The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Getting Into And Out Of A Rut
Your working life provides one of the main rhythms of your daily existence. Once the initial anxiety and steep learning curve of starting a new job is out of the way, the act of turning up and getting your tasks done becomes – for most people – almost automatic. Occasional challenges may arise, but short of disaster or a particularly unpleasant environment, we tend to settle into our jobs and rarely think of changing things up.
It’s a bad habit to get into. Of course, stability and commitment have their own strengths and advantages – but how many of your parents’ generation do you know who regret not having been bolder with their professional choices when they were younger? Quite a few of them, no doubt. They simply didn’t notice they were stuck in a rut until it was too late.
This needn’t be the case for you. There are a handful of warning signs with which to arm yourself so as you notice when you career progress has ground to halt. And jarring yourself out of the rut needn’t mean something as drastic as quitting – it can just be about making a small adjustment to your everyday routine, your relationship with your colleagues, or the way that you look at your immediate environment and the world around you.
This new visual guide to the symptoms that you’re in a rut is a fantastic place to start. The animated images make for memorable warning signs – it’s a handy resource to look over now, and to which you can return whenever things don’t feel quite right in your professional life.
