Slowly but Surely: The Only Plan you’ll Need for a Hassle-free Career Change

You feel stuck in your current job, right? I know. You wouldn't be reading if you love your job and you think it’s the most awesome thing to do for the rest of your life. But kidding aside, I know how you feel. I was once there too – together with a couple of family members and friends so it’s a pretty normal thing.

But you shouldn't take this matter lightly. Leaving your concerns to the expert tips and tricks of human resource books might not give to most suitable solution. Remember that every individual is unique so you definitely need to find that answer to your specific problem.

Changing careers is a leap of faith. Leaving a stable job to find a new pursuit is often a necessary risk you’d have to take in order to get to a better place. But since you’ll take leap, make sure to do it carefully or you’ll get injured. Yes, I’m talking about life here – because one wrong decision you make can bury you into a deeper hole.

Today, I’m going to tell you about The Plan which you can carry out in the first four months of 2013 to make sure that you only make the right decisions for your career change. Though you can do all of these in just a month, I suggest you take your time because from experience, my haste created much waste.

So save yourself from further trouble and take things slowly but surely. Here’s what you can do on…

January Determine whether there is an actual need for change. Would you still feel miserable if you worked for another company in the same industry?

Many individuals rush to think that leaving their current career and changing it completely is the only solution to the burning feeling of unhappiness that they feel for their current job. Given that you are unsatisfied, it is best to find out where this feeling is coming from. Keep in mind that there are tons of things in your current job that can drive you to lose interest in work. Problems can range from having bad office politics, an evil boss or simply not having a water cooler.

Before you bid your current career goodbye, make sure that it’s the one you want to leave. Not just your boss or the company that you are working for.

February Find the direction you’d like to pursue. If you’re sure that being in the corporate could kill you in the next 24 hours, decide on what you’d actually like to pursue. I hope that being a beach bum or a couch potato is not one of them.

When thinking about a new route to take, looking at your skills, hobbies and shelved dreams could be of great help. However, you have to be realistic with what you want at this point. You can’t be just be a hot rock star over night so you might want to keep that dream in the drawer if you’re not willing to work for it.

Mixing your dream with reality is the right way to go. If you want to be a full time artist or an entrepreneur, make sure that your resources can support you well throughout your transition until you make it.

March How much do you want it?

Now that you know where you want to go, do you really want to go there? How much time, effort and commitment are you willing to give to pursue your new goal? If your answer is still half-baked, you’d better stay where you are at the moment until you find something that you’d like to pursue.

This could be especially difficult if you have a family to fend for or bills to pay. Don’t forget to consider other important factors in your life before you make that big decision.

April Create an action plan. Write concrete steps on how you’ll arrive at that new destination. Think of it as a road trip that you’re planning to take to get away from your current toxic career. How would you get there?

During this time, you would like to think about the training's, seminars and certifications that you might need to successfully shift gears. You can also create a timeline of events to make sure that you don’t fall into a procrastination rut where you’ll aimlessly wander around until you get nowhere. Remember, go at great lengths to specify what you intend to do so as not to lose sight of the prize. It would help to write actual information on the training programs that you need as well as the other tasks that you need to do including research among many other things. Resource books on the field can provide you with tons of information.