Feeling stuck in your career is a good thing...
- William Graham
- 15 hours ago
- 3 min read
I've had multiple moments in my career where I felt stuck. No traction on a new job. No movement in my current one — no raise, no new title, nothing changing. Sometimes that's on circumstances outside your control: a hiring freeze, economic volatility, a world-stopping pandemic, a rigid corporate culture, or coworkers who simply have more favor than you do.
Of course, there's also the possibility that you're stuck because you're not good enough at what you do. Or you're not enough of a people person. But if you're reading this, I'd bet neither of those is the real issue — because you already care too much for that to be true. Caring is the number one driver of improvement. You have to care about yourself, your job, your family. When you care, you automatically become better at your job and better with people.
So why are you stuck? And why might that actually be a good thing?
Here's the twist: the reason you're stuck doesn't really matter. So the real question isn't "why?" — it's "what are you doing about it?"
Start With the Obvious
A work situation that isn't moving forward is a genuine opportunity to get better at the process itself. Consistency is king. Your body performs better when you sleep on a rhythm, work out on a rhythm, and eat roughly the same way every day. The same is true here — when you're stuck in a consistent situation, take advantage of the consistency. Learn to love the boring, repeatable processes that improve your life and your relationships. Boring is often just discipline in disguise.
Then Go Deeper
These stretches of feeling stuck are meant to be spent learning how to dig deeper into a work process that actually works for you — finding new layers to add to your workflow. You'll probably be doing this alone, and that's fine. It shouldn't stop you. Every intentional step you take now is preparing you for the next one.
Here are a few steps you can take today to find out if you're actually making progress:
Ask an LLM to define excellence in your role. Ask Claude, ChatGPT, or another AI what your job looks like when it's done at the highest level. It's a fast way to get the ball rolling on what you can improve immediately.
Be intentional about communication. Don't let updates happen by accident — make them a habit with your coworkers.
Close the loop before anyone has to ask. Instead of waiting for your boss to request a status update, send a weekly report on how your project is going. Do this consistently and you become the person who always has the answer — the one people can trust because the work visibly gets done. This is the single fastest way to build the kind of reputation that outlasts any one job title.
Nothing Wrong With Staying Put
To be clear — there's nothing wrong with staying in the same job for 30-plus years. But I'll admit there's something rewarding about new experiences: getting recognized for hard work, being rewarded for contributions, meeting new people. I think our capacity for empathy and self-awareness — our ability to love the people around us — grows when we take on new experiences and new challenges.
Being stuck isn't the end of the story. It's the training block. What you do with it is what separates the people who plateau from the people who keep climbing.
Hopefully, we're all in pursuit of something.
Pursuit Training | @train_pursuit | trainpursuit.com
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