If you’ve done it for 10 years, you need to make a change.

If you’ve been doing more or less the same thing for 6 to 10 years or more, you are probably feeling stuck, irritable, negative and a little bored. You may have a sense of quiet excitement about the future …. a palpable feeling that something good is out there, but you probably aren’t sure what it is, or how to find it. And it may be quite dangerous to broadcast your interest in moving on for fear of losing what you have.

Most likely, your sense of being in the wrong place is taking up more and more of your headspace. One day you’re tired, frustrated and pining for something new… a chance to get back to the joy and excitement you felt earlier in your career. The next day, you are actually enjoying the work and reminding yourself that you are lucky to be here.

In your darkest moments, you worry that if you stay where you are, you’ll get marginalized or run out of clients or get so frustrated that you screw up ….or just wind down and get pushed out.  You tell yourself that if you were any good, people would be bringing you at least a FEW descent opportunities, but everything you hear about is either more of the same elsewhere or in scenic West Overshoe. Your spouse or partner is not real keen on a move and getting terminally sick of this whole windshield wiper routine.

Unfortunately, the traditional wisdom about job hunting isn’t much help.  If you mention wanting to make a career move to others, they tell you to hit the internet and network, network, network. Although that is totally appropriate for job changes within a 10-year cycle, it doesn’t work so well for these once-a-decade major transitions when you so desperately want to do something NEW! Alas, you’re totally uncompetitive for those attractive LinkedIn opportunities in a new industry, new function or new technology. You don’t have much of a network, or sense of the terrain there and even if you know what you want to do, which you probably don’t, it will feel pretty daunting to reach out to strangers when you don’t know what you want and are pretty ignorant and ill prepared for stuff outside your current arena.

Crawling in bed and pulling the covers over your head is looking like a great option…..if it weren’t for the mortgage, of course.

Look for a short-term lily pad NOT the next big job

Truth is, in a sense, that is exactly what you DO need to do.  Not hide out, really, but cocoon for a while. Stop focusing on your next big thing or high energy networking. Look instead for an interesting short-term gig where you can experience new things, rest and think without having to make a long-term commitment.

I see such places as lily pads, a series of stopping points as you move across the lake to the promise land on the other side: temporary experiences or intervals where you can clean your pallet, process the past, do some thinking and some learning, and look around. Places where you can sit comfortably while you talk with interesting people; look more deeply into stuff that appeals to you, read, study, experiment, explore, try on new roles or endeavors and begin to build a template for what your next chapter should be. Great transitions are often characterized by several lily pads.  All major transitions will probably have at least one.

The criteria for a lily pad: easy, temporary and with access

Your first great lily pad may have been college.  Like all good ones, it met three important criteria:

• It was easy,
• It was temporary, and
• it’s gave you access to interesting new worlds.

As your long-suffering parents can probably attest, the fraternity parties, spring breaks, part time jobs and intramural sports indicate that, for most of us, college wasn’t that hard… and it was definitely temporary … a definitive 4 years.   Most of all, it gave us a line of sight into some new worlds and a socially acceptable cover for thinking about and tying on some options both personally and professionally.

In the context of a career, a lily pad is like college, a relatively low stress gig that gives you contact with people and ideas that interest you without a long-term commitment… someplace that has a gentle learning curve and relatively little emotional stress or risk.

A good transition model lets you move from lily pad to lily pad following what shows up that captures your attention, learning and experimenting until you find the right long-term next direction.

The important thing is to be sure that each step meets all three criteria:

• easy,
• temporary,
• accessible to a world that interest you.

If it is just easy and temporary any dip-shit project at work or even flipping hamburgers at your local McDonalds would do, but you wouldn’t get much new insight or experience. It must have access to what interests you.  On the other hand, if it isn’t easy or temporary, you may get sidetracked or stuck in long term commitments. You won’t have the time or energy to move forward relatively soon. Each lily pad MUST meet all three criteria.

Where to find a lily pad

Amazingly, lily pads are not that hard to find and are quite likely to be adequately remunerative.  In fact, there are probably several available to you right now once you stop looking at them as slightly embarrassing or inappropriate next steps or as extra projects that will get in the way of serious job hunting.  For example:

• The job you currently have …. only now you see it less as a trap and more as a safe and well-connected place to sit while you deliberately explore other options or actively seek access to the new or interesting worlds that it touches (the tech side of your industry, the office in Beijing, suppliers in an industry that interests you).

• A new project or temporary duty opportunity where you already work, or elsewhere.

• A consulting gig or temporary job that you know from the start is not the future but is easy and gives you a line of site into a world that interests you or access to people you’d like to know.

• Moonlighting in something that is a bit closer to your dream, like helping a friend with the accounting at her restaurant to get closer to owning one yourself.

• A family project like closing out your grandma’s estate or temporarily running a family business (that gets you to Maine for a few months for example).

• A hobby or volunteer activity (board member, museum docent, athletic coach, community association officer, political campaign volunteer)  

• Going back to school (an executive MBA or a graduate program in philosophy), a management training course (finance for nonfinancial managers or an Agile workshop) a certificate in a new discipline (psychology, certified financial planner).

• Creating (or joining) an initiative at work or within an organization you belong to that follows your interests (a taskforce on artificial intelligence or a cross-functional working group on internal communication and organizational development).

• Serving as an interim executive or just providing arms and legs for a friend in need of a little professional support. 

• Taking a sabbatical to write a book, create a movie, have a baby, take care of an ailing parent, or supervise a new addition on the house. 

Not all these things may seem like places with access to interesting new career opportunities or places to think, learn, experiment or change gears, in ways that will serve your career, but I’ve seen every one of them work that way.  Lily pads are very personal and unique… but ultimately quite wonderful.

For most people major transitions take several years and show up pretty much every decade or so until at least your 80s.  Between the time you begin to feel you’re no longer in the right place and when you are excited again and fully committed to a new era, there will be uncomfortable times for sure. Lily pads can and do make the experience mostly refreshing and joyful though, albeit not easy. Like college, we are different people when we come out than when we went in.  

Your Insight?

If you’ve used a lily pad that might help others understand how it works or if you own version of stuck has some unique aspects worth a deeper look, please share that with the rest of us.  Your insight and advise are most welcome.