Do You Know Your Next Career Move?

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I had dinner with a friend last week, and she was talking about something that caught me off guard. For the first time in her career, she doesn't want the next logical promotion.

She's happy where she is.

Up until now, she'd always known what came next: the title to pursue, the company to target, the interview to prepare for. But now? She likes her job. She likes her team. And she isn't sure she wants to keep climbing simply because that's what she's always done.

Sometimes, of course, you can take this too far, though! For example, when I was a young lawyer, I actually had a ridiculous flow chart mapping out all of my possible career paths. I was trying to plan the next 30 years before I'd even figured out whether I liked practicing law. In hindsight, I probably would have been better off focusing on the next good decision instead of trying to optimize an entire career.

The other side of this is focusing on which skill or experience you want to acquire next — my friends who took that approach within a big company or firm have had much more stable careers because they were constantly growing and changing.

As my friend is finding out, though — and as we've disussed before — being happy in your job might be superior to striving for the next thing.

It made me wonder whether we've been asking ourselves the wrong career question. Instead of “What's my next promotion?” maybe the better questions are “Am I still learning?” and “Am I actually happy?”

So some questions for today:

• Have you generally known what your next career move would be — whether that meant a promotion, a new employer, or something else entirely? Or have the best opportunities surprised you?
• How do you think about career growth now? Are you focused on titles, building new skills, finding work you genuinely enjoy… or something else?

Psst… in the past we've discussed whether your job is right for you, how your career affects your happiness, and how to handle a midlife career crisis. We've also discussed career coaches, and whether to salary or title is more important in choosing a job.