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The power of prototyping: how to test a big change before you leap.
"Even if someone can't give you a job, they can still give you a story." — Bill Burnett
If you're wrestling with a big change, I'd recommend Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. It teaches you to build a new direction using the same process used to develop great products: prototyping. They define it as "a process of experimentation during which designers turn their ideas into something tangible so they can test them." Prototypes are essentially rough first drafts, and they rarely look like the finished article. By building them, you refine and validate an idea before committing to it.
What prototyping a change looks like
Applied to a life or career change, prototyping means trying out a small version of the future self you might like to become, or, as Dave Evans puts it, "test-driving some possibilities, but doing it in water up to your knees, not over your head." Good prototyping challenges the assumptions you're carrying about an option, and helps you answer questions like: would I actually enjoy the day-to-day environment? Do I care about it enough? What kind of people would I be around? What does a typical day, and a bad day, look like? How long until it's viable? Could I see myself doing this for years?
Don't confuse prototyping with fake work, the researching, list-making and CV-tweaking we do when we're not quite sure what to do. There's nothing wrong with research, but a big change isn't an intellectual exercise like writing an essay. You don't think your way into a new direction; you find it through action. There are two ways to prototype: informational interviews and work experiments.
Informational interviews
The fastest way to prototype is to talk to someone already living the thing you're considering. An informational interview is the opposite of a job interview: you ask the questions. Be careful, though, if your interviewee thinks you're angling for a job, they'll close down, assuming they can't help. So only ask, don't pitch. This isn't the moment to sell yourself.
Don't be shy about reaching out to strangers. Most people love talking about themselves, would be quietly flattered to be asked about the life you imagine they lead, and get a genuine kick out of helping someone along. Be specific and upfront about how much of their time you'd like, and make clear from the start that you're not asking for a foot in the door.
Work experiments
Work experiments are short, hands-on, low-commitment trials that give you a real flavour of something before you commit. A few options:
Offer your services for free. Fancy life as a coach or consultant? Offer a few free sessions to friends. If just reaching out to your network with a free offer already gives you palpitations, that tells you something useful.
Volunteer. It puts you on the front line, with the face-to-face interaction and immediacy that only doing the thing provides.
Shadow someone. Find a person whose role you're curious about and ask to shadow them for a few hours or a day. See what their environment and challenges actually look like.
Freelance. A good way to run a parallel track alongside your current life, especially in creative fields, even if the early pay is poor.
Conferences and events. Not quite hands-on, but a useful window onto a field and a way to meet the people in it.
Work experiments can be humbling, inspiring, disappointing and eye-opening, often all at once. But they show you the kind of challenges you'd actually need to tolerate, which no amount of daydreaming can.
Conclusion
It's tempting to walk out after a particularly bad day, but unless circumstances demand it, I wouldn't leap without being clear on the next move. Spend time prototyping instead: talk to a couple of people already doing it, and get some real, low-stakes experience. Both are available to you right now, whatever you're currently doing, and both pull other people into your search, building a network of allies. Interview people, start small, and you'll no longer be stepping into the unknown when you're finally ready to move.
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