Career Decisions From Your Own Data

Career decisions are made from impression: how the last few months felt, what a recent conversation suggested. A long record supplies something impression cannot.

To try the approach with real entries rather than memory, start with this practical resource. The result should remain easy to correct, export and interpret after the immediate details have faded.

What it answers well

What you actually spend your working life doing, as distinct from what your job title says.

For a neutral companion reference on repeatable data analysis, see Python; it helps separate the choice of format from the conclusions drawn from the record.

Whether the proportion has changed — the role that was three-quarters one thing when you took it and is now a quarter.

Which kinds of work you have done most of, and therefore what you are actually experienced in.

And when the change happened, which matters because people usually misplace it by a year or more.

The finding people do not expect

Roles drift substantially without anybody announcing it.

A record frequently shows that the job someone is deciding whether to leave stopped being the job they took eighteen months ago, and that nobody mentioned it.

Which reframes the decision: not "should I leave this job" but "this job already changed, and do I want the current one".

Capacity, honestly

How many hours a week you actually sustain, over years, including the bad periods.

This is the figure people are most wrong about, in the optimistic direction, and it is the input to any decision about taking on more.

A record settles it, and the answer is usually lower than the impression and higher than the worst month suggests.

Evaluating a change after the fact

The single most useful application: you changed something — role, hours, employer, working pattern — and now you can compare.

Same measure, comparable periods, with the change dated.

Most people evaluate a career change by how they feel three months in, which is the period most contaminated by novelty and by the effort of settling.

What it does not answer

Whether you should want what you want.

Whether a role has a future, which is about the world rather than about you.

And anything about relationships, reputation or opportunity, which do not appear in a time log and frequently matter more than allocation does.

The danger of over-reading

A record shows what you did, not what it meant.

Two years of a category declining might be disengagement, delegation, competence, or a change in how you recorded it.

Bring the notes. Numbers alone will support whatever story you are already inclined toward, and the notes are what constrain that.

Using it in a conversation

A performance discussion or a negotiation is a place where your own figures are unusually persuasive, provided they are modest and consistent.

"Across the last two years this has been about a third of my time" is answerable and checkable.

Overclaiming precision loses the argument, which the comparing note covers.

What to check

Does your record show what your role actually is, as opposed to its title?

Has the balance changed over two years — and when?

What is your honest sustainable weekly capacity, measured?

And if you changed something, did you date it so the comparison is possible?

The point

Bring the notes to any career reading.

Numbers alone will support whatever story you are already inclined toward, and the notes are what constrain that.

Worth adding

A record does not answer whether you should want what you want, or whether a role has a future.

Those are about the world rather than about your allocation.

Additionally

A performance discussion is where your own figures are unusually persuasive, provided they are modest and consistent.

Overclaiming precision loses the argument.

Finally

Roles drift substantially without anybody announcing it, and a record frequently shows the job stopped being the one you took eighteen months ago..

In summary

A record answers what you spend your working life doing, as distinct from what your title says, and when the balance changed — which people usually misplace by a year..

Last word

The practice this points at is unglamorous: a small daily act, a short weekly correction, an annual read, and a written page of conventions beside the data. None of it is difficult and all of it is easy to skip, which is why most records do not reach the point where they start paying.