In our Q&A bonus episode, we’re opening the mailbag to respond to your (occasionally panic-tinged) everywoman questions about navigating the midlife career odyssey:
How do you stay the course for change when the sirens of the familiar sing so sweetly?
How do you find space to think about change, experiment and network when the everyday mounts its endless Trojan assault?
And how do you keep up with tech when it’s moving at Hermes’ pace and you’re still lacing your sandals?
Listen as we answer these questions with wisdom borrowed from some fellow travellers.
Resisting the siren call
This question has particularly resonance:
Dear Wobbly Middle. Once I've started to make a change, it's so hard to stay the course. What advice do you have for resisting the siren call of a career which is familiar and easy when the new career is not yet making itself evident?
According to the myth, the sirens are actually luring sailors to their death. I’m not suggesting that staying in the same role is tantamount to letting yourself get dashed on the rocks by monstrous sea-nymphs but query whether the temperature of the water is as comfortable as you think.
A quiet, insidious threat to women’s careers in midlife is boredom. It’s the sluggish sense that your work no longer stretches or sparks you and hasn’t for some time - but you keep going because it’s fine. It’s the price of compromise, right? You can do it in your sleep and it pays the bills. Plus there’s always stuff going on at home so now’s not the time to rock the boat…Until one day, you realise you just … don’t …. care that much about work any more…
Which is fine. But the kicker with boredom is that when we get bored we tend to lack the desire to engage. Other side effects included “risky decision making, costly mistakes, and accidents triggered by inattention or lack of focus - and that’s not to mention the fatigue that being bored can generate.1”
One article I read cited "childish emotional responses” as a side effect of boredom. I relate.
We’re not talking your common and garden every-role-has-its-dull-bits boredom2. We mean chronic boredom, prolonged and persistent boredom to the point that your work feels pointless. It’s not good for you. Recent research shows that it can cause depression, anxiety, stress and insomnia.
So if your ship is in the doldrums (can we work this metaphor any harder?), it’s worth examining whether the status quo is really the safe harbour (it seems we can) you think it is or whether you are just drifting further from work that is meaningful to you.
Plotting the course
In terms of actually answering the question about plotting and staying the course for change, the Goddess of Wisdom and Strategy, Athena Aundrea Cline-Thomas says you need to strengthen your “Why”. Watch her in full as promised:
About the Hosts:
Patsy Day is a lawyer on a break—and a podcast producer. She’s worked everywhere from London to Ho Chi Minh City, but these days she lives in Oxford. Patsy is knee-deep into podcast production for SafeHouse Amsterdam (launching 2025) and co-hosting The Wobbly Middle.
Susannah de Jager has just relocated to Abu Dhabi, where she’s podcasting, consulting with start-ups, and occasionally advising on scale-up capital. After leaving her role as CEO of a boutique asset manager, she asked the all-important question: what next? Five years later, she’s following her curiosity —The Wobbly Middle is for her and every woman doing the same.
This extract is actually from an HBR article “The Benefits of Being Bored at Work”. It’s good for understanding the different kinds of boredom and when things just need tweaking. What we’re talking about is a boredom is not harmless boredom…
Apparently there is a measure called the Dutch Boredom Scale.
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