Can you spot your career patterns?

Never mind Wordle, are you playing Connections?

Another cracking daily word game from the New York Times to zhuzh up your coffee break (and, I'm hoping, stave off the inevitable mental decline that awaits us all ) ??

Your job is to sort 16 words into four groups of four by figuring out what connects them. It's full of glorious red herrings and double meanings (and - just to warn you - the occasional Americanism that will throw you right off).

You might suck a bit at first - you'll fail to think creatively or laterally enough and fall into every sneaky trap the puzzler has set for you ??

But it doesn't take long to get better at spotting more interesting and less obvious connections.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, aside from the fact I need more players to vent with on tricky days (clock, mattress, mousetrap, trampoline - "things with springs" - grrrrrr), training your brain to see what patterns you can discern in an apparently random set of data is a nifty skill we could all do with a bit more of.

A kind of Self-Coaching 101 ??

Because to know what you do and don't want from your life and from work, you need to become an expert pattern-spotter.

A curious connection-maker.

And a masterful interpreter of what your own personal patterns might mean.

Here's a nice three-piece puzzle to get you going:

?? Draw a timeline of your life, both personal and professional - capturing different chapters, significant moments, your highs and lows. If you want, use coloured pens, draw small images, scribble symbols to express how you felt.?

What connections can you see between times in your life when you have been most fulfilled or energised or inspired? And those where you haven't? What was present? What was missing?

?? Write down all the jobs you've had to date (yep, include your paper round and your volunteering for the community dog show). Jot down some details around each to capture the kind of activities you were doing.

What connections can you find between the skills and strengths you've used even in seemingly different roles? What links can you spot between what you were doing and how satisfied you were?

??? Set a timer for 2 minutes and free write a page of A4 about your ideal life if you had absolutely no limits on what you could do (yes, you can move to Hawaii and open a surf school, never mind your children and the hamster). Pack it with as much colour and detail as you can.

What images or words or desires reoccur? What 3 key themes can you pull out of what you've written?

Patterns are powerful things.

Some we want to repeat or build on ... others we want, or need, to break.

What do you notice if you lay out your work life as a giant puzzle? And what does it mean for you going forwards?

Stay curious,

Rachel ?

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