How To Get Out Of A Career Rut In Your 30s

The first steps to get out of a career rut in your 30s are to gather results of your work, audit your transferable skills and update your CV and LinkedIn. After that, it’s crucial to sort out your work-life balance by revisiting your personal passions, and find pleasure in your daily job so it doesn’t feel like such a grind. You should also build an ‘options fund’ and go on a professional retreat to work out your next steps. 

But if all that sounds like a lot right now, I get it: you’re stuck in a rut and feeling bored, dissatisfied and frankly CBA with your job. The idea of doing more work just so you can feel less frustrated about your existing work isn’t very appealing. So let’s go through it, step by step, and make it a little more palatable.

First, a bit of context.

Background photo by NEOM on Unsplash

What Is A Career Rut?

A career rut is a period of time in your professional life where you feel you’re doing the same things repeatedly and don’t seem to be moving forward. Just like a rut in a dirt track, you’ve fallen into a routine of doing the same old things, over and over, and you feel stuck.

It’s basically the difference between being ‘in the groove’ and, well, not in the groove. When you’re feeling in the groove of your work, you know what you’re doing, it’s a pleasure to do each task, everything is running smoothly, and life feels like it’s moving forward.

Compare that to being ‘in a rut’, where what you’re doing feels monotonous and isn’t generating any discernible momentum. Your metaphorical cart has fallen into a well-worn path on a dirt track, and now you’re spinning your wheels, going through the motions - but not actually moving anywhere.

(Interesting fact: ‘in a groove’ originally had a negative connotation, just like being ‘in a rut’, but it seems like that changed during the 1920s with the development of slang terms related to jazz and the hip new vinyl records everyone was listening to. Well, I thought it was an interesting fact.)

What Are The Signs Of A Career Rut?

The signs of being in a career rut are regularly feeling bored at work, going through the motions in your everyday tasks, living for the weekend and making no progress in your chosen field. 

Being in a career rut in your 30s is very much like career stagnation at 35, where everything professional just slows down and you start feeling dissatisfied at work:

• Work feels boring - you’re bored consistently and repeatedly, even to the point of apathy and ‘checking out’ of tasks you used to find interesting or novel.

• Going through the motions - because you feel bored, you’re putting in much less than 100% (think more like 50%) and maybe even cutting corners on some mundane tasks. The worst part of this is no-one seems to notice, which can feel very disheartening.

• Living for the weekend - you’re not being adequately intellectually stimulated at work so you spend your time counting down the hours until the weekend, dreaming of far-off holidays, planning your escape, etc. 

And the biggest sign of a career rut is when you’re just not making any progress in your role or field. You’re not getting promotions or raises, you’re not picking up any new clients or projects; you’re just doing the same old thing, day in and day out.

It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, though. If you’re bored and checked out, you’re not going to bother trying to make progress, and therefore you’ll stay stuck in a career rut. But also, if you feel unable to make progress or disheartened from doing so, then obviously you’re going to feel more bored and even more checked out. 

It ends up being a vicious cycle.

P.S. For a deeper dive into the signs of career stagnation, you can read my full article Feeling Stuck? The Signs of Career Stagnation at 35 (UK Edition).

Why Does A Career Rut Happen In Your 30s?

A career rut happens in your 30s because you’re past the initial enthusiasm you had for your professional life in your 20s, and you’re being asked to make big decisions about the next, more senior phase of your career. Aka you’re in the sticky middle bit of your professional experience, and those bits are always hard.

You undoubtedly spent most of your 20s absolutely smashing it at work (and possibly being absolutely smashed outside of work 😬). You graduated, got a ‘good job’, got your head down and started climbing the corporate ladder. It’s only now, a decade in, that you’ve decided to look up from your desk - and that’s mainly because you don’t have the energy of a 20-year-old anymore, and you’re starting to think about the next phase of your career (and life).

As you’ve been in your chosen field for 10 years or so, it makes sense that in your 30s you start asking “Do I want to be doing this for the next ten years? Is this it?” accompanied by various wailing, gnashing of teeth, 4am staring out the window, etc. 

The answer is no, my friend: there is a lot more to life and work than what you’re currently doing. You just can’t see out of your little dirt track rut right now. 

So let’s get you out of there, shall we?

Step By Step Guide To Getting Out Of A Career Rut

• Gather results of your work from the last 3-12 months

• Audit your transferable skills

• Update your CV and LinkedIn

• Revisit your personal passions

• Find pleasure in your daily work

• Starting building an ‘options fund’

• Go on a professional retreat

Let's break these down, step by step.

Gather results from the last 3-12 months

Step one of getting out of a career rut is to collect results from your work over the last three to 12 months. If you do this one thing, I guarantee you will start to feel better, see more opportunities and may even bust yourself out of that career rut entirely.

As a business owner, I am pretty much a one-person band. I am my whole sales and marketing team - and to be good at that I have to know, in great detail, the results I get for the people I work with. If I don’t know the results, I can’t sell my services, and if I can’t sell my services, I will be eating Lidl own-brand beans for a month. 

But when you’re employed, you don’t need to think about ‘results’. Your salary plops into your account like clockwork and, unless you actually work in sales, you don’t have to worry about it. However, knowing the results you generate from your own work is some of the most self-affirming data you can have. It proves to you that you are talented, that you can do things, and that you do have options for your next step.

Easy ways to get proof for your CV

• Go back through your email / Slack messages / carrier pigeons and screenshot every bit of positive feedback you’ve got, ever

• Email your colleagues for feedback or testimonials (yes, you are allowed to do this)

• Pull reports from your projects, looking at data of before and after: how did your work increase revenue, improve customer retention, etc?

With this information you now know how what you are doing is contributing to actual impact in the world. And having that evidence is useful not only for recognising your excellence, but demonstrating it to others.

This results-gathering process is a key step in my Wild Success methodology, which I teach on day two of my personal development events. Remembering to collect results takes a lot of conscious effort, but it has astonishing results, which is exactly why I included it in my methodology - so that you learn how to do it, establish a repeatable process that works for you, until eventually it becomes second nature.

Audit your transferable skills

The next step to get out of a career rut is to audit the transferable skills you have which can be used across roles, industries and companies. This is a natural second step after you have gathered evidence of your results, but it’s also perfectly fine to do this part independently.

‘Transferable skills’ gets thrown around a lot, and if you read the phrase and sighed I am not surprised. Having worked in a huge variety of jobs, I used to think I had zero transferable skills. Art shop, university lecturer, bar tending and SEO copywriting? How do they all fit together?? Similarly, if you’ve only ever done one type of job in one type of industry, you might think your skills are way too specific to be used anywhere else.

But it’s just not true. I believe our career is a vehicle for something we want to experience as an individual person: some path of learning or growth which we’ve subconsciously embarked upon. That means everything you’ve done has commonalities running through it, some golden thread that’s going to help you find a path through the ‘maze’ of your professional life.

Working out your transferable skills means finding that golden thread, identifying the talents you use at work which cross industry, role, and even seniority. They can be practical, technical, or ‘hard’ skills, but don’t underestimate the power of ‘soft’ skills (really don’t like that term, tbh); they are much more valuable than you’ve been led to believe.

Update your CV and LinkedIn

Your third step in getting out of a career rut is to review your CV and Linkedin, and update it with detailed experience of what you’ve been doing. I know, I know - literally everyone’s least favourite job. But it’s an exercise in self-reflection and self-promotion that really does make a difference.

My CV reads like three different people’s careers smooshed into one. I’ve had such a portfolio career, doing many different roles at the same time, it’s hard to even work out how to format it, let alone write it. But updating my CV is something I do religiously, and the same goes for LinkedIn.

Because where else do you get to toot your own horn but there? Where else do you get to really share how brilliant you are at your job? It’s the one place where all of your excellence can be gathered together for you to bask in. So use the results you gathered in step one and put them all in here.

That’s why your CV and LinkedIn are so important. They’re for you, not for anyone else; for you to remember how great you are, and get yourself out of this career rut. 

P.S. Shameless plug - connect with me on LinkedIn for guidance on finding your purpose and taking consistent action so you can finally experience wild success. I post 3-4 times a week.

Revisit your personal passions

Next, to get out of a career rut, you should revisit your personal passions, hobbies and interests which may have fallen by the wayside since you started focusing on your career. By the way, Netflix does not count as a ‘hobby’.

Remember when you used to love taking photos for yourself, rather than Instagram? When you would read a book and not tell anyone about it? Go LARPing in Epping Forest? Exercise for pleasure rather than stress release? Make a home cooked meal?? Exactly. 

If you threw yourself into your career at 21, it can be painful to wake up in your 30s and realise you pushed aside all the passions you previously had for the sake of that career. And if it has been a particularly stressful or depleting job, it’s also sad to realise that the reason you pushed your hobbies aside was because you just did not have the energy to do them. Ouch 😴

But your personal passions are just as important as your work - I would say even more important. So start small. Use your local library. Turn off your phone for an hour (or 24). Find interest groups on MeetUp. Remember what used to light you up, and start doing a little bit every week so you rebalance your work and life.

Find pleasure in your daily work

Another step to help you get out of a career rut is to find pleasure in your daily work, which can include your relationships with colleagues, small wins, and personal satisfaction. Because getting out of a rut can take a while, and you need to find something to keep you going in the meantime.

One of my favourite books is It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be by the godfather of advertising, Paul Arden. In the book, Arden describes that the job on your desk right now is the job to focus on - not the one coming in tomorrow, not the one you keep dreaming about, but the one you’ve got. His argument is that if you make that job the best you can, you’re in with a shot at getting a better one.

When you’re in a career rut, that means taking pleasure in the small, daily things - the perfectly written email, the meeting that ended with actual actions, the happy client, the jokes with your colleagues. In general you might be feeling bored and dissatisfied with your career, so look at the tiny specifics and celebrate them. 

This is rule #1 of Wild Success: you can’t get to a good time without having a good time. So start having a good time - even if that’s in the tiniest of ways.

Starting building an ‘options fund’

An important step in getting out of a career rut in your 30s is to build an ‘options fund’ which covers a few months of living expenses and gives you options for what to do next. This was an essential factor in me feeling able to leave corporate life, even if it doesn’t feel particularly glamorous or ‘grammable.

When you’re in a career rut in your 30s, the worst thing is feeling like you don’t have options: that you have to stay because you need the money, etc. An ‘options fund’ takes away that problem by being a pot of cash that is specifically for spending on options - aka experiments and explorations in your career next steps.

I’ve read lots of contrasting advice about how much to actually save for a pot like this, but my fund was three months’ of living expenses - and when I say living expenses I really mean the basics. No gym, no nails, no new clothes, just food and rent and bills. 

I suggest this number because:

1. The amount is much more achievable than if you factored in every single chai latte, yoga class, collectable Pokémon card, etc.

2. It gives you a massive reality check about how much you need to live vs how much you are currently spending to feel happier 👀

Go on a professional retreat

If you’re serious about getting out of a career rut, then going on a professional retreat to figure out the next steps for your career is a recommended move. Never done one of those? Don’t worry, I got you.

I love retreats. I love going somewhere for a day or two and just focusing on me, my life, what I want to do, etc. But events like this seem alien to a lot of people because it feels … well, indulgent. Weird. Why do you need to ask for help? Can’t you just figure it out by yourself? Do you really need to spend all that time and money on you??

Listen, if you could figure it all out alone you wouldn’t be in a career rut. The reason you’re stuck is because you’ve been doing the same thing over and over, listening to the same advice, and you need help. You need fresh ideas. And you need the time to actually think about this stuff. 

My personal development events in London, where I teach the Wild Success methodology, are exactly these breaks from the norm: time and space to think, learn, and do things differently. It’s not indulgent to spend a weekend working out your next moves; in the long run, it’s going to save you so much time, energy, money and heartache than if you keep plodding along by yourself.

Bonus Content: Finding Purpose At Work

Finding purpose at work can include working for the right cause, seeing the whole project come together, being of service, and getting comfortable with the limitations of your job. You can try some of these ideas now, in your existing role, or use them as a guide for your next steps (and your options fund).

• Work for the right cause. More than ever we’re feeling called to work for companies that do good in the world, whether that’s because they’re ethical, sustainable, or operate in the third sector. Finding purpose at work can mean doing the same job for a different employer who better matches your values, or for projects where you can clearly see the positive impact on society.
  

• See the whole project come together. Corporate work for the information economy mostly involves completing only one tiny bit of a job, rather than the whole thing, and you don’t often get to see the finished result. This was exactly my issue with corporate marketing, where I would send off a couple of hundred words for a project and never see it again. Connecting with team members at the delivery end of projects, so you can see the whole thing come together, helps you find more purpose at work because it connects your actions with a concrete outcome.
  

• Try to be of service. We’ve become so used to the idea of work being where we find personal satisfaction that we’ve forgotten there are other ways to think of your job - including being of service. This means tuning in to how you are helping, supporting, uplifting or guiding others through your professional responsibilities, rather than only what you are doing for yourself.
  

• Get comfortable with the limitations of your job. Your work is just one facet of who you are, and it may be that the role you’re currently doing is not one where, right now, you can find purpose. But that doesn’t mean you are purpose-less! It means that you have the opportunity to find purpose in the rest of your life: being a great friend, a good partner, helping your community, or supporting others outside of the 9 to 5.

Frequently Asked Questions: Meaningful Success vs Financial Success

What does having a meaningful career in your 30s look like?

Having a meaningful career in your 30s can look like having greater freedom with your time, more autonomy over the work you do, a healthier work-life balance, and working for a company with ethical or sustainable values.

In fact, a meaningful career in your 30s can look like anything you want, and is often characterised by all the stuff you haven’t had so far. Focusing on work and career progression in your twenties probably meant you didn’t have time for hobbies, you didn’t have a lot of scope in the work you did, and you prioritised professional success over everything else. You may have even made career choices that now feel a little questionable - and now, in your thirties, you want to change that.

For me, a meaningful career looks like doing work that supports people to be who they truly are, free from constraints and expectations, and helping them become wildly successful in the process. I’ve found the best vehicle for that is my own business, which gives me more autonomy and less financial stability than traditional employment.

What’s most meaningful to me is the cause I am contributing to, rather than the way I work. What’s most meaningful to you?

Should I take a job just for the money?

If you’re thinking about taking a job just for the money, it’s important to compare the financial compensation you’ll receive with the hidden costs of the job on your time, energy, and personal wellbeing. This is a perennial quandary and one I used to discuss a lot with students when I was a university lecturer.

Ultimately, you’ve got to eat, keep a roof over your head, etc. and so there are going to be times where you take a job for the money. (Like when I was a professional copywriter and said yes to a job writing case studies about paving slabs 😂). And there’s nothing wrong with taking a job just for the money, at least in the short term.

But in the long term, you need to consider how doing that job is going to affect your health, autonomy, and wellbeing. If I was writing about paving slabs full time I would’ve gone completely mad - but doing it for a month or so was fine. If your well-paid job involves working incredibly long hours and feeling extremely stressed, it’s important to ask yourself: “Do I think this is worth it? And if so, for how long?”

Will earning more money make me happier?

There’s evidence to suggest that earning more money will make you happier, but it won’t make you happier at work - only when you actually get to spend the money. 

A study on happiness and work from Wharton found that when people were paid more, they were generally happier across everything they did … except work. And work was the single activity which all participants, no matter what they got paid, reported doing most often, with higher earners spending more time at work than lower earners.

So basically: when you have more money, you get more happiness from spending it than from earning it. It doesn’t change your actual happiness at work. And unfortunately, earning more money is also likely to mean you are working more often, therefore decreasing your ‘happiness window’ for when you can spend the cash, rather than earn it.

It’s only when participants hit $200,000 and above (a tiny number of people in their research) that much higher earnings correlated with higher happiness at work, possibly due to the greater autonomy and meaning associated with these roles. 

Whatever you earn, the thing that will make you happiest is getting out of your career rut and actually doing something you enjoy - something that will make you wildly successful in the way only you are destined to be.

---

About The Author

Astra is an inspirational speaker and writer leading experienced professionals to wild, untamed success. 

Astra's unique insight is based on 10,000+ hours studying purpose, meaning and the human condition. Their study has led to over 2,000 hours teaching, coaching and facilitating, plus published writing, keynotes and conferences, peer-reviewed research, digital content and working with 60+ brands as a communication professional - as well as living on a commune, in a warehouse, and with the Hare Krishna monks.

Through their Wild Success methodology, Astra teaches talented professionals how to find their purpose, take consistent action, and finally start experiencing the wild success they are destined for: not 'next year', not 'some day', but now.

---

Get Weekly Advice & Become Wildly Successful

Join 200 other talented professionals on Astra's weekly email list