Clarity doesn't come from thinking harder

When I first shared my framework for navigating career changes with clarity, curiosity, and courage in this post I got a lot of questions. The most common? "How do I actually find clarity?"

Clarity doesn’t just happen one morning while making coffee. It’s work. Sometimes uncomfortable work. It requires you to ask yourself the questions you've been avoiding and accept answers that might surprise you.

Clarity comes first for a reason in my framework: without it, you act on old desires or assumptions. You miss out on what you truly want now, and that’s how you end up stuck again.

This is Part 1 of a three-part series on clarity, curiosity, and courage, the three elements that can help you shift from stuck and overwhelmed to clear and ready for your next move. Let me tell you why this step is non-negotiable.

In a world where attention is currency, looking inward for clarity is an act of resistance.

You log onto social media and get flooded with career advice:

With all this noise, it's hard to know what you actually want versus what others want for you. 

Sure, working at a hot startup can be thrilling. There’s potential equity, rapid growth, the chance to create something fresh. But are you ready for the chaos? Do you thrive when priorities shift daily? Are you willing to work long hours with no guarantee it pays off?

If the answer is no, there's nothing wrong with you. You've been influenced to want something that doesn't fit your needs right now.

Clarity means cutting through that noise to understand what you genuinely need. Not what looks good on LinkedIn, or what your peers are doing. What you really need to thrive. 

I know this kind of introspection feels slow when you want to make a move. You want a plan, a new role, something fresh. Sitting with questions can feel like you’re not making progress.

But the issue is, when you skip the clarity work, you end up making the same choices repeatedly and wonder why you keep getting the same results.

Psychologists call this a mental set — the tendency to reach for familiar strategies that worked in the past, even when they're no longer effective. When you're laser-focused on escaping your current situation, you filter out the equally important question of what you're moving toward.

This often happens when you're overwhelmed and drained at work. You want to leave as quickly as possible, and you focus so intensely on the need for change that you forget to consider what you actually want to create. What's driving you is the push away from a situation you don't like, rather than a pull toward something better.

Without clarity, you're just reacting and you miss chances to choose what truly fits. The cost of skipping this work is prolonged dissatisfaction; waking up in a few years and realising you spent your time on the wrong things because you didn't stop to find out what really mattered.

This is where the real clarity work begins. I see this often: someone wants a new job because their current role is overwhelming. Too much work, too much stress, so they think they need to get out.

When we start to explore what they want next, I ask: what do you want to move away from? What do you want to move towards?

One client said came to me when she was drowning in too many projects, constant stress and never-ending demands. She said she wanted a calmer job with better work-life balance.

That makes sense, right? But when we dug deeper, something else emerged. She wanted to be on a team that recognised her hard work, where she felt that her contributions mattered. She wanted her colleagues to notice when she went above and beyond instead of just piling on more work.

By going a level deeper than the first response (work is stressful), we uncovered that the workload wasn't the main issue. What really bothered her was feeling invisible. She had been handling a lot of work for years, but only because she felt it was meaningful and appreciated, and now that was gone.

If she had left for a “less stressful” job without understanding this, she would have solved the wrong problem. She might have ended up in a role with fewer hours but still feeling undervalued.

Clarity doesn’t come from thinking harder. It comes from asking better questions and being honest about the answers.

Here are some questions to get you started. Grab a notebook or open a document and write your answers (don’t just think about them):

Take 20 minutes this week to write the answers to these questions and be really honest. You might be surprised by what comes up.

Then dig deeper. Take your first response and ask why three times.

I want a new job.
Why?
Because I'm stressed.
Why are you stressed?
Because there's too much to do.
Why does that bother you?
Because no one notices how hard I'm working.

There it is, the issue beneath the issue.

Once you're clear about what you genuinely want and what's not working, you can start exploring your options. That's where curiosity comes in, and we'll dive into that in the next piece.

For now, focus on getting clear. Separate your own voice from all the noise. Figure out what you're actually optimising for and whether your current path is getting you there.

Everything else you want to build comes after this foundation.

I help ambitious tech professionals navigate career changes when the old playbook no longer works. If you want structured support, I’m here to guide you. 

If you're ready to move from feeling uncertain to finding clarity, check out the Career Clarity Sprint. We will focus on clarity, curiosity, and courage together. This way, you can make decisions in days instead of months and build a career that suits your life.