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.

• 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.

The first full week back at work has a way of undoing good intentions. Calendars refill. Standing meetings reappear. Requests arrive with a familiar tone of urgency. And whatever clarity emerged when things went quiet is quickly crowded out by motion.

This is usually the point where capable professionals tell themselves a comforting story: “I’ll come back to this later. Once things settle down.” They won’t because work is very good at reasserting the familiar. If you return unchanged, the system will happily keep using you exactly as before.

This week matters because it decides whether reflection becomes direction or just another private insight that never quite makes it into action. You don’t need a plan yet. You need action: small, deliberate movements that create information before commitments harden.

Lesson from career coaching: Clarity rarely comes first

Many mid-career professionals get stuck at this stage because they’re waiting to be sure before they move. Sure about the right role. Sure about the right timing. Sure they won’t regret it. That certainty almost never arrives in advance.

Career clarity is not a thinking problem. It’s a feedback problem. When people say they feel paralysed, they usually mean they’re trying to decide in isolation. Inside their own head. With the same assumptions that created the problem in the first place.

Waiting for certainty is one of the most reliable ways to stay exactly where you are.

From insight to orientation

The last two weeks were about noticing and meaning-making. This week's focus is orientation:

• Where should I apply my attention?
• What conversations would expand my options?
• What assumptions need testing?
• What version of myself do I want to make more visible?

You are not choosing a destination yet. You are choosing how you move. That distinction matters because people who rush to plans tend to lock themselves into narrow paths too early. People who build traction keep optionality alive.

A practical 30-day orientation (not a plan)

Think of the next month as an experiment, not a commitment. Here’s a simple structure that works precisely because it is modest.

1. Choose three conversations to have

Conversations that change your understanding of reality. These conversations require curiosity and composure, not an announcement or a career confession. Aim for one in each category:

• A mirror conversation: Someone who will tell you how you’re currently perceived. “What do you see me being relied on for right now and what do you think I’m underusing?”
• A market conversation: Someone closer to opportunities than you are. “What capabilities are actually becoming more valuable this year?”
• A system conversation: Someone who understands how power and decisions really move. “Where is energy and investment genuinely going around here?”

2. Identify one identity shift to make visible

Shift examples:

• from dependable executor to strategic contributor
• from specialist voice to integrative thinker
• from supportive presence to decision owner

Then ask: What would someone notice if I had already made this shift?

Pick two behaviours that would signal it:

• how you frame issues
• what you volunteer for
• what you stop absorbing by default
• how clearly you state a point of view

Make those behaviours visible this month.

3. Run one low-risk experiment

Lesson from career coaching: Identity changes faster through behaviour than through insight. Experiments beat commitments. Examples:

• shadow a project adjacent to your current role
• lead a small initiative with higher visibility
• test a different way of saying no
• ask to join a decision forum you usually observe from the sidelines

The purpose is not success. It’s feedback.

How coaching supports orientation

At this stage, what helps most is disciplined thinking in company. Someone who can:

• slow you down when you rush
• challenge your default explanations
• help you separate signal from noise
• keep the focus on agency rather than reassurance

That’s why coaching tends to become relevant here. Not as rescue but as a way of thinking more rigorously about choices before they harden. It’s to prevent you from drifting back into what’s familiar, not to tell you what to do.

The danger of the first working week is amnesia.

Forgetting that you noticed something important when things went quiet. Slipping back into patterns that once worked and no longer serve. Letting the default decide for you.

You don’t need a plan yet. You need movement that produces information. That’s how careers change without drama and without regret.

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