Problems you are drawn to
03
What you have gone off
04
A specification
+
Your TAIU handover — a portable summary of everything the conversation established.
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 and ask what a bad week looks like.
What I would do
Work from occasions, not from ambitions.
Look for the conditions that recur, not the job titles.
Describe the problems you like as problems, not as sectors.
Treat your constraints as part of the design.
Test a direction cheaply before you commit to it.
Test it
When did the work last go genuinely well, and what were the conditions?
What are you good at and no longer want to do?
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
Take this to Ask Mark
Interpretation, not another copy-and-paste exercise.
Take this to Ask Mark →Finished the exercise?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Next tool
If you need the evidence for what you are actually good at
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
Article
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
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
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
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.