Four decisive ways to deal with analysis paralysis
Deciding to change your career can unleash loads of energy. Maybe you applied yours to random Google searches for intriguing jobs, doing every imaginable online career test, or reading a pile of career change books.
Now you've exhausted this first flush of excitement, and you're stuck. Figuring out how to change careers has got you flummoxed.
You're keen for some decisive career change action, but you're blocked by analysis paralysis.
What is analysis paralysis?
Analysis paralysis causes us to overthink everything that may have a bearing on decisions, little and large. It drives us to take refuge in research as a substitute for action.
I've grappled with analysis paralysis as a career changer. Although I knew I needed to do something different, I didn't know how or where to start. I worried about the end as well as the beginning. How would I recognise the right career if or when I found it?
My brain whirred like a hamster on a wheel. Masses of painstakingly gathered career information whirled around my head, but it didn't lead anywhere. I felt like screaming.
If analysis paralysis is killing your career change momentum, these four tips will help you stay on track.
1. Get out of your head
You're a smart person. If you could've figured out your career change in your head, you'd have done it by now. You certainly wouldn't be reading this article. Since you're here, why not try a new tack?
The number one thing to do to break out of analysis paralysis is to act.
Talk to someone
Yell for help. As soon as you realise you're spinning your wheels or stuck in a cyber maze call for back up. If you have a career change cheerleader, phone them. Alternatively, book lunch with a friend or a colleague or a session with a coach.
Organising your thoughts to present to someone else helps untangle the mess in your mind. Bouncing ideas off your sounding board stops them ricocheting around your exhausted brain. Getting constructive feedback can give you the confidence and clarity to make your next move. Best of all, talking to someone else will infuse you with new ideas and intell.
Act don't think
Switch off your mental spin cycle. Treat your overwrought brain to some fresh perspectives. Get off Google and out into the real world. Tap your networks for new contacts, ask to work shadow. Open your eyes to careers you didn't even know existed. Learn new things that spark you up and show you what's genuinely possible (as well as what won't work).
2. Take small steps
Overwhelmed by a brain that's awash with career change ideas? Buried in 'to do' lists crammed with complex plots to explore your options?
Ask yourself,
'What's the smallest practical thing I can do today to keep my career change exploration moving?'
Maybe it's sending a polite but cheeky email to a potentially helpful human in a field that's got your attention. Perhaps it's making a hit list of five appealing organisations then offering to volunteer. How about signing up to support a local event where you're likely to meet people who share your interests?
Think of all the small, quick, quirky ways you could try out a new career. Besides shadowing, volunteering, or pro bono work, try giving it a go with a friend. If a fitness career is on your list, offer someone a personal training session in your garden. If fashion or design appeals to you, host an evening of wardrobe swapping and restyling.
Pick a thing and do it even if you don't feel ready . Worried about an outcome, you can't begin to predict? As Ice Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky puts it, 'you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.'
3. Trust your gut
If you find it tough to trust your instincts, here's a tip from Malcolm Gladwell, whose book Blink makes a case for the power of split-second decision making.
'The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.'
Understanding comes from the kind of 'thinking without thinking 'that we do all the time. It's called 'thin slicing' – it's our hardwired high-speed knack of filtering out what's important in any situation. Thin slicing is the opposite of overloading our brains with data. It's intuitive and innate and the reason why so many apparently spontaneous decisions work out better than carefully considered ones.
If you're stuck for a way to make a data-driven decision and drowning in 'what ifs' and 'maybes,' go with your gut. Focus on each option and note the first thing you feel before anxiety or disbelief set in. Maybe you had a split-second image of yourself thriving in a new role before fear of failure hit. Perhaps you felt a moment of doubt about pursuing a lead your head tells you should be ideal.
4. Work with whatever happens
Whatever we decide, there are no guarantees that things will turn out as we would like. Any decision is a first step, and so much of what happens next is beyond our control. Our decisions' ultimate 'rightness’ depends mainly on how confidently we handle the consequences, whatever they turn out to be.
Take pressure off by approaching every career change exploration as a chance to try something out. Immerse yourself in loads of career experiments without anticipating or judging the outcome of any of them. When you find one that’s not for you, that’s a win, one less on the list. Use this insight to refine your next decision and reset your direction.
Caught in career change analysis paralysis? Let’s talk about getting you out of it.
By Jo Green, Career Change Coach
I know that when you find what you love, heart and soul, your life changes. I work every day with people who are reshaping their current careers, starting new enterprises or searching for a new direction. Basically I help people who don’t like their job to figure out what to do instead!
As a Careershifters and Firework Advanced Certified Coach and experienced career changer myself, I can help you figure out what fulfilling work looks like for you.
Drop me a note to organise a free 20 minute consultation to chat about your career change and how coaching could help.
