Get Career Fit, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 4 Choose

What will you progress?

‘The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?’

Confucius

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice follows the White Rabbit and falls down a rabbit hole. She has no idea where she is and embarks on a series of adventures.

At one point, she meets the Cheshire Cat in the woods and enquires:

‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

‘I don’t much care where—’ said Alice.

‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

‘—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.

‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’

In your career, you certainly want to get somewhere, and you should very much care where that somewhere is. You want to be clear that your somewhere isn’t leading you just anywhere.

By now you may have a fairly precise idea of the leap you want to make. You may have decided to leap from your current career to becoming a doctor, financial commentator, media personality, landscape gardener or interior designer.

Alternatively, your destination may be less clear and your ‘somewhere’ may be no more than a couple of options on the table that you want to explore further. Perhaps you love creating things and are tossing up between becoming an architect or an app developer. Or perhaps you love helping people, and you’re thinking about working ...