The career data nobody tells you to collect. The data that was sitting in my own office, the whole time.
I was sitting in our accounting department, watching my manager accept an ad hoc task from the CFO. Overtime. Third time that week. And she was very pregnant.
“I do not want her life.”
Not because there was anything wrong with her. She was kind, capable, had her things figured out. But I looked at where she was — six or seven years ahead of me on the same track — and something in my chest went cold.
Because if I kept doing what I was doing, that was the version of me I was building toward. And I didn’t want it.
I used to sit at my desk and picture it. Not abstractly — specifically. Same cubicle, different year. Same spreadsheets, bigger numbers. Punching figures into a screen until retirement, while something in me quietly went out, year by year, and nobody around me seemed to notice it happening to them too.
That image haunted me more than any performance review ever could.
That moment with my manager — and the years of that image sitting in my chest — is the closest thing I have to an origin story for leaving accounting.
Today in 5 minutes or less, you’ll learn:
✔️ A small experiment to run when you’re not sure if your current path is yours
✔️ A reflection question about who you’re modelling your life on
✔️ Why the people one rung above you are the most honest career data you’ll ever get
Doable ideas 💭
Here’s something I want you to try this week. It takes about ten minutes.
Look at the person in your workplace who is roughly five to seven years ahead of you on the track you’re currently on. Not the founder, not the CEO, not the dream-case-scenario person you saw on LinkedIn.
The realistic next step. Your manager, your senior, the person whose role you’d probably grow into if you stayed.
Now ask yourself, honestly:
- Do I want their calendar?
- Do I want their stress?
- Do I want what they talk about at lunch?
- Do I want how they look on a Wednesday at 4pm?
You don’t have to do anything with the answers yet. Just notice what comes up. The body usually knows before the brain does.
If the answer is yes, that’s beautiful information. Keep going, you’re on a path that fits.
If the answer is no, that’s also information. It doesn’t mean you have to quit tomorrow. It just means the script you’re following might not be yours, and it’s worth getting curious about that before another five years pass.
Reflections 🪞
Whose life are you currently building toward, and did you actually choose them as the model, or did proximity choose them for you?
What’s the specific image, like my cubicle one, that you picture when you imagine staying on your current path? What does it tell you?
Mindfulness 🧘🏻♀️
I think one of the most underrated career tools we have is looking at the people one rung above us and being radically honest about whether we want what they have.
We’re trained not to do this. It feels rude. It feels ungrateful. It feels like we’re judging people who have been kind to us, who’ve mentored us, who are objectively doing well.
But here’s the thing: you’re not judging them. You’re gathering data about your own future.
The people one step ahead of you are the most honest career data you will ever get.
Not the founder of the company. Not the partner who’s been there 25 years and lives in a different reality. The person who was you, four or five years ago, and made the choices you’re about to make.
Their life is a preview of yours.
When I looked at my manager that day, I wasn’t being cruel. I was being honest. She had done everything right by the script we were both following. She was the success case. And I still didn’t want it.
That told me something the brochures and the graduate program slides never could: the destination of this path is not somewhere I want to arrive.
I want to be clear about what that felt like, because I don’t think it’s talked about enough. It wasn’t a dramatic realisation. It was quiet and it was heavy. A low-grade dread that sat in my chest most mornings on the train into the city. I’d watch the same view go past the window and think, “is this it, then? Is this just what my life is now?” Not panic. Just a kind of grey resignation I didn’t have a name for at the time.
I didn’t quit that week, or that year. I sat with that cold feeling for a long time before I did anything about it. Which is, I think, the most honest thing I can tell you about this — noticing isn’t the same as acting, and that gap can last longer than you’d like.
A lot of us stay stuck because we never let ourselves look. We keep our head down. We tell ourselves we’ll figure it out later. We assume the discomfort we feel now is just a phase, and that the people ahead of us must have figured something out we haven’t.
Sometimes they have. And sometimes they’re just further down the same road, wondering the same things, with more responsibilities making it harder to turn around.
So look. Really look. Not to be ungrateful, not to be dramatic, just to be informed.
And if what you see makes something in your chest go cold, don’t ignore that. That’s not a malfunction. That’s your own compass trying to get your attention before another five years go by.
You don’t have to act on it today. You just have to stop pretending you didn’t notice.
Ideas Worth Pondering 🧠
It’s far better when doing good work is sufficient. In other words, the less attached we are to outcomes the better. When fulfilling our own standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. When the effort—not the results, good or bad—is enough.
– Ryan Holiday
Did you love this article?
If so, please let me know by either:
- #1: Forwarding this to a friend whom you think would benefit from actionable well-being tips
- #2: Hitting reply. Send me a sentence or two about what you enjoyed. I meant it when I say I’d love to hear from you. Typing into the void isn’t nearly as fun as interacting with real humans 🙂