At the heart of this book are the stories of dozens of people who changed careers. It analyzes their experiences through the lens of established psychological and behavioral theories. Based on the stories and extensive re- search in the social sciences, the book affirms the uncertainties of the career transition process and identifies its underlying principles. But it does not offer a ten-point plan for better transitioning, because that is not the nature of the process. Instead, it lays out a straightforward framework that describes what is really involved and some tried and proven unconventional strategies that will make the difference between staying stuck and moving on.

The book hinges on two disarmingly simple ideas. First, our working identity is not a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered at the very core of our inner being. Rather, it is made up of many possibilities: some tangible and concrete, defined by the things we do, the company we keep, and the stories we tell about our work and lives; others existing only in the realm of future potential and private dreams. Second, changing careers means changing our selves, reworking our identities. Since we are many selves, changing is not about swapping one identity for another but rather a transition process in which we reconfigure the full set of possibilities. These simple ideas alter everything we take for granted about finding a new career. They ask us to devote the greater part of our time and energy to action rather than reflection, to doing instead of planning. Hence, the unconventional strategies.

Endings are tougher and take longer than we think. No matter how unhappy we may be in a job, most of us continue to revisit the possibility of making it work because the present role is necessarily tied to a possible self—an image, outdated though it may be, of whom we once wanted to become. June’s academic identity, for example, kept reasserting itself throughout the entire transition period, even after she had handed in her resignation. “My department was family, a dysfunctional one,” June says, “but one I was an intimate part of, one I joined at age seventeen when I went to college.” For her, leaving academia meant not just giving up a long-term career objective but also an image of who she should become that important people in her life, including her mentor, harbored. The emotions she felt when she found the pile of draft articles that would have assured her professorial future show just how much giving up a possible self—even one that has become a burden or lost its appeal—marks a real loss.

A working identity, however, is not merely what we do and with whom; it lies also in the unfolding story of our lives. Throughout a career transition, the narratives we craft to describe why we are changing (and what remains the same) also help us try on possibilities. June’s attempts at explaining herself—why she wanted to make such a seemingly “crazy” career change, why a potential employer should take a chance on her, why she was attracted to a company she had never heard of a day before—were at first provisional, sometimes clumsy ways of redefining herself. But each time she wrote a cover letter, went through an interview, or updated friends and family on her progress, she better defined what was exciting to her, and in each public declaration of her intent to change careers, she committed herself further.

Like many who switch careers, Susan’s transition brought her back to her starting point: working full-time for a top consultancy. Yet her professional life—the way she does her work, the way she relates to coworkers and employers, and the way she balances her personal and professional life—has changed because of what she learned along the way. Making a career move is a chance to make fundamental changes in one’s life. Many people, like Susan, have long-held dreams about their careers but for one reason or another—including financial, family, or social pressures—have put them off. In some cases, like Susan’s, the issue is less the substance of the work than the lack of flexibility of the institutional structure in which the work gets done. In other cases, a person may have dreamed of becoming a writer, musician, or entrepreneur, but the practicalities of life were constraining.

Appendix: Studying Career Transitions

“My starting assumption, based on the work of MIT psychologist and career development expert Edgar Schein, was that the changes that occur during a career transition are changes in the nature and integration of a person’s social selves and not in basic personality structure or patterns of psychological defenses. But research also indicates that the identity changes that follow a period of major questioning and exploration are not limited only to competencies, attitudes, and behavior; they may also entail a rather drastic reorganization of the basic priorities and organizing principles that structure a person’s life.