Hate Your Job? How to Escape to a New Career

Do you hate your job? I did, fifteen years ago. Stressed, poorlyrewarded and unappreciated, I found that simply packing my bag andleaving for work gave me a headache. It wasn’t just the company Iwas working for that was the problem. I was simply in the wrongcareer.

Trouble was, at the time, I really had no idea what else I mightdo. The internet was in its infancy so browsing sites likeClassifind.com.au for new opportunities wasn’t an option. Nor wasgoogling for ideas. It was very difficult to think outside the narrowbounds of the career I had more or less fallen in to.

Thankfully I did manage to turn things around. I have now foundwork that I can get paid for and enjoy. But looking back over thoseyears has prompted me to rethink the way we go about choosing jobsand careers, and in fact the way we go about setting ourselves goalmore broadly.

Goal Setting has become to Complex

My main conclusion is that goal setting has become too complex andscientific. Importantly, the idea of the 'dream' has become lost. 

Goal-setting books and websites - and there are many of them -tell us that, as individuals, we should be making detailed careerplans in order to achieve our goals. They advocate the steadyrung-by-rung climb up the ladder to the position ultimately soughtafter.

This ‘orderly approach’ thinking has a place, but it needs acontext.

Back in that unhappy period, I struggled to set meaningful goalsfor myself. I remember being encouraged to write my goals down. Toplan out 1 year, 3 year and 10 year goals. But I felt so trapped inthe job I disliked - and so unclear about what I wanted to do as analternative - that setting specific and measurable goals wasimpossible.

Having a dream is a starting point

What I did have was a dream: a very fuzzy idea of what I mightwant to do. For many years - since very early in my career - I hadfelt that I wanted to make a difference. To be in a situation to havea positive influence on peoples' lives. I also knew I wanted morevariety (I hate routine). And I had always admired genuine 'experts':those who not only knew their speciality really well but also knewhow to put it into practice. 

Deep down I knew these were things I wanted. Trouble was, Icouldn’t get them in my career at the time and no amount of goalsetting would see me move towards them. I just didn’t have enoughdetail to build a detailed plan on. However, with the benefit ofhindsight, I now realize that this dream was fundamental to giving methe courage to break out of the bind I was in.

It was the dream that helped me see obscure opportunities whenthey came my way. And it was the dream that gave me the courage totake risks and actually pursue jobs

David James Brewster, is a writer for Classifind.com.au. Classifind.com.au is Australia's largest search engine specialising in jobs. Hundreds of thousands of job listings from major Australian job boards are brought together in one place, reducing search time.