** This post is part of a series called The Alignment Method: 6 Steps to Meaningful Work + a Joyful Life (After Medicine). Find the full series here.
🌟 Post Highlights:
Step 2 Create a Career Bridge
What is a career bridge?
A temporary job or set up that gives you both financial stability and energetic breathing room to start your transition from burnout to alignment.
Signs you need this step
You don’t have the capacity (time or energy) to devote to figuring out your transition plan.
How I can support you:
Aligned Exit Toolkit: An online course bundle to plan your exit without the panic and overwhelm.
Career Transition Planner: Create a clear transition timeline and map out a financially stable exit strategy.
Do you feel too burnt out to even think about what’s next- let alone plan it?
If you’re running on empty, stuck in survival mode, and quietly pressuring yourself to figure it all out… this is your permission slip to stop.
You don’t need a master plan.
You don’t need to figure everything out- while you are running on fumes.
You need breathing room.
You need… a career bridge.
In this post you’ll learn
Why it’s impossible to make progress on your exit plans when you are depleted.
The very first move to make when you're too drained to move forward.
How to create breathing room for yourself so you can start working on your transition more intentionally.
What is a career bridge?
A career bridge is a temporary job or setup that gives you two things you desperately need when you’re burned out:
Financial stability (enough to pay your bills)
Energetic breathing room (so you’re not maxed out all the time)
It’s not your dream career.
It’s not a long-term solution.
It’s a bridge- something that carries you from a life that’s burning you out to a life that actually fits you.
Most people try to leap from total misalignment into their ideal career, but when you’re in survival mode, it’s low key impossible to leap. Instead, you need a bridge.
The bridge gives you time.
It gives you space.
It gives you capacity — so you can actually start thinking about what you want, instead of just trying to get through your week.
This step is critical. Because if you're emotionally depleted, maxed out, and overwhelmed- you won’t have the capacity to figure out your next move.
Your mind isn’t clear enough to identify desires or make decisions.
If you try to figure out your dream career ultimate plan- you’re going to end up in a mental spiral full of self doubt.
That’s why we create a career bridge first.
So that everything else becomes possible.
Signs you need a career bridge:
This is the step most people skip- and it’s why they stay stuck.
They try to force clarity while still in survival mode.
They pressure themselves to “figure it out” on evenings and weekends when they’re completely drained.
But I don’t recommend this approach. Instead, of forcing clarity- let’s first try to free up some capacity.
So how do you know you need a bridge?
If any of these sound like you… it’s time to build a career bridge.
You’re working full-time clinically. Period. My hot take is that no one should really be working full time clinically.
You finish your workday completely drained (even if you're only working 2–3 days a week)
You technically “have time,” but no energy to do anything with it
You keep trying to plan your transition on evenings or weekends, but you aren’t making any progress.
I’m guessing you fit one of these, so now it’s time to talk about what a career bridge actually looks like.
3 Types of Career Bridges:
There’s no one right way to build a career bridge. They are meant to be personalized and flexible.
But the overarching goal is the same: increase capacity, maintain financial stability.
There are 3 major categories of career bridges that we can create.
Drastically reducing hours at current job:
This one is a great place to start because it’s pretty low risk and is generally the fastest way to free up some time and energy.
But the important thing I want you to take note of…. is the word drastically. If you try to go from 1.0 FTE to .8 FTE that is going to feel like a drop in the bucket.If we are going to create a career bridge- we want to make a real noticeable difference in your capacity. That means dropping your FTE as low as you possibly can to still pay the bills.
The Sabbatical:
If you have the financial ability to do this, a sabbatical is your best move. Taking a period of time completely off work and living from your savings, or supported by a partner- is the absolutely best way to get clarity on next steps.
The Bridge Job
Finding a new job to pay the bills that doesn’t deplete as much of your energy. This could be finding a telemedicine gig, moving away from patient care entirely, teaching English in South Korea (like I did!). Sometimes your bridge job will take a hit to your ego- because it looks like you are “going backwards” or taking a demotion. But if you let go of your fear of being judged by others- you can thrive in a bridge situation- that pays your bills AND frees up your time and energy.
Your career bridge doesn’t have to make sense on paper.
It just has to give you enough time, money, and energy to start moving toward what does.
It is not meant to be forever. It is not meant to be impressive to other people.
It just needs to free up enough capacity to help you get started.
How I can support you in creating a career bridge
If you’re at capacity and ready for a clearer way forward, I’ve created these resources to guide you.
Aligned Exit Toolkit: An online course bundle to plan your exit without the panic and overwhelm.
Career Transition Planner: Create a clear transition timeline and map out a financially stable exit strategy.
These tools are designed to meet you where you are and give you a step by step process forward.
You don’t need to figure everything out right now.
You just need a bridge.
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