Episode 99

Stop Blaming Yourself for Being Late: Time Blindness, Drift, and What Actually Works

You can be successful at your job and still wonder, “Is this really it?”

Maybe the career that made sense in your twenties no longer fits the person you are in your forties. Maybe you are good at what you do, well compensated, and respected by your colleagues, yet Sunday night still brings that sinking feeling about the week ahead.

That does not necessarily mean you chose the wrong career. It also does not mean you should quit your job tomorrow.

According to career and talent strategist Stephen Shortt, it may mean that it is time to get much more curious about the fit between your abilities, interests, environment, and the life you want to build.

I recently spoke with Stephen, creator of CareerFit and an expert in career development, talent, and purpose, about why accomplished people can become disconnected from their work and how to figure out what needs to change.

The Career That Fit You Then May Not Fit You Now

Stephen understands career change from personal experience.

He grew up in family businesses and eventually bought and ran his family's English language school. It was a career that worked for him for years. Over time, however, his interests changed.

The next logical steps in that business no longer excited him.

That realization led to an important insight: What was right for you 15 years ago does not have to be right for you now.

We sometimes treat our career decisions as though they were permanent declarations of identity. You chose a field. You earned the degree. You accumulated experience. You built a reputation. Therefore, you are supposed to keep going.

Except people change.

Our interests change. Our families change. Our priorities change. The kind of challenge that once energized us may eventually feel repetitive or draining.

Changing direction does not necessarily mean throwing away everything you have already built, either. The skills you have developed can often transfer into work that fits who you are now.

As Stephen put it, you do not necessarily need a forever job. You need a “for now” career.

You Probably Have More Transferable Skills Than You Think

One of the biggest obstacles to career change is the feeling that starting something new means starting over.

That is rarely the whole story.

By the time you reach your thirties, forties, or fifties, you have likely accumulated far more than expertise in a particular job title or industry. You may have developed skills in leadership, communication, strategic thinking, problem-solving, project management, relationship building, decision-making, or creative thinking.

Stephen argues that having a spectrum of skills can actually be an advantage.

A highly specialized skill can be enormously valuable, but industries and technology change. A broader collection of abilities gives you more ways to adapt those strengths to new environments.

Instead of asking, “What other job can someone with my current title do?” consider asking, “What am I exceptionally good at doing, and where else is that valuable?”

That is a very different question.

The Intersection of Ability, Interest, and Demand

Stephen uses three overlapping areas to think about career fit:

• Ability: Are you good at it?

• Interest: Do you actually enjoy doing it?

• Demand: Will someone pay you to do it?

If you have the ability and interest but nobody will pay you for it, you may have a hobby.

If you are interested in something and a market exists for it, but you do not currently have the ability, it may be a dream you can develop the skills to pursue.

If you have the ability and people will pay you well, but you have little interest in the work, you have a job.

The sweet spot is the intersection of all three.

This also explains why being very good at your job does not guarantee that you will find it fulfilling.

Competence and fit are not the same thing.

When the Golden Handcuffs Are Really Golden

Of course, knowing that you dislike your work and walking away from a well-paid career are two very different things.

There may be a mortgage, children, college tuition, excellent benefits, or a lifestyle built around your current income.

Stephen makes an important distinction about those golden handcuffs: They may strongly entice you to stay, but they do not necessarily mean you have no choices.

Sometimes staying is a perfectly reasonable choice.

You may decide that your job provides the financial resources you want while you find meaning through family, hobbies, travel, volunteering, or other parts of your life.

The important part is making that decision intentionally.

There is a difference between saying, “This job is not my deepest passion, but it supports a life I genuinely value,” and saying, “I am miserable, but I guess this is what I have to do forever.”

Happiness Is Progress Toward Purpose

During our conversation, Stephen shared a definition of happiness that I particularly liked:

Happiness is progress toward purpose.

If you are making progress but have no sense of purpose, you may feel like you are spinning your wheels.

If you have a clear sense of purpose but cannot make progress toward it, you are likely to become frustrated.

Purpose plus progress creates momentum.

Stephen uses a framework he calls HAPPY to help people explore what that purpose might look like:

• Highlights: What do you want to experience, accomplish, build, or explore?

• Appreciation: What has your life taught you so far, including through difficult experiences?

• Progress: What skills, habits, or abilities would you like to develop?

• People: Who matters most to you, and what qualities do you admire in others?

• Your contribution: What do you want to put into the world for other people?

The goal is not necessarily to emerge with one grand purpose statement that dictates the rest of your life.

Look for the threads.

What keeps appearing? What matters repeatedly? What kinds of experiences energize you? What do you want to contribute?

Your purpose can also change. You can have purposes for the next six months, five years, or twenty years.

Be Careful Not to Confuse the Means With the End

Another reason successful people can end up dissatisfied is that somewhere along the way, the thing they were pursuing became disconnected from the reason they wanted it.

Maybe you wanted financial success because you wanted freedom.

Then you became so focused on earning more money that you lost the freedom you were trying to create.

Maybe you wanted a beautiful home because you imagined filling it with people you love.

Then you spent so much time working to afford the house that you stopped investing in those relationships.

The house, title, salary, promotion, or sports car may be the means.

Ask yourself what the end was supposed to be.

What did you believe achieving that thing would allow you to experience?

That answer may tell you much more about what you actually want.

You Cannot Give 100 Percent to Everything

Career dissatisfaction can also be difficult to distinguish from plain old overload.

You want to excel professionally, be a fantastic parent and partner, exercise regularly, sleep eight hours, maintain friendships, help your aging parents, participate in your community, eat well, keep the house running, and perhaps have a hobby or two.

There is nothing wrong with wanting those things.

The problem comes when you expect yourself to excel at all of them simultaneously.

As Stephen pointed out during our conversation, if you give 20 percent of your total energy to six different things, you are already trying to operate at 120 percent.

Something has to give.

At different times in life, different priorities may need more attention. Career may take the lead for a period. Family may move forward during another season. Sometimes “good enough” really does need to be good enough.

That is not failure. It is resource allocation.

Saying Yes to Everything Can Pull You Away From Your Best Work

This becomes especially important at work.

Capable people are frequently rewarded for their competence with more opportunities to demonstrate it.

Someone needs to lead the meeting. You are good at leading meetings, so you volunteer.

There is another project that needs an owner. You know you could handle it, so you say yes.

A colleague needs help. Of course you can squeeze it in.

Individually, each decision may make sense. Collectively, they can scatter your time and energy across so many responsibilities that you no longer have enough left for the work where you could truly shine.

Knowing your direction makes it easier to evaluate those requests.

The question becomes less about “Can I do this?” and more about “Is this where I want to put my limited time and energy?”

Look Beneath the Activities You Enjoy

When people start exploring career possibilities, they are often told to “do what you love.”

That advice needs another step.

Suppose you love gardening. That does not automatically mean you should become a professional gardener.

Ask yourself what you love about gardening.

Maybe you love planning exactly where everything will go and thinking months ahead about what will bloom when. That could point toward strengths in strategy and long-term planning.

Maybe you love taking a project from beginning to end. That could reveal an affinity for project management and execution.

Maybe you love gardening because nobody talks to you while you are doing it.

Also useful information.

Instead of jumping directly from an activity you enjoy to a career that resembles that activity, go one or two levels deeper.

Ask:

• What specifically do I enjoy about this?

• What am I doing when I lose track of time?

• What kinds of problems do I enjoy solving?

• What part of this experience gives me energy?

• What strengths am I using?

• Where else could I use those same strengths?

You can do this with hobbies, childhood interests, volunteer work, previous jobs, and everyday activities.

You may discover common threads running through experiences that appear completely unrelated on the surface.

Neurodivergent Strengths Often Depend on the Environment

This way of thinking can be particularly powerful for people with ADHD, dyslexia, autism, or other forms of neurodivergence.

A trait that creates difficulty in one environment may become an advantage in another.

Stephen talked about people with dyslexia becoming excellent problem-solvers because they approach information differently, as well as people whose ability to sustain intense attention on repetitive technical processes becomes highly valuable in software testing.

The child who was repeatedly told they talked too much may eventually discover a career that pays them to speak, teach, sell, interview, or connect with people.

The person who was told they were too sensitive may discover that their sensitivity allows them to notice nuances and connect with people in ways others miss.

Sometimes the problem is not that you need to eliminate a trait.

You may need an environment in which that trait can become useful.

Before You Quit Your Job, Figure Out What You Actually Hate

If you are driving home thinking, “I hate my job,” resist the urge to immediately translate that into, “I need a completely different career.”

Get more specific first.

You might hate:

• Your boss

• Your organization's culture

• Your department

• The industry

• The lack of creativity

• The quality of the work

• The constant pressure

• A particular responsibility

• The absence of challenge

• The work itself

Those problems require very different solutions.

If you love marketing but hate your company's culture, changing careers may be unnecessary. A different employer might solve much of the problem.

If you like your company but your current role has become repetitive, perhaps another department would provide the challenge you need.

If you realize that you are no longer interested in the fundamental work itself, then a larger career change may be worth exploring.

You do not have to answer the entire question today.

Give yourself an hour this week. Sit somewhere comfortable with a cup of coffee and ask yourself:

What, specifically, am I unhappy with?

Then go one level deeper.

You Don't Need to Know What You Want to Do Forever

Changing careers in your thirties, forties, or fifties can require courage.

There are financial considerations. There may be family responsibilities. There is also social pressure. Moving into a new field could mean temporarily taking a lower-level position, earning less, or exchanging some of the visible markers of success you have accumulated.

But you are not required to choose your next career for the rest of your life.

You are choosing what fits now.

The work that challenges, interests, and fulfills you today may eventually stop doing so. If that happens, you can reevaluate again.

The goal is not to find one perfect career and cling to it forever.

It is to understand yourself well enough to recognize when your work fits, when it does not, and what you might want to do about it.

Sometimes that means a new career.

Sometimes it means a new employer, a new role, stronger boundaries, or permission to stop trying to be exceptional at everything simultaneously.

And sometimes the first step is simply sitting down long enough to ask yourself the question you have been avoiding:

What is it about my work that isn't working for me anymore?

The answer might be much more specific, and much more solvable, than you think.

👉 Resources

• Find Stephen: happypeopleproject.com | careerfit.com | stephenshortt.com

• Sign up for the weekly Sunday Reset Newsletter

The information contained and documents referenced in the podcast “Your Priority Centered Life” are for entertainment, educational and informational purposes only, and are not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, professional medical or health treatment, diagnosis, or advice. We strongly encourage listeners to consult with medical providers or qualified mental health providers with issues and questions regarding any physical and/or mental health symptoms or concerns that they may have. Furthermore, the opinions and views expressed by podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates are not necessarily those of the podcast host. Dr. Alise Murray’s opinions and views are expressed in her individual capacity and are not to be construed as those of any of her podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates.