Experiment Your Way To a New Career

Maybe you’re feeling stuck. Maybe you’re bored. Maybe you have been in the same career for so long you just need a change.

Whatever your reason for thinking about a new career, getting curious and experimenting is one of the most powerful things you can do.

What can I experiment in?

Almost anything!

The first step is to start writing down some ideas for what you could do as your career. This does not have to be realistic. Let your brain come up with all the ideas it can.

Often we really do know what we want to do, but our brain protects us as it doesn’t like change, so give your brain permission to come up with anything, however outlandish…you never know there might be some truth in those ideas after all…

Once you’ve got a list, make a decision to try something.

Making a decision is the most powerful thing you can do. It DOES NOT MATTER if you make the ‘wrong’ decision. We’re not choosing a career for life here, we’re choosing an experiment.

So if you’ve always wanted to be a marine biologist, write it down. Experiment.

How do I experiment?

Ok, so what you’ve chosen has some actions associated with it. If you want to be a writer you’ll need to start writing. If you want to be a lawyer, you’ll need to start learning the law. If you want to be a teacher, write some lesson plans.

The idea is to fully immerse yourself in your new career path for 30 days. If you enjoy it, keep doing it…if not, try something else…

Ok, tell me more, how can I experiment in a job I don’t have?

Let’s take some examples…

If you think you’d like to do marketing you could create a website and practice doing what you need to do to attract people to that website. If after 30 days you find that boring and tedious, you probably won’t want to do it for a living. If you fund it fun and engaging then you might want to take it to the next level! There are loads of online resources such as Google’s Digital Garage

If you think you might want to be a teacher, approach someone you know who has children and ask if you can tutor them for 30 days. Learn the curriculum, create lesson plans. Go all in with the teaching and see how you like it. it won’t be exactly like a classroom but you will get a feel for the type of work that would be involved.

If you think you might want to be a data analyst, download a free version of software such as PowerBI and do a YouTube tutorial every day.

If you think you might want to be a writer spend an hour every day writing, seriously, for 30 days…

Etc etc

So, you’re telling me this actually works?

In my experience, yes.

If you make a decision. Commit to it. Experiment.

I experimented with creating my own project management consultancy, being a coder and being a writer before I tried coaching.

With the first three I knew after 30 days it wasn’t for me. so I tried something else.

With coaching I experimented by getting in touch with an old colleague and asked if she would let me coach her, for free. She said yes. I loved it, she loved it and from there my business took off.

I still coach her to this day.

Be curious, be gentle

This is about experimenting. Make it fun. Don’t be upset if it doesn’t work. Just move on to the next experiement.

Need more help and ideas?

If you’re still not sure how this would work for you, get in touch, I’ll be happy to help