Hey Little Pineapple,

Just get back from Poland.

Been there for 3 weeks - lots of coffee and catching up with friends.

There's this strange thing about visiting people you know well but don't see often.

You get this bird's eye view of their lives.

You can clearly see what happened in the last few months since you last met.

And with all of them, one topic kept coming up across every conversation: what they're doing with their lives and whether it's the right direction.

Specifically about work.

These guys are in their 30s.

Few years of real experience.

Enough to know the current thing isn’t the final answer.

Not enough to know what’s next.

At some point one of them said something like “I just don’t know what I want.”

And I swear every time I hear this it's like someone flips an "on" switch in my brain and I immediately go into coaching mode.

So I asked one of my favourites:

“What does a typical Tuesday look like for you, 2 years from now?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing in 3 months, let alone 2 years.”
“Yeah. Almost no one does. So, how does it look?”

Point is: most people can’t answer that question.

When I ask "what do you want to do?" they usually go with:

“I want to work in games.”

Quick. Easy. Useless.

Or some version that contains a job title:

"I want to be a Character Artist/Game Designer/Tools Programmer"

Which also is useless because job titles tell you nothing about whether you’ll actually enjoy the work.

So what you do in this situation is to start thinking in typical Tuesdays, not job titles.

This is the first thing I dig into with almost every client who comes to me and says he has ok-ish job, 6/10, but they feel is not the one for them.

So it's not “what role do you want?” but: when do you wake up, what are you working on, who are you talking to, when do you close the laptop?

Because when you get specific about a random Tuesday, not some dream milestone, just a normal Tuesday, you stop lying to yourself pretty fast.

Some people realise they have no idea what tasks they actually want to do.
Useful.

Some get genuinely excited describing it.
Also useful.

Both tell you something.

I’ve been updating my own answer every few months for 5 years.

Current version has me writing in the morning, two client sessions in the afternoon, laptop closed by 6. No alarm. Dogs walked. Dinner out with my wife.

Boring? Maybe.

But I can get excited about that Tuesday.

That’s the signal.

If you know your current role is a 6/10 but you can’t picture what a 10 looks like, that’s exactly where I start with people.

Hit reply and tell me what industry you’re in.

I’ll send back one question worth sitting with.

Fingers crossed for you,
Patryk