The grind, the wait, the glorious reward – and why rushing any stage ruins the whole thing. Career transition tips for mid-career professionals.
There is a ritual I look forward to every single morning. The kettle goes on, the beans go into the grinder, and for about ninety glorious seconds, the whole house smells like possibility. I’m not in a rush. I know better.
Because I’ve made the mistake of rushing it before, and what ends up in the cup is barely worth drinking.
Career transitions, I’ve come to realise, work in exactly the same way.
Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of mid-career professionals who come to me for help having already made one of two mistakes.
Either they’ve been sitting with their dissatisfaction for so long that the coffee’s gone cold – procrastinating, wondering, waiting for the “right time” to make a move.
Or they’ve bolted toward the first thing that looked like an escape route, poured the water on before the grounds were ready, and ended up in a new role that felt surprisingly similar to the one they’d just left.
Both situations are fixable. But they’re also, entirely, avoidable.
I firmly believe life is too short to drink bad coffee. And it’s certainly too short to stay in a career that no longer fits who you are.
First, You Have to Choose Your Beans
Before any great cup of coffee happens, someone made a deliberate choice.
Not just “I want coffee.”
What type of coffee? What origin? What roast? Light and bright with citrus notes, or dark and complex with something smoky underneath?
This is where most career transitions quietly go wrong, right at the very beginning, before anyone’s even looked at a job board.
People focus on the what (what job, what industry, what title) before they’ve sat with the deeper question: who am I now, and what do I actually want from my work?
At mid-career, you are not the same person you were when you first started out. Your values have shifted. Your priorities have changed.
Things that used to light you up might now feel hollow, and things you once dismissed as “not for me” might now be calling your name.
Before you pour anything, you need to know what’s actually in the bag.
This is the work I love most with my clients. The deep, honest exploration of who they’ve become and what genuinely matters to them now. It’s the foundation of everything that comes after.
The Grind (Yes, There Is One)
No great coffee skips the grind. And no meaningful career transition skips the hard work of self-assessment, skills mapping, and honest reflection.
I know that’s not the romantic part. Nobody makes a movie about the bit where you sit down with a notebook and write out your transferable skills. But this stage is where that wonderful flavour actually comes from.
When I work with someone navigating a career change, we spend real time here. What are you genuinely good at? What do people consistently come to you for? What problems do you solve almost effortlessly? What are the things that feel obvious to you but seem to mystify everyone else? That’s your grind. That’s where your value lives.
The people who skip this step, those who jump straight from “I’m unhappy” to “I’ll just apply for anything that pays more”, often find themselves eighteen months later, sitting in a new office, wondering why they didn’t leave their dissatisfaction behind, and the dissatisfaction followed them in.
“According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, only 23% of employees worldwide report feeling engaged in their work.” – Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2023
Water Temperature Matters More Than You Think
Ask any serious coffee person and they’ll tell you: boiling water burns the grounds. You want it just off the boil, around 93–96°c, patient, not aggressive.
The right temperature extracts what’s good. The wrong temperature extracts what’s bitter.
In career transitions, your energy and urgency are your water temperature. A certain heat is necessary and you need momentum, you need action, you need to actually do something.
Did you realise that panic, desperation, and frantic applying-to-everything is like boiling the water. It scorches the process.
I see this with professionals who’ve been made redundant, or who’ve had a particularly bad review, or who’ve simply had one too many Sunday-night dread spirals.
The urgency is real and valid. But when that urgency tips into desperation, it changes how you present yourself in interviews, how you evaluate opportunities, and how clearly you can think about what you actually want. You end up bitter before you’ve even begun.
The antidote isn’t to slow down entirely. It’s to channel that energy purposefully into research, into meaningful conversations, and into building the kind of clarity that lets you move quickly and wisely.
The Bloom – That Quiet Moment of Possibility
Here is my favourite part of the process, and the one most people skip in both coffee and career transitions.
When you pour a small amount of hot water over freshly ground coffee and wait thirty seconds, something extraordinary happens. The grounds bloom, they puff up, release carbon dioxide, and open themselves up to the extraction that’s about to happen. Skip this step, and you get uneven results. Honour it, and everything that follows is richer.
In career transition, the bloom is the pause between deciding to make a change and charging headlong into action. It’s the period of exploration, of informational conversations, of trying things on, of sitting with what excites you and what doesn’t.
It’s a little uncomfortable, because it doesn’t feel like “progress.” But it is. It is absolutely progress … and it provide career clarity.
Some of my clients call this the “in-between” and feel guilty about it, as though they should already have the answer.
However this is what I tell them: “This is where the richness develops. Let it bloom.”
The Career Transition Coffee Method. Six Stages Worth Savouring
I love this infographic of the process – I asked ChatGPT to create what was on my mind and it did a great job here:
1. Choose your beans
Clarify your values, your non-negotiables, and who you are at this stage of your career.
2. The grind
Do the honest work of mapping your skills, strengths, and the problems only you can solve.
3. Temperature check
Channel your urgency productively. Panic rushes; clarity moves purposefully.
4. The bloom
Pause. Explore. Have conversations. Let possibilities open before you commit to a direction.
5. The pour
Take deliberate, consistent action. Applications, networking, and job interviews with strategy, not a scattergun approach.
6. Savour it
Transition with intention, not just relief. Know what you’re stepping INTO, not just what you’re stepping away from.
The Pour: Consistent, Patient, Deliberate
Once you’ve bloomed, you pour. Slowly. Steadily. Not all at once as that overflows everything and makes a mess. You pour in controlled circles, giving the water time to work through the grounds evenly.
This is your action phase.
Updating your LinkedIn profile.
Reaching out to people in your network with genuine curiosity rather than naked desperation.
Applying to roles thoughtfully, tailoring each application rather than shotgunning the same resumé to forty-seven listings one frantic Tuesday evening.
Going to the interview prepared, not just hoping for the best.
Consistent, patient, deliberate action, poured in circles, not dumped all at once, is what gets you to a result you’re actually proud of.
Finally: Savour What You’ve Made
I want you to think about the last time you made something you were truly proud of whether in your work, your life, in a kitchen, wherever.
There’s a particular satisfaction to it, isn’t there? You don’t just gulp it down to get it over with. You notice it. You appreciate it.
This is what I want for you at the end of your transition. Not just relief that it’s over. Not just gratitude to be out of something bad.
But genuine, grounded satisfaction in where you’ve landed, because you did the work, you honoured the process, and you did something good.
I’ve seen what happens when people rush a career transition just to escape discomfort. They end up somewhere new but not somewhere right, and the whole process starts again six months later.
And I’ve seen what happens when people do the work properly, when they take the time to get clear, to explore, to act with strategy and self-knowledge. Those are the ones who send me messages once they’ve settled into their new roles that make my whole day.
That’s the cup worth making.
Ready to Start Brewing?
If your career has gone a little cold and you’re not sure where to start, I’d love to help. Book an exploratory chat with me and let’s talk about what’s possible for you.
If you’re ready to take action today, my VIP Career Day tailored just for you could be what you’ve been searching for.
www.janejacksoncoach.com/vip-career-day-australia
