What’s a well-paid and challenging alternative to my desk job?

This week’s problem

I have built a successful consulting career. During lockdown I have been volunteering at my local vaccination centre and realise how unsatisfying it is to spend the day sending emails and writing reports. Is it possible to find a job that is well-paid and mentally challenging but does not involve sitting behind a desk all day? Anonymous

Jonathan’s answer

Sometimes it takes an external event to show what you may have already suspected about a situation. The fact that you volunteered demonstrates that you were open to new experiences and seeking ways to try these out, without risking the day job, just yet.

To help guide your search for a new role, it will be helpful to identify what might be missing from the current monoculture of your desk job that makes it unsatisfying. Make sure what you have observed is representative of more than only the past 12 months, during which many roles have been reduced to mostly desk work.

Positive aspects of your recent experience may include working with other people in real life, a physical change of scene from your desk and four walls, serving a universally recognised worthwhile cause, and volunteering itself.

Professor Laurie Santos devised Psychology and the Good Life, the most popular course in Yale’s history where about 25 per cent of the students enrolled to learn about the psychology behind how humans flourish and behavioural changes that help. Professor Bruce Hood has a similar course at Bristol University, on the Science of Happiness. Some of the conclusions from the courses are echoed in your own recent experiences, including: kindness and happiness are positively correlated, talking to strangers makes us happier, and giving gifts to others activates our own reward centres in the brain.

Your volunteering experience, and some of the neuroscience findings, can help you define what sort of job you want to be doing in the next two to five years. As you negotiate with yourself on your package of pay, location, mental challenge and active non-desk work in your dream job, work out what is fixed and what you could vary. Feeling well-paid can be a personal measure of success and relative status, but your happiness is related to your expenditure as well. If you trim your expenses to just below income — even if the income is much reduced, you would still be happy.

To help you find your dream job, and while you are deciding what income you could accept, take time to learn about other people’s career paths and choices. Consider profiles in the media: the Life Scientific on Radio 4, for example, discusses with a scientist his or her career path. Biographies, and even friends, can all show you examples of decisions others have made. Don’t overlook the courage that will be needed to make the jump; your recent experience has shown you, however, that the result could be really worthwhile.

Readers’ advice

Diversify. Maintain the well-paid consulting part-time and start a side hustle or volunteer as a Trustee. Loquaciousd

Start experiments on the side and the path will open up. As Picasso said, “Do not seek, find.” It takes guts. Pmack

Ask, “What can I offer employers, that they want and cannot readily get elsewhere?” and, “What do I like doing?” and see if there’s an intersection. If you can see potential jobs in that space which make you a little bit excited and a little bit afraid, that’s a good sign. Markdoc

Jonathan Black is director of the Careers Service at the University of Oxford. Every fortnight he answers your questions on personal and career development, and working life. Do you have a question for him? Email dear.jonathan@ft.com