It is almost normal for university students to understand they do not like the career path in which they are registered at school. The best way to choose a new career path is to understand more about yourself and choose a career path that matches your personal characteristics. One of the most common difficulties in choosing a career path is not knowing about the lifecycles of the career path you chose and not knowing about your own lifecycle.



Lifecycles

For example, the job of teaching algebra has a lengthy lifecycle. Nothing changes much in the field of algebra over the decades. People who make a career of teaching algebra seem to have a personal lifecycle of 15 to 25 years. They need things that remain the same. They are most comfortable in contexts where there is little or no change. So, they are drawn into a job where the job and the content of that job does not change for many decades.

On the other hand, the job of application software development has a fleeting lifecycle. Most software development projects are only 10 to 15 months. So, professionals who will thrive in the application software development job must have a fleeting lifecycle. This job needs professionals who want to start something, finish it, and then move on to the next task.

In between these two ends of the scale are those whose lifecycle is five to seven years. The majority of workers fit into this category. These are the workers who are the backbone of the workforce in the USA. These are the workers who market, forge, maintain, transport, and provide customer service for most of the goods & services in our marketplace.

Recognizing your own lifecycle can be simple. If you have a long work history, you explore your history of labor and find the pattern that you have lived in your labor. Have you had a progression of labor which are in the 5 to 7 years time-frame? Is your work experience made up of situations where you are drawn into projects where you build or maintain? If so, you may fit in the five to seven year lifecycle category.

Have all of your labor been doing one thing? If you have spent decades doing the same work and you have maintained a level of comfort with the projects and content of your work, you probably fit in the 15 to 25 year lifecycle category.

If your work history is a long list of short labor which you start, complete, and then move on, you probably fit in the fleeting lifecycle category.

Which is best?

There is no category that is better or worse than the others. Each category fills a need in our economy's work cycles. Some of these lifecycle groups fit better for certain careers or for certain labor.

If you are a student in university, you don't have a history to look back on to understand your patterns. You need another way of understanding your patterns and making useful elections about your career. Before that, you need to know a little bit more about these lifecycle categories.

The Alarm Clock

Without respect to which of these categories you are in, everyone carries an alarm clock in their head which lets them know that their cycle is exhausting. They usually really like their work situation and the others they work with, but they find themselves reading the ?Help Wanted? section in the newspaper. They start finding things to be dissatisfied with about their job, the people, the location, the weather, or anything else they can use to decide it is time to move on to another job. They start finding themselves thinking about moving on to the next work situation.

This is the usual method we use to know that our work situation lifecycle is exhausting, and we need to begin the next cycle. But, starting the next cycle does not have to be the next job or career. If you know this is your group, you can plan for the shifts you make from one cycle to the next. If you catch this ?alarm? when it first starts to sound, you can make comparatively small differences and reset your clock.

For instance, when you get a promotion on the job, your lifecycle is re-started, and your cycle starts over. When you get new kinds of tasks on the job, your lifecycle is re-started, and your cycle starts over. When you move to a different project in your company, your lifecycle is re-started, and your cycle starts over.

But if you do not make the break you need to make, when your ?alarm clock? sounds off, you start to get depressed. And, the longer you wait to make the change, the more massive the break needs to be to reset your clock. If you need to make the break and you do not make it, you get depressed. The longer you wait before you make the break, the deeper the depression.

When you first notice the alerts that you need the break, the break does not need to be very large. New task assignments or changing your work hours are usually enough. But if you wait, you may need to change the company you work for or you may need to change your career.

What Can You Do?

This could be a difficulty. Do you want to change your major because you really don't like this career, or is it because you have terminated your lifecycle?

You should obtain a career assessment using a process which helps you know many of your patterns including your lifecycle. With this kind of assessment, you can make reasoned decisions about your major, your career, and your life.