“I’ll think about my career when things calm down.”
After this project, after Christmas, when the kids are back at school, after the quarter ends, when I’m less busy – I’ve said all of these things myself over the years. What’s your version?
You know you should be thinking about where your career is heading longer term, whether the role you’re in still fits, what the next one might be – but when? There’s always another meeting, another deadline, and precious family and friends time you’re trying to protect.
So career planning too often gets pushed to the backburner. You tell yourself you’ll get to it properly when things ease up – except that never quite happens.
While you’re waiting for that mythical calm moment, sometimes things shift. Sometimes it’s gradual – the work that used to energise you doesn’t anymore, the balance that used to work simply doesn’t. Sometimes it’s sudden – a restructure, a redundancy, a change you didn’t choose. And sometimes you just wake up one day realising you’ve drifted so far that staying feels impossible or deeply unappealing, but you don’t have a proper plan for what’s next.
Why Making Time Matters
Strategic thinking about your career isn’t a luxury that can wait indefinitely until conditions are perfect. It’s what helps prevent drift becoming crisis and what helps you be ready if unexpected change comes your way.
I see this with clients a lot – talented, highly capable people who are managing demanding roles, complex stakeholders, team challenges, and full lives, but for whom career planning has felt like one more thing on an already impossible list so it’s been kicked into the long grass until something has brought it sharply back into focus.
Without regular space to step back and reflect, we end up shifting the balance too much towards reacting to what’s in front of us rather than proactively shaping our path. We say yes to things that we should probably question and prod a bit more, and no to opportunities that we should perhaps challenge ourselves to explore more. Small misalignments can then grow into bigger ones, temporary dissatisfaction can become chronic, and stress that one day feels manageable can compound into something much harder and more concerning tomorrow.
The changes we could have made with some forethought become decisions we’re then forced to make under pressure, and those are the ones we often regret later.
What We’re Actually Waiting For
When we say “I’ll do it when things calm down,” what we’re often really saying is: “I’ll do it when I have more energy, when I’m sure what the answer is, when it won’t feel self-indulgent.” Often at the heart of it is prioritising everyone and everything else over ourselves and our needs.
Those conditions rarely arrive on their own, and meanwhile the mental load of “I should be thinking about this” keeps growing. The irony is that making time to think is often the thing that creates the clarity and energy we thought we needed before we could start. It’s not the reward for getting everything else sorted – it’s the thing that helps us actually get everything else sorted.
Making Time: Some Practical Approaches
So how do you actually create some time when you’re already stretched thin? Here are some of the approaches I’ve found most helpful for me and my clients.
- Piggyback on existing habits Don’t try to create brand new time from scratch. Attach thinking time to what you already do reliably. The dog needs his daily walk – I’ve learned to set a thinking topic beforehand and use voice notes to capture ideas. One of my clients dedicates the 45 minutes when her children are at swimming lessons, another gets off the tube one stop early and uses that 20-minute walk, and another uses her time on the treadmill.
- Find your thinking environment Your best thinking rarely happens at your desk between back-to-back meetings. Where do your ideas actually emerge? Walking outside? In a coffee shop? During a commute? Movement and change of environment can shift your mental state in helpful ways.
- Start small You don’t need a whole day or even half a day. Thirty minutes of focused thinking beats three hours of distracted circling. Start with what feels manageable – even 20 minutes a month can start to build some momentum.
- Schedule it and defend it Put it in your calendar, recurring, and monthly at minimum. Treat it as non-negotiable – this isn’t time that always gets bumped for other things. Would you cancel a key stakeholder meeting for something non-urgent? Your career deserves the same protection.
- Use the time with intent Set a specific topic beforehand and have a method to capture your thoughts as they come – voice notes work brilliantly for this, or a notebook, whatever suits you. Structure helps you make progress rather than just circling. At the end, note how you want to use your next slot so you’ve got momentum going in.
- The download approach Start by getting everything out of your head – all the things you’re carrying, all the things that need thinking about. Write it down. Don’t filter or judge, just download. Then use something simple like Eisenhower’s Matrix to prioritise: what’s important and urgent, what’s important but can wait, what can be delegated, what can be dropped.
- The power of three Once you’ve factored in the essentials, anchor the rest of your week in a few clear priorities. Three for work and three for life can keep things moving without overwhelm. Success feels more attainable when the focus is on what matters most, not everything at once.
- Let go of perfection Have you truly embraced ‘good enough’ – are you spending the right amount of time doing the things you’re doing? I’m not saying don’t do a great job, but if you have perfectionist tendencies it can be easy to spend too long getting something perfect – and that extra time has to come from somewhere.
- Build in accountability Tell someone you’re doing this – a friend, a colleague, your partner. Or find someone who’ll do it alongside you and check in with each other. Accountability makes it stick.
The Real Investment
Making time for career thinking isn’t adding one more thing to your plate. It’s creating the conditions that help everything else work better. It’s the difference between drifting and directing, between reacting and shaping, between arriving somewhere by default and getting somewhere by design.
Yes, it requires intention. Yes, it means protecting time that could be used for something else. But the cost of not doing it – the years of drift, the opportunities missed, the decisions made under pressure that you later regret – that cost can be far higher.
Where to Start
If you’re reading this and thinking “yes, but…” – I get it, I’ve been there, and I know the barriers are very real.
But what I’ve definitely learned here is that you don’t need perfect conditions to start – you just need to start. Just one small step, one protected hour, one key question written down – it all helps.
Put 30 minutes in your calendar for next week. Label it “Career Thinking Time.” Defend it, show up for it and see what happens.
And if you’d like someone in your corner for that thinking – to help you use the time well, ask the right questions, and build from there – that’s where coaching can really help. If you’d like support creating regular thinking space and shaping your next steps, I’m always here to help.