Week 1 : If nothing changes next year, what would quietly be lost?

Most capable professionals don’t arrive at this week feeling dramatic. They’re not burnt out. They’re not in crisis. They’re not posting resignation fantasies into the void. They’re just… tired. Tired of having the same private conversation with themselves, and maybe with their partners, for another year.

“It’s fine.”“I should be grateful.”“Let’s see how next year goes.”

This time of year removes one thing from working life: excuses. The meetings pause. The inbox thins. The constant justification for not thinking disappears. And for many mid-career professionals, a blunt question surfaces:

"If nothing changes next year, what would quietly be lost?"

That’s when the discomfort sharpens because nothing meaningful has shifted for far too long.

The most common year-end career pattern

At this time of year, I speak to a disproportionate number of professionals who are high-functioning, respected and quietly frustrated. They are still delivering. Still being relied upon. Still externally successful.

But internally, something has thinned out. Less motivation. Less pride in the work. Less appetite for conversations they’ve had too many times already. What unsettles them is the stasis not failure.

One year ago, they told themselves they’d reassess. Twelve months later, they’re having the same thought only now with a trace of self-irritation attached. That irritation is valuable data.

How did I get here?

Feeling dissatisfied with your career does not mean you lack perspective. It does not mean you’re ungrateful. And it does not automatically mean you should leave. Those are lazy interpretations.

In many cases, dissatisfaction shows up when capable people have outgrown the shape of their role but haven’t yet updated the story they tell themselves about why they stay. The work still fits their skills. It no longer fits their identity.

So they cope. They normalise mild frustration. They dull curiosity. They stop asking certain questions because they don’t like where those questions might lead. Nothing breaks. But something slowly drains. By the time people act, they often say:“I don’t recognise how I ended up here.”

A lesson from career coaching

Here’s a pattern I trust after many years of work with experienced professionals:Unchosen careers exhaust people more than demanding ones.

When you haven’t consciously decided why you’re where you are, motivation has no stable foundation. You start negotiating with yourself instead of committing. And negotiation is mentally expensive and visible at this time of year.

This week is not for decisions

This is not the moment to update your CV, draft an exit plan or provoke a dramatic internal debate. Now is for honesty not for answers. So instead of asking“What should I do?”, consider sitting with better questions.

Read these slowly. Notice which ones make you slightly uncomfortable.

What have I been tolerating at work that I wouldn’t actively choose?
What part of my job am I no longer curious about?
Where am I performing competence rather than exercising judgement?
If next year looked exactly like this one, how would I feel about that, really?
What would I quietly lose if nothing changed?

You’re listening for clarity.

A final thought as the year closes

You don’t owe anyone a career change narrative. You don’t need to justify your dissatisfaction. And you certainly don’t need to resolve it before the holidays end.

But you do owe yourself one thing: not to carry the same unexamined question into another year by default. Clarity doesn’t arrive through pressure. It arrives when you stop pretending that vague unease will resolve itself.

For now, let this week do what it’s meant to do. Slow you down enough to notice what you’ve been quietly carrying.

Week 2 : Are you dissatisfied or undecided?

The New Year has a way of provoking premature certainty. People announce intentions. They talk about “fresh starts.” They apply pressure to questions that haven’t yet been properly framed. That’s rarely helpful.

In career conversations at this point in the year, the most important work is not deciding what to do. It’s clarifying what state you’re actually in. Because dissatisfaction and indecision feel similar on the surface and lead to very different outcomes.

A distinction most professionals avoid

I see this pattern in coaching. Someone says: “I’m unhappy in my role.” But when we slow things down, what emerges is something else: They’re not clearly dissatisfied. They’re undecided, and have been for a long time.

That undecidedness is doing more damage than they realise. It leaks energy. It erodes authority. It turns work into something they endure rather than choose. And because they haven’t named it, they misdiagnose the problem.

Three career states emerge

At the risk of oversimplifying, most professionals I work find they sit in one of three places at the end of the year:

1. Satisfied and committed: You’ve chosen this role or direction deliberately. You may not love every aspect of it, but you’re invested. Your effort has coherence.

2. Dissatisfied and undecided: Something is off. You feel it regularly but you haven’t yet taken a clear stance. So you oscillate between tolerating and fantasising.

3. Dissatisfied and avoiding the decision: You know more than you admit but you keep yourself busy enough not to act on it.

1 is stable. 2 is uncomfortable but workable. 3 is where people slowly lose respect for themselves. The problem is not dissatisfaction per se. The problem islingering too long without choosing a position.

Undecidedness is draining

Indecision looks harmless… even responsible. After all, you’re “thinking it through.” You’re “being pragmatic.” You’re “waiting for the right moment.” When you haven’t decided whether you’re staying or leaving, you can’t fully commit to either:

You don’t invest deeply because you might exit.
You don’t explore alternatives seriously because you might stay.

So you hover, which creates a low-grade cognitive and emotional tax, paid daily, often silently. By mid-career and senior levels, that tax shows up as:

irritability
disengagement
quiet resentment
a sense of being underused or under-recognised

Not because the role is unbearable but because your relationship to it is unresolved.

A lesson from career coaching

One of the most relieving moments in coaching is not when someone decides to leave. It’s when they finally say, clearly:“I am choosing to stay, and this is what that choice requires of me.”

Paradoxically, commitment often restores motivation faster than escape fantasies ever do. Staying by choice is energising. Staying by default is exhausting.

Better New Year questions

If you’re tempted to ask “Should I leave?”, pause. That question is usually too blunt, too early. Try these instead:

If I chose to stay for the next 18 months, what would I need to stop complaining about?
What would “staying well” actually look like here?
What would have to be true for this role to feel worth my full energy again?
If I left in a year’s time, what would I regret not having tested or addressed?

These ask for honesty about your current stance not a decision.

Another lesson from career coaching

Many professionals believe clarity comes before commitment. In practice, clarity often follows a provisional commitment: to explore seriously; to renegotiate expectations; to test assumptions rather than recycle them.

Waiting to feel certain before acting is how people stay stuck for years while telling themselves they are being sensible.

What this week is really for

The New Year is not asking you to reinvent yourself. It’s asking you to notice whether you’re:

actively choosing your situation, or
quietly tolerating it while hoping it resolves itself

There is no moral superiority in leaving. There is no virtue in staying. There is, however, a cost to drifting without a stance.

Next week, in the third final article, we’ll move from stance to action. For now, resist the pressure to decide too quickly. But don’t confuse slowness with avoidance. Clarity begins when you stop pretending you’re neutral.

Andrew Jones is an Executive Coach, Team Coach and Career Counsellor. Please contact Andrew directly if you want to learn more about this topic or subscribe here if you would like to hear more from Andrew in the future