This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Mindshift" by Barbara Oakley. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Are you unhappy at work? Interested in another field? Worried that your job is in danger of becoming obsolete?
Barbara Oakley says it’s never too late to make a career change. In her book Mindshift, she asserts that you can have a mindshift regardless of your age or occupation. That means expanding your skill set—and, consequently, your opportunities—through transformative learning.
Keep reading to learn how to make a career change with three steps from Oakley.
How to Make a Career Change
Oakley’s advice on how to make a career change is threefold: change your perspective, determine what you want to do next, and learn how to learn. Let’s take a look at each step in detail.
Step #1: Change Your Perspective
Oakley says that to have a mindshift, you first need to adjust your mindset. In particular, you should realize the value of your experience and be humble.
Realize the Value of Your Experience
Oakley writes that shifting to something new may seem intimidating because you feel like others in your desired field have a head start, but she argues that starting later than your peers doesn’t necessarily put you at a disadvantage. In fact, she asserts that your experience in one field gives you unique, transferable skills that you can use in unexpected ways in another field. She gives the example of a Juilliard-trained musician who later became a doctor; his musically trained ear gave him the unique ability to detect irregular heart sounds.
Further, Oakley says that your experiences don’t even have to be related to your career and can instead come from your hobbies. For example, if you’ve built a respectable following by making cooking videos on your personal TikTok account, you might parlay this experience into helping your employer generate more engaging Instagram reels on the company account.
Be Humble
While it’s important to know the value you bring to a new field, it’s equally important to embrace being a beginner. It may be difficult to find yourself back at square one, especially if you’re already highly accomplished in another field, but acknowledging your newbie status can make you more open to learning new things because you accept that you don’t know it all.
Step #2: Determine What’s Next
Once you’ve reframed your thinking and opened your mind to the possibility of learning new skills, reflect on your desired career path.
There are two ways to go about making a career change. The first is to shift to another field entirely, which requires persistence and a healthy dose of the humility Oakley prescribes. You might need to immerse yourself in an environment where you’ll get plenty of guidance and exposure to your target field. For example, if you want to become a pastry chef, you might leave a cushy office job so you can work as a server at a restaurant and closely observe a patissier in action.
(Shortform note: Making a big career change can be risky, so Scott Pape, “The Barefoot Investor,” gives two tips in his eponymous book: First, make the transition gradual. Keep your current job, and dip your toe into the field you’re interested in by working a side job. And second, connect with people in your desired field. Ask them about their success strategies and any leads for work opportunities.)
The second way to make a career change is to shift to something that’s still within your current field. Oakley says this is an especially viable option for those who’ve already spent years of study and practice in a demanding field such as medicine or law—you can explore another specialization instead of starting from scratch and putting in more years of exhaustive study. For example, if you’re an accountant, you can go from being an auditor who inspects companies to a financial consultant who helps individuals prepare for retirement.
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Barbara Oakley's "Mindshift" at Shortform.
Here's what you'll find in our full Mindshift summary:
- That it's never too late to make a career change
- How to overcome the mental barriers that hold you back
- Why career shifts are essential in the fast-changing world
