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Do you want to shift your career in some bigger way but feel that you are too busy to do so right now? Are you waiting for the perfect moment? Well, don’t be a baby and do nothing. Actually, correction, be a baby and take some baby steps.
The Perfect Moment Probably Won’t Ever Come
That’s because if you wait for it, wait for it, wait for the perfect moment, you could end up waiting for a long time, like forever. Life instead will deliver more messy, fruitcake batter-like moments. Life can be quite nuts—but fruitful if you take advantage of such moments, meaning take action.
Therefore, take a baby step—a very small, immediately doable action—toward that career direction of interest. You can’t really say “Like baby, baby, baby, no,” in the words of that Bieber song “Baby” to such an approach. That would be like saying that you can’t even be a baby and can’t even do anything.
How to Identify the Right Baby Steps
The best types of baby steps are those that you know you’ll do—namely, things that you’ll enjoy. So start by breaking down whatever new career situation you are considering into its component mundane parts—things that you would be doing every day if you were to successfully transition. Then choose one of these parts that you might enjoy doing and just do it—regularly, preferably each and every day. For example, if you want to be an artist, why not paint, sculpt, or draw something, each and every day? If you want to enter some kind of counseling profession, give some advice to someone on a daily basis. If you want to do something with artificial intelligence (AI), make sure that each day consists of something me, myself, and AI.
Years ago, I wondered out loud to my significant other at the time about getting into journalism. That freaked her out because she didn’t want a potential spouse of hers considering such a low-paying profession. With little support for such a change, I could have said, “I’ll wait until I save more money or at least find another significant other.” But instead, I quietly wrote something every day—initially, just for fun without a clear goal. But, over time, such regular writing became pieces that could be submitted to any place willing to publish them. That helped me progressively build up a writing portfolio, which could then be easily shown to editors when opportunities eventually arose. And that, kids, is how I met my journalism and writing careers.
Baby Steps Are Easier to Take Than Big Changes
The whole “baby” name suggests that such steps are much easier to undertake than larger-scale changes. After all, there are few things that babies can do better than you, with the possible exception of smiling like an idiot and burping. The baby steps approach lowers the bar and can help you overcome paralysis by analysis—getting you to take action rather than just think about action. It can also force you to focus more on the here-and-now present than the super-uncertain future.
Baby Steps Can Help You Realize What You Don’t Want
If you do find it difficult to take any baby steps toward a new direction, then maybe that’s a clear sign that such a direction would be wrong for you. For example, I tell aspiring journalists, “If you don’t like that whole write-each-day thing, then journalism may not be the ‘write’ thing for you.” Therefore, baby steps can serve as a very low-cost test for you—a test of your interest and gumption.
Ultimately, the day-to-day mundane activities of a career are the things that are going to sustain you—not the supposed accolades, pay, prestige, or other things that only occasionally, if ever, come. I’ve heard many people claim to want jobs where they’re some kind of big investor, leader, or star when what they really want to be is rich and worshipped. And last I checked, I couldn’t find “rich and adored” on the Monster.com job search site.
Baby Steps Can Help You See More Steps
When you do find baby steps that you enjoy and, thus, can sustain, you will more easily see the next possible steps to take. That should happen on any journey, whether it’s to some far-off land or even to the nearby bathroom—your perspective and viewpoint will continue to evolve along the way. For example, once I began writing on a daily basis, it became easier to think of different writing topics and audiences.
Even if some of your baby steps prove to be missteps, anything babyish should be relatively easy to reverse and pivot from if needed. Say you participated in a weekend acting class as a move-toward-show-business baby step. It’s not as if a significant other worth keeping might say, “I just can’t be with someone who would act as badly as the cast of that 2003 disaster, known as the movie ‘Gigli,’ did. That had such a bad Affleck on me.” Rather than having irreversible consequences, a bad baby step could help identify a better next baby step, such as finding a better acting class or moving toward directing instead.
Speaking of acting, the baby steps approach will be a constant reminder that when trying to make a change, it’s important to take action. That’s because any kind of action is typically better than no action. In other words, don’t be a baby and just do nothing.
