How to avoid career rut?
Some years ago you started your new career with full passion and enthusiasm, having new ideas up your sleeve, facing new challenges, and overcoming them was a daily routine for you. You were living a thrilling life but now that thrilling has become ordinary for you. The same cycle repeats itself and makes you feel stuck.
You are not alone, there are many people out there who irrespective of their career choices fall into a career rut. It can be your job or your mindset; either there is no scope for you to grow in your job or you couldn't find one. In both ways living in such a situation is an absolute nightmare.
So, to find out how to avoid it altogether, we must first know how we landed here.
What makes you land in a career rut?
What are the major deciders concerning people’s career choices? Their passion, guidance from teachers, parents or they are trying to imitate their ideal person.
No matter who or what influences them to take their career decisions most people approach their career as a form of T i.e. learning one heavy-duty skill and complementing it by taking some partial knowledge of other things. This forces them to rely only on their domain skill to build a career around it or even earn a decent living. Today, the constantly evolving technology and changing global conditions can put a full stop to any skill which was precious a while ago.
The T approach can increase the possibility of them falling into a career rut as they will find themselves sitting at the same desk, doing the same job, and working with the same people every day without much room for growth or any minimal changes. And that terrible office coffee doesn't make it any better.
Best way to approach your career
There are also other ways to think about your career which gives you more opportunities and exposure.
The pi approach, as the symbol suggests, this career approach has two key skills instead of only one, giving you more stability. Both skills can be directly related or entirely different from each other. Only make sure that one is not completely dependent on the other. Though, one can complement the other.
For example, learning technical skills with a soft-skill on the side or vice versa makes a perfect match. By doing so, you become much more than just a job title. Cause we all know job title changes sooner than we expect.
You don't have to wander in the unknown in search of a second skill. Your passion can take care of it too. Look for the ways it can add value to your career. Give some time to your hobbies and see how they carve your future.
Suppose you are working as an engineer and you are also passionate about arts and crafts, you can use that knowledge in the design part of engineering or you can even create a side hustle out of it.
Having some experience in other domains not only opens more opportunities for you but also helps you to bring a fresh perspective to your current job. As we have heard life is all about balance. We need both legs to move forward. You might start with one but you need the other sooner or later, just like in hopscotch.
You might agree with me, but, still and all thinking, second skilling is a thing for another time. But I think you already know, we never feel like having enough time for anything. And the good news is you don't need much time for this. Skill development career graphs are typically logarithmic, not linear. So second skilling isn't as difficult as you may think. Just start with an open mindset and positive attitude, well begun is half done.
Acquisition of skills requires a regular environment, an adequate opportunity to practice, and rapid and unequivocal feedback about the correctness of thoughts and actions.— Daniel Kahneman
Learning is the only path to take, to never stop growing. When the pages on your journal start repeating themselves, turn to a different book. Your career path may be a roller-coaster ride but nobody falls if the harness is tight.
