Be a Pollyanna for a day to figure out your next career move

Having gone through a career transition myself (staffing programs to marketing), and being the introverted over-thinker I am, I have some thoughts on how to go about deciding where you want to be next. I'm not a Pollyanna; I don't even think I'd call myself an optimist. But now is the perfect...PERFECT opportunity to step back and really think about what's important to you in your next role. Be the change you want to see in your career. OK, that doesn't make sense but still.

Here's a little exercise for you: get out a piece of paper or start a new word doc and think back over your life to the times you were really happy. Think about the work that made you happiest, but don't limit your list to just work. For the sake of illustration, I'll use an example: my college years (man, that was fun).

Once you have come up with a few of these happy memories (it can be something that took place over years, something that was momentary or an in-between situation like a special project), think about what it was during each of those times that made you happy. So for me in college, it was learning new things, lots of choices around how to spend my time and the freedom to decide for myself, and great weather. I am over-simplifying, but you get the point. So you'll end up with a list of things that have impacted your happiness in the past and you'll start to see some trends. In my case, the need to learn, try new things and direct my own time were/are a really good fit for consulting (and even though I wouldn't call the weather in Seattle "great", it beats the heck outta those Chicago winters I just couldn't stand anymore). Everyones list is different though so spend some time on this. Ask your S.O. to participate (if you need someone really tuned in to when you were happy).

Then brainstorm what your future, most-happy-making scenario is and what the step is right now that can get you a bit closer. Think of this as a journey toward the ideal situation (because it's extra challenging to make a significant career change between companies, much easier to make one within a company). If you are an SDET and want to work in development on larger scale, more complex projects and you loved a previous job you didn't have to commute to, start to think about nearby employers that operate at significant scale and have good reputations for career development, job-shadowing and internal movement.

This kind of thinking seems obvious, not that we are talking about it, right? But have you ever actually taken some quiet time to think about it in this way?

If you want to get all nerdy and mind-map some of this stuff, I like XMind - you can download it for free. I also like free.