Scott Anthony Barlow: You make thousands of decisions every single day, and most of them quietly drain energy without you ever realizing it. Decisions like what to have for breakfast, what to wear, what order to start your day in. Each one takes only a small amount of energy on its own, but they add up fast. And the big decisions, the ones where to actually spend your time and energy in your career, they can feel almost overwhelming to tackle. But it doesn't have to be that way, and we're gonna fix that.
A common mistake that we see people make in their careers is what was called binary decision-making. That's comparing opportunities, one versus another. This role versus that role, this company versus that one. Do I take this opportunity or not? There's ample research to say that binary decision-making does not work.
It's not the same as intentional decision-making. Why? Well, first and foremost, this often leaves you continue to circle with the same set of choices without ever getting closer to what is really going to be a great fit for you. The problem here isn't the options; it's the comparison point. You don't evaluate a career opportunity against other career opportunities.
You evaluate it against your own criteria, what you know about your signature strengths, what you've learned from the past, and what you want from your life. And when you have that framework, bad fits become obvious much faster. The right opportunities start to stand out in a way that they never have before.
Welcome to day six of the What Fits You eight-day mini course. And if you're just joining us, then I would encourage you to, first and foremost, get registered for the complete course experience, including the emails and guided exercises. You can go to happentoyourcareer.com/8day, or the link is in the show notes right below.
But the other thing I would encourage you to do right after that is go start with the introduction. Go back in your feed, or when you look at that first email, it'll guide you to the introduction, and then you can begin working through days one through five, 'cause every day directly builds upon the last. Before we evaluate any kind of decisions here, we need to consolidate what you've built across the last five days into a clear framework.
Step one, we're gonna build our criteria summary. This is where you can pull open that set of documents or the papers that you've been writing on, and we're gonna work through each of the following here in a moment, and then we're gonna try to summarize what we know.
From day one, your signature strengths. Try to articulate just a couple of your strengths, those areas that you're genuinely great at and energized by. Not the categories. Instead, the specifics.
From day two, what emerged from those questions about your past? What consistently has shown up across the roles, the things you gravitated towards, the work that made time disappear, the problems you couldn't stop solving? This is where we want to try to summarize each of these pieces here.
From day three, what you actually want. What did the 5 Whys exercise surface underneath your don't wants? What are the real wants those complaints were pointing towards?
And then from day four, those five areas that we mentioned that are not work but impact work. What does your ideal life look like across environment, finances, family relationships, personal growth, and health? What are those pieces that you need? What are the non-negotiables for each area?
And then here's what I want you to do from day five. Go back, take a look at what you wrote that seemed wildly unrealistic. When we summarize these area, I want to read through these and look for the through lines. By the way, if you've put this into a document or digital format of some sort, then you can actually drop this into your AI tool of choice and then help to summarize each area. You can also ask it to analyze what are the particular through lines.
What AI can't do is it can't look back at it and say, "Is this consistent with what feels like it matters most to me, both in the past, now, or potentially what we can anticipate in the future?" And AI also can't tell you what you're willing to compromise on. That's what we're trying to develop here. We're trying to develop your criteria framework.
Okay, our next step here is we want to evaluate against some opportunities here. The goal here isn't necessarily to find the perfect opportunity. The goal here is to practice filtering. We can take any career option, role, organization, or direction that we have been considering, including ones that you've been entertaining, maybe even ones that you're currently in conversations about, and even the wildly unrealistic things that came up in day five, and we can hold each one up against our criteria framework that we're starting to develop here.
Now, we wanna ask one question for each. Does this fit what I know I want and need from this criteria framework? Does this fit the minimum in what I'm unwilling to negotiate on? If the answer's no, we're gonna stop considering it. But the questions I don't wanna ask, I don't wanna ask, "Is this a good opportunity?" I don't wanna ask, you know, "Would other people want this?" I don't wanna ask, "Does this make logical sense given my background?" Not at all.
"Does it fit your criteria that you're beginning to develop?" That's what we're doing in this mini course, is beginning your development of your criteria for your career and your career change, and ultimately, the life that you're trying to build.
If it doesn't match what you know about what you need, we're gonna eliminate it. Every opportunity that you can eliminate or take off the table is one you're not gonna spend the next six months just cycling or pondering or pursuing potentially in the wrong direction. Eliminating what doesn't fit is not giving up on something. It's how you make room for what actually does fit.
Okay, step three here. This is where we're gonna practice. We wanna identify three that we can further investigate. After you've worked through the elimination process, I want you to write down three opportunities you're considering. This could be in the form of a role, a direction, a organization that you're interested in, or other possibilities that do seem to match these criteria.
Now, a few important notes. These do not have to be fully formed. They can be directional, like a type of role, a kind of organization, an area of work where you want to move forward. What matters is that they align with what you've built. I don't want you to qualify your answers. Don't write them down and then say, "But I'm not sure if this is realistic," or, "But I don't know if I have the right background."
Write them down as if they were possible, because based on what we've seen from literally almost 100,000 people working through this course, they're probably a lot more possible than what you think. You just don't know it yet. And don't worry if your three feel different than what you expected them to feel like.
This exercise is designed to surface what actually might fit, not to confirm what you already assumed. Okay, this is the point where people get a little bit antsy. They're like, "But how do I connect these back to the real world?" And I hear you completely, and also that's not our next step. Our next step is just to identify what might fit so that later we can investigate does it actually fit.
That's how people move from where they are to work that actually is a potential fit, not jumping immediately to the job or thing. We have to find out. That requires detective work, and just to give you an idea, you know, even though, on average, you know, it might take somebody anywhere from, you know, 12 months to many years to make a career change, often that's what we're doing with our clients over a period of about 8 to 12 months.
At least that when your goal is fit, not just accepting any job or any situation. Okay, so for the moment, to wrap things up for today, I want you to take this action. Complete all three steps, build your criteria summary, eliminate what doesn't fit that currently you're considering, and write down three opportunities that might.
Then leave a comment. What's one opportunity you eliminated, and what made it easy to let go once you held it up against your criteria? Or what's one opportunity that is a potential fit? Day seven is next. Subscribe or follow wherever you're listening right now so that it lands in your feed automatically.
And of course, if you're finding that you want more help with this, that's absolutely what we do. It's what we love to do, and all you have to do is send me an email, scott@happentoyourcareer.com, put conversation in the subject line. I'll connect you to my team, and then we'll have a simple conversation with you, understanding your goals, what you're trying to achieve, and begin to help you build a plan to get there.
It's phenomenal to be able to see what's actually possible for people when they have the right tools, resources, direction, and support. Until day seven, I'm Scott Anthony Barlow. Adios.