Are you one of the growing number of people struggling to make mid-career changes? Searching for ten easy steps to professional reinvention? Or awaiting flashes of insight—while opportunities pass you by?

Would you be willing to jettison all you’ve heard about career transition and follow a crooked path—rather than the straight and narrow one that’s gotten you nowhere?

If so, consider the counterintuitive approach described in this article. It’ll have you doing instead of infinitely planning. Taking action instead of endless self-assessment tests. You’ll reinvent your working identity—your sense of who you are as a professional—by experimenting with who you could be.

The Idea at Work

Sounds reasonable, but …
Consider the traditional “plan and implement” approach to career change: Assess your interests, skills, and experience; identify appropriate jobs; consult friends, colleagues, career counselors; take the plunge.

This all sounds reasonable—but it actually fosters stagnation. You get mired in introspection while searching for your “one true self”—a futile quest, since individuals have many possible selves. Your ideal won’t necessarily find a match in the real world. Worse, this method encourages making a big change all at once—which can land you in the wrong job.

Sounds crazy, but …
Now consider the “test and learn” method: You put several working identities into practice, refining them until they’re sufficiently grounded in experience to inspire more decisive steps. You make your possible future working identities vivid, tangible, and compelling—countering the tendency to grab familiar work when the unknown becomes too scary. Reinventing your working identity takes several years—and may land you in surprising places. But that doesn’t mean the process must be random. These tactics provide a method to the seeming madness:

•    Craft experiments. Play with new professional roles on a limited but tangible scale, without compromising your current job. Try freelance assignments or pro bono work. Moonlight. Use sabbaticals or extended vacations to explore new directions.

EXAMPLE:
A former investment banker dabbled in wine tours and scuba diving businesses before determining that such work wouldn’t hold his interest long-term. Realizing a “more normal” career path would better serve his emotional and financial needs, he is now a internal venture capitalist for a media company.

•    Shift connections. Strangers can best help you see who you’re becoming, providing fresh ideas uncolored by your previous identity. Make new connections by working for people you’ve long admired and can learn from. Find people—perhaps through alumni and company networks—who can help you grow into your possible new selves.

•    Make sense. Infuse events with special meaning. Weave them into a story about who you’re becoming. Relate that story publicly. You’ll clarify your intentions, stay motivated, and inspire others’ support.

EXAMPLE:
An investment banker considering fiction writing visited an astrologer, who noted that forces pulling him in opposing directions (stability versus creative expression) were irreconcilable.He told everyone this story and wrote about it in his local newspaper. The more he communicated it, the more the incident made sense—and the more friends and family supported his writing ambitions.

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