After leaving my own company at the beginning of 2024, I spent many months trying to figure out how to continue my career at this stage of my life. At 35, after 12 years in the software industry, I was tired of working without a long-term purpose in mind.
I wish I could say that I took a sabbatical year, but it was just a few months. Enough time to understand what I was doing right (professionally speaking) and, more importantly, what I was doing wrong. During this introspective mission I had many insights, and I want to share some of them here.
Stop
If you are having doubts (as little as they could be) about your career, just try to stop doing it for a while (as long as you can). I found it very useful to spend time not living off my professional income. It could help you to have a valuable perspective of how your life could be without your sharpest skills. It will also free up time that you can spend developing those skills that you need to improve in your life — only you know what those skills are.
Archaeology phase
Imagine yourself walking through the Giza Plateau and discovering, for the first time in centuries, the famous pyramids. You will have many questions, but for sure the most likely will be: “Who built those fucking gigantic triangles?!”. After your consternation, you may try to understand the real origin of those pyramids.
Ask yourself why you started your career in the first place. What brought you here? Was there a little spark at the beginning? Try to reconnect with this spark again. Do old stuff you used to do when you started your journey, just to remember why you decided to enroll in that first course, or why you sent your curriculum to that particular company. Try to understand why and who the hell built those gigantic triangles in your own story.
Fix your foundations
If you allow yourself to accept that you may have problems in your foundations, you are more likely to take care of those problems because they will be there forever if you keep ignoring them. Spend some time learning that particular subject you skipped many times before and (somehow) you managed to get here without it, but you know that your life will be much easier if you hadn’t been too lazy.
Having more solid foundations will give you a renewed confidence in what you are already good at. It works like leverage for your top skills.
Open your mind
(Do not read that like Kuato Morty’s voice). After many years in your field, it’s easy to fall into monotony. It’s easier for our brain. That monotony leads us to always look for the same patterns in our lives. Train your mind to question every idea you have (especially the ones you are most engaged with).
Many times we are closed to new ways of doing our job just because it works fine for us until now. And because of that we may be missing many opportunities that are just in front of our nose.
Professional crises are more common than we think. It’s easy to fall into the comfort zone in these chaotic moments. But in this chaos are emerging new opportunities. Are we ready to take them?
By the way, this is the first time I’ve written an article in English, this is a huge step. Please, if you have any recommendations, I’d love to hear them.
