It will be a waste of your time to spend twenty years working in a career that doesn’t make you happy. Many people do it for fear of making a drastic change, failing, or what others will say. But, ultimately, it is your life, and only you have the power to make a decision.

Besides, job-hopping has become common, and companies don’t think it is a bad thing. These tips will help you recognize if your career isn’t for you and if a career switch is what you need to be happy.

How Do You Feel at Work?

Knowing how your work makes you feel is important to understand if your career is for you. You can start by identifying if it makes you feel unhappy. If this is true, then you can try to understand why. You can analyze your emotions for a week. Pay attention to what you feel while you are at work and identify the sources that generate negative reactions.

Maybe your boss isn’t a good manager, or you don’t get along with your coworkers. These issues could be resolved by finding a new job in a different company. But if the source of your unhappiness is just the little tasks you have to do every day, this won’t change with a different company.

Let’s say you are a full stack developer and you hate spending hours in front of a computer. This can be fixed by changing to a remote position where you can move around and be closer to nature when it’s time to unplugged. But if you hate having to develop code and write similar programs every day, then you should probably change careers.

What Excites You?

You can also answer this question: What things in life make you excited? If the answer doesn’t include your job even at the bottom of the list, you should look closer into why. If your job bores you, or just doesn’t engage you, then it is a sad way of passing most of your time. When you aren’t engaged at work, you do your task on autopilot. In twenty years, you will look back and wonder where all those years went.

Your job should make you feel excited, and you should feel motivated to go every day. The answer to this will also help you decide what to do next. If you realize your career isn’t for you, you have to build a new path. Thinking of things that you do love to do is a good point to start.

Try Out Different Skills

If you are afraid of making a decision because you don’t know what else you will be good at, you can start by trying out different skills. For example, you can try out tech skills without having to pay for a course. Many coding bootcamps offer free intro courses to give you a taste of what programming is like. You learn the basics and know if it is something that you could do.

This is not only possible with tech skills. You can try your hand in different niches while still in your current career. Like if you’ve always wanted to become a writer, you can start your own blog or novel and see how you feel. You can try to make money from this and see if it could become a new career and income source. The thing is to try different options before deciding to quit your current job.

In Summary

At this point, you should know if your career isn’t for you. But maybe you are still stalling for fear of failing. If you were looking for a sign, this is it. Write that resignation letter and start your journey into your new career.

Remember to thank your employer for all the years and opportunities they gave you. It is always helpful to leave a job on a good note. You can also wait to resign until you have another opportunity waiting.

A lot of online courses, coding bootcamps, and vocational training are available part-time. So, you can start your transition while still in your old career and only quit when you have a job opportunity in the new profession.

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