Few career questions are more frustrating than, “What do you actually want to do?” when the honest answer is, “I have no idea!”

1. Learn how to identify your strengths

We start asking people what they want to be incredibly early in life. Many of us choose jobs like teacher, doctor, lawyer, or engineer because they are visible roles with clear tasks. We often carry this approach into adulthood. When we become unhappy or restless at work, we scroll through vacancies by searching for job titles similar to our own.

Instead of doing this, think about the work you’ve already done; and when you were at your best. Which problems did you enjoy solving? What did other people repeatedly come to you for? Which tasks absorbed you? What are you really good at?

I understand this approach isn’t always easy. In more than 20 years working across education and coaching, I’ve seen capable people find it difficult to answer these questions. One reason is surprisingly simple: the things we do naturally often don’t feel particularly impressive to us. If something comes easily, we can assume it comes easily to everyone. It doesn’t.

Perhaps you enjoy making complex information simple to understand. Maybe you spot patterns other people miss, bring order to chaos, build relationships easily or generate ideas with ease. None of these things have one job title behind them, but they do tell you something important about how and where you create value.

Look at the strengths underneath your skillset. You might be good at giving presentations. But is your real strength understanding your audience, making complicated information clear or identifying what really matters? Those underlying strengths are far more transferable and useful to your approach to understanding what makes your happy than “giving presentations”.

2. Pay attention to energy as well as ability

Another question we often forget to ask ourselves is, “Do I actually enjoy using my skills?”

You can be extremely good at something that leaves you feeling completely drained. Perhaps you’re excellent in a crisis, so you become the person everyone turns to when something goes wrong. Maybe you’re highly organised, so you get given all the admin tasks. This doesn’t mean you actually enjoy the tasks you’re naturally good at doing. But success can sometimes pull us towards work we’re capable of doing rather than work we actually want to do.

Instead, pay attention to what you love doing. When are you engaged, interested or absorbed? When does your energy noticeably drop? Look at the conditions surrounding those tasks. Do you prefer working independently or collaboratively? Do you prefer solving new problems or following an established process?

Most importantly, ask what matters to you now. Salary, progression, autonomy, flexibility, stability, intellectual challenge and work-life balance can all matter at different points in our careers. The important question isn’t which should matter. It’s which matter to you right now.

3. Consider changing environments before your change career

Before deciding you need a completely different career, consider another possibility. Perhaps the problem isn’t the work but the environment in which you’re doing it.

You might do your best thinking when you have time to process information but work somewhere that rewards whoever responds first. You might enjoy collaboration but find a culture of back-to-back meetings exhausting. You might thrive with clear expectations and autonomy but struggle when priorities constantly change. You might be perfectly capable of doing your job but gradually lose confidence in an environment where your contribution is rarely noticed.

Before changing what you do, ask whether it is actually where, how or with whom you do it that needs to change. You may not need to start again. You might just need to apply the same expertise in a different organisation. Would you thrive in a different sector? Would you like more responsibility or less responsibility? Greater autonomy or more challenge or structure? Make sure you’re solving the right problem.

4. Translate what you learn about yourself into work possibilities

Once you understand more about how you contribute, you can start exploring where else those capabilities might be valuable.

Break down your experience, and don’t just rely on your job title. Perhaps you’ve spent years managing people, analysing information, building relationships, delivering projects, solving problems, training colleagues or communicating complicated ideas. Which of those things were you both good at and enjoyed?

Just because you have ten years’ experience doing something doesn’t mean you need to spend the next ten years doing more of it. Nevertheless, your past experience could give you valuable evidence about what might work.

Consider whether you want to go deeper or broader. Do you want to develop specialist expertise and become the person others turn to in a particular field? Or are you more energised by variety, connecting ideas and working across different problems?

Find people who have moved onto those positions from roles that are similar to yours. Read job descriptions outside your current sector. Notice where the same capabilities appear under different names.

5. Look before you leap

Once you’ve identified a possible direction, you don’t necessarily need to resign to find out whether you’re right. Test your assumptions first. The aim is to replace assumptions with information wherever you can.

Be cautious about assuming another qualification is the answer. Before investing significant time and money, find out whether you genuinely need it. Speak to people already doing the job you want. Attend an industry event. Join a relevant professional network. Volunteer for a project that exposes you to another part of your organisation. Shadow somebody.

A mentor or coach may spot patterns you’ve overlooked. A good recruiter can help you understand where your experience might transfer and what employers are looking for.

Instead of starting these conversations with, “I don’t know what I want to do. What do you think I should do?” try “I’ve realised the parts of my role I enjoy most are X and Y, but I’d like less of Z. I also want more autonomy. What kinds of opportunities do you think I should explore?”

You may discover that the career you’d idealised isn’t quite what you imagined. Or you may find yourself thinking, “Yes. I want to explore this further.” Either outcome gives you better evidence on which to base your next decision.

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You don’t need to have it all figured out. “How do I figure out what I actually want to do?” makes it sound as though there’s a single right answer somewhere, but careers rarely work like that.

By taking the steps I’ve outlined above, you can get more clarity on knowing how you create value, what gives you energy, what matters to you, and the conditions in which you do your best work. And all this information will help guide you to your next decision.

Through Quietly Brilliant People, I specialise in helping quieter people whose strengths and talents can easily go under the radar – and helping organisations make sure that talent isn’t missed, wasted or lost. A particular focus of my work is early-career talent and the transition from education into employment, helping individuals understand the value they bring and organisations create the conditions in which they can contribute at their best.