Few people decide to actively stay on the corporate hamster wheel when they don’t recognize they’re on it in the first place.
That’s the thing about inertia. There’s no active decision made.
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Last week I named the four forces I see making capable people feel stuck: the Four Horsemen of Career Doldrums, Obligation, Inertia, Fear of Change, and Shortsightedness. Last time I wrote about Obligation, the quiet pull of living someone else’s story. This time, it’s the Horseman I promised can sneak up on you.
Inertia.
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Obligation at least has a villain. Someone’s expectations. A salary. A person you don’t want to let down. Inertia has none of that. No boss, no crisis, no fork in the road. Just Monday. Then another Monday. The work is fine. The pay is fine. You’re good at what you do. You’re not miserable enough to do anything about it, and “not miserable” is the whole trap.
One of my clients is genuinely brilliant at her job. She’s also been quietly bored by it for years. Competent, productive, a tad numb. When I asked what she wanted to be doing in five years, she laughed and told me about a time capsule she’d opened as a kid. As she’d written it, she had no idea what she wanted to be. She paused and said, “Here I am. Still no idea.”
That’s inertia. Not a wall. The sneaky momentum of just keeping up. And it often carries you somewhere you never actually chose to go.
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Here’s the tell: if someone asks why you’re still in your current role and your honest answer is “It’s not that bad,” that isn’t contentment. That’s inertia wearing contentment’s clothes.
Combating inertia doesn’t require fireworks, a la Jerry Maguire’s famous “flip out.” All it takes is to contemplate what is and isn’t working for you. Send the message you keep meaning to send. Take the call you keep putting off. Say out loud, to just one person, the thing you actually want.
You don’t need to beat inertia by taking a leap of faith. You beat it by deciding to not yield to it.
Purposefully. Today, not tomorrow.
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What’s the decision you’ve let Monday after Monday make for you? Or maybe just ask yourself: is this working for me?
I’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Next week: Fear of Change, the Horseman that convinces you the devil you know is safer than the one you don’t.
#careerdoldrums #inertia #careercoaching #makeworkwork #careercalibration