There is a particular kind of career discomfort that is surprisingly hard to act on.
Nothing is really wrong. You have a good role, you’re capable, you’re respected, the money is decent and you know how to do the job. You might even still enjoy plenty of it. If someone asks how work is going, you probably say, “Fine.” Gee I hate that word!
That’s exactly why it can be so difficult.
When something is obviously broken, there is usually a reason to move. A toxic culture. A restructure. A terrible boss. Burnout. Redundancy. Something happens that forces your hand.
But fine doesn’t force anything. Fine lets you stay exactly where you are.
You can stay there for years because there is no compelling reason to leave and no immediate crisis demanding your attention. Yet underneath all of that, there can be a quiet sense that something no longer fits in the way it once did.
Maybe you’re no longer growing in the way you want to. Maybe the work that used to stretch you now feels familiar. Maybe you are very good at what you do, but you are using only part of what you’re capable of. Or perhaps your priorities have shifted, but your career has not quite caught up.
This is often when people start asking themselves bigger questions. Is this still what I want? Am I still challenged by this? What do I want more of now? And sometimes, almost as quickly as those questions appear, we shut them down because we know how lucky we are.
I hear versions of this all the time: “I shouldn’t complain. I have a great job.” Or, “There’s nothing actually wrong.”
But wanting more does not make you ungrateful.
And “more” does not automatically mean a bigger title, more money or another promotion. It might mean more freedom, more interesting work, more creativity, more flexibility, more impact, more time with the people you love or simply more energy left at the end of the day.
Sometimes more actually means less.
This is one of the ideas at the heart of my book, Designed For More: Build a Life and Career You Love. I think many of us have been conditioned to wait until something is bad enough before we give ourselves permission to reconsider it.
But what if you didn’t need a crisis?
What if “this no longer fits me” was enough?
That does not mean resigning tomorrow or making a dramatic change for the sake of it. It means becoming curious before dissatisfaction turns into resentment, boredom or depletion. It means paying attention to what is changing in you, rather than waiting for the outside world to make the decision for you.
It might mean asking yourself: What still fits me about this career? What have I quietly outgrown? Where am I genuinely energised, and where am I simply competent? What do I want more of in the next few years of my life? And if I keep doing exactly what I’m doing now, how will I feel about that in two or three years?
There is nothing wrong with contentment. In fact, contentment is a wonderful thing. But contentment and settling are not the same.
One feels peaceful. The other often feels like a compromise you have learned to live with.
So if your career is “fine” but there is a little voice telling you there might be more, don’t rush to silence it. Get curious about it. You don’t have to blow up your life, but you might owe it to yourself to find out what that voice is trying to tell you.
Because sometimes the greatest risk is not making the wrong move. It is staying somewhere that is fine for so long that you stop imagining what else might be possible.
Designed For More: Build a Life and Career You Love is available to buy from next week.
If you are starting to ask yourself whether “fine” is still enough, this book was written for you.