What To Do When You’re Stuck In A Career Rut

Career ruts are an unfortunate but common experience for many professionals. People often find themselves stagnating, being passed over for promotions, and being omitted from meetings that they used to attend regularly. These are all signs that may be indicative of a career rut. Unfortunately, some people fail to recognize these warning signs, turning a temporary slump into a long-term setback. To ensure that you’re able to bounce back, it’s important to identify the areas you’re struggling with and create a plan to help lift yourself out of the rut. As with all problems, the first step is to identify the issue.

Recognize The Signs Of A Career Rut

In order to solve a problem, you need to acknowledge and address its existence first. Recognizing a career rut can be more difficult than you would think, simply because we tend to avoid the signs. This denial of a problem is common for those in a career rut, and may warrant deeper reflection.

The most common sign of a career rut and the one that leads people to search for help is underperformance. Whether internally noted or externally mentioned through performance reviews and the like, underperformance tends to coincide with career ruts. It’s hard to move up positionally when you’re struggling with the duties of your current role.

A sneaky sign of a career rut might also be your reputation, or how your coworkers and managers perceive you. This perception can be hard to pick up at times, but generally, the way others see you has a big impact on your performance. Their views, positive or negative, could bolster or stunt your performance, respectively. You might also internalize your perceived reputation, believing that you won’t be able to get the promotion, and thus stop yourself from even trying in the first place.

Assess Your Current Situation

Noticing signs of a career rut may be difficult, but figuring out how to counteract them is a true challenge. The first step of escaping a career rut (once you’ve determined that you’re in one) is to take stock of your current situation. Analyzing what specifically is causing you issues is the only way to effectively and efficiently find solutions to your problems.

If you or others think that you’re underperforming, determine what specifically about your performance is lacking. Identify concrete areas of your work that need improvement, and find resources or coaches that can help you improve your knowledge base and efficiency in those areas. If you’re simply exhausted from work or life circumstances, devote more time to yourself. Find time for reflection, even if it’s five minutes during your commute, and give yourself the space to process the issues that might be affecting your work. Conversely, if you’re disinterested in your work, take time to consider why. Think about times when work was fresh and enjoyable, and identify ways you can bring your job back in line with the work that used to excite you.

Company Vs Career: What Is The Source Of Your Career Rut?

This step is also when you determine whether you have a company problem or a career problem. You might be struggling in your role because your company has placed you in a toxic situation or hefted too much work onto your shoulders. If you’re struggling with work but love what you do, seeking a similar position with a different company might be the best way to break out of your career rut.

Alternatively, if you’re starting to become disenchanted with the type of work you spend each week on, it may be time to think about a career change. Identify the moments where you’ve found the most joy or accomplishment from your job. What about that moment in time made your work so enjoyable and fulfilling? Focus on that skill or interaction. Learn more about it, and identify careers where you use that skill or have that interaction all the time. From there, upskill and get in touch with people in that industry to see if it’s a job you’re ready to move to. Switching careers can sometimes be the most effective and fulfilling way to bounce back from a career rut.

Explore Personal Development Resources

One of the best ways to break free from any slump you may be feeling professionally is upskilling. Learning new things is the best way to feel progress, while also giving you the chance to open yourself up to additional responsibilities or roles. Personal development resources like books, online courses, and workshops are there to help you grow professionally. Maybe you’ve never understood all of the keyboard shortcuts you could be using to save yourself time, or maybe you’ve never spent time thinking about the way you speak. Whatever your situation, everyone has areas of improvement. Capitalizing on these as room for growth rather than letting them become weaknesses can be the difference between a career rut and your next promotion.

Create A Plan For Change

After you’ve determined what’s causing your career rut and you’ve grown your skills appropriately, it’s time to make a plan. Knowing the problem won’t always lead you straight to the solution, and bridging the gap between the problem and solution can feel impossible at times. Setting yourself a clear goal is one of the best ways to build yourself up after falling into a career rut. Set a specific goal, identify what you can do to achieve that goal, and then do a little bit each day. This method of goal setting and achieving represents your plan for change.

For example, if you’ve seen your performance dip in the past month because of how tired you are, you might set a goal of six hours of sleep each night, with eight hours on weekends. This goal is specific and attainable for most people. Once you have that precise goal picked out, set the steps you can take to achieve it.

In the above example, you might try putting away blue light an hour before bed, taking vitamins like magnesium, and putting yourself at the right temperature when you’re trying to sleep. Of course, this goal won’t happen all at once, so part of your plan should be to do a little bit every day. For the first week, you might just try putting away your phone for an hour before you go to bed. Next week, you might buy a fan to see if the cool air can help you get to bed faster. Taking this measured approach towards a clear goal is the best way that you can set yourself up for success, no matter what you might be trying to achieve.

Take Action & Stay Committed

The key to any kind of improvement, both in life and professionally, is consistency. Staying true to your plan is the best way to achieve whatever goal you set for yourself. To achieve this consistency, it’s important to take action. Identify times throughout the day where you can work on your goal. Pick one of those times, and give yourself the space to improve. Using to-do lists is a great way to stay on track and receive positive feedback.

Staying committed can be a challenge, especially if you’re solely finding motivation internally. Therefore, it’s helpful to find external sources of motivation like friends and family. Having a supportive environment goes a long way towards achieving your goals. You can find this environment at work, at home, or even online. If you developed your skills through a workshop, you might be able to lean on some of those participants to help you stay consistent with your plan. Wherever you draw support, staying consistent is the key to achieving your goals and breaking out of that career rut.

Partner With Premier

Working with a staffing company during a career rut can be a great way to look at your options and receive advice from career experts. When you work with Premier, you gain access to our excellent recruiting team, ready and willing to help you closely examine all the options available to you. Our team understands how quickly the job market can shift and change, and they can help you understand what skills are the most employable in today’s market. Get started today and see what Premier can do for you!