Designing Your New Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness--and a New Freedom--at Work

by Bill Burnett

Give yourself a long weekend and do something you really like doing to recharge your batteries and get set to start a whole new season of job searching. Get your head wrapped about taking at least three and up to six to nine months for this project. Pace yourself—this is not a sprint. Make a Take It with Me inventory, listing all the assets you’ve gained during your employment in your current work. Don’t forget to list all types of things: learnings, peak experiences, hard challenges, people, relationships, personal growth, accomplishments, future goal clarity, credibility building, etc. Read and search and click your way all around your locale and your area of career interest to find out what’s happening, what companies are leading, and who’s doing what. Reach out to your network for referrals to “get the story” meetings, prototype conversations about relevant topics that are current in your field and of sincere interest to you. And scan LinkedIn for people you’d like to have coffee with, and do not ask them for a job! They will be blown away that you think they are interesting. Then start having those conversations and enjoy yourself! Make the learning its own game and its own reward. Repeat the process until it works and you find a new job worth taking. And throughout the process, keep doing great work in your current job. Finish strong to start strong.