Stick, Twist or Bust: Choosing Your Next Move
When something ends, a job, a role, a version of yourself, the pressure to decide what’s next can feel overwhelming. We’re often pushed to rush into answers: What will you do now? What’s your plan?
In my book Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing to Happen to You, I describe three options available to us at moments like this: Stick, Twist or Bust. They’re not career strategies in the traditional sense. They’re ways of thinking, lenses that help you navigate uncertainty without force before you’re ready.
Stick: Stick with what you are doing, but upgrade in some way
Sticking is staying in there, with your project, with the ting you decide to keep going, with your expertise, stick to a job you know all about. But we always want to feel like its an upgrade somehow.
You might:
Stay in the same job but renegotiate boundaries
Keep the same profession but shift the environment
Continue on the same path, but with different expectations, hours or responsibilities
Keep going with that business idea but change how you show up
Apply for similar jobs to what you’ve always done but one that offers better hours, closer to home, more aligned to your values.
Stick is often underestimated because it doesn’t look dramatic. But it can be the bravest choice when the issue isn’t what you’re doing, it could be how you’re doing it. Burnout, frustration or disengagement don’t always mean you need to leave everything behind. Sometimes they’re signals to redesign the way you work, or even just take some sort of pause for a rest.
Twist: Same expertise, new expression
Twist is about keeping the core of what you do, your skills, experience and identity but applying it differently.
You might:
Take your expertise into a new industry
Shift from doing to teaching, consulting or mentoring
Move from employed to freelance, portfolio or project-based work
Curate other experts around the specialism to create a community
Create a course or write about your expertise
This option often appeals to people who still love the thing, but no longer love the container it sits in. The role, structure or system has stopped fitting not your capability. Twisting allows you to honour what you’ve built, while giving yourself permission to reshape it. It’s change with continuity. Itcan also be a grat steeping stone if you are not quite ready to fully ‘bust’ and go for it.
Bust: A clean break, something completely new
Bust is the boldest option but sometimes to option where you get the most energy. It’s stepping away from what you know into something fundamentally different, often well out of comfort zone but something is driving you for the need to do something completely different.
This might mean:
Retraining or studying again
Starting in a completely new sector
Letting go of an identity you’ve held for years
Starting a brand new business or project
Moving away from your current base, surroundings, circumstances
Bust often comes with a big dose of fear and for good reason. It requires unlearning, beginner energy and a willingness to be uncomfortable. But sometimes, staying close to what you know only reinforces what you’re trying to escape. It’s where you focus on what you are moving towards rather than what you are moving away from.
Bust isn’t reckless reinvention. It’s an honest acknowledgement that the next chapter can’t be built from the same materials. It’s time for something new. It’s good quitting.
So how do you decide?
The decision isn’t about what you should do. It might come down to three things:
1. Your appetite for discomfort
Every option involves discomfort, just in different forms.
Stick asks you to confront patterns and change behaviour
Twist asks you to re-position yourself
Bust asks you to start again
The question is: which discomfort are you most willing to live with right now?
2. The thing you really want
Be clear about what you’re actually moving towards, not just away from. Is it freedom? Stability? Meaning? Energy? Time? Money? Different choices serve different desires. And knowing what you really want, in it’s full form. Not just the end goal want but the understanding of what that will take to get there, and knowing you’ll try everything to give you the best chance possible.
3. Your capability and capacity
Capability is what you can do, and you might need to work on new skills, or unlearning. But just as important is capacity, what you have space for emotionally, financially, mentally. For example a Bust might be appealing, but not viable right now, it really isnt the right time as you have no energy, headspace, time. A Stick might feel dull, but provide breathing room, just what you need right now. So think hard about what you need right now v what you want in future.
There’s no single right answer and you don’t have to choose forever. Stick, Twist and Bust are not forever decisions. They’re temporary strategies to help you make a good decisions right now.
What matters most is choosing consciously not reactively, and giving yourself permission to change your mind as you learn more about what you need next.
Sometimes, the bravest move isn’t leaping forward. It’s pausing long enough to choose your direction on purpose.