⚡ Productivity
Career Planning Prompt: 3 Paths and a 90-Day Test Plan
Paste your skills, values, constraints, and energy patterns to get 3 career paths with fit scores, skill gaps, low-risk tests, and a 90-day plan you can run.
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Prompt
Act as a career coach and former hiring manager who helps people choose their next move by testing it in small steps before they quit anything. You work from my skills, values, and limits, and you do not invent salary numbers or job market statistics. Inputs: - Current role, years of experience, and the tasks I spend most of my week on: [CurrentRole] - Skills I am proud of, with one real example each: [Skills] - Work that gives me energy and work that drains me: [EnergyMap] - Values and must-haves (schedule, remote, location, stability, meaning, pay floor I set myself): [Values] - Constraints: money runway, family, hours per week for learning, credentials I cannot get quickly: [Constraints] - Paths I am already curious about, or "none yet": [Curious] Generate: 1. Pattern read: 3 themes from Skills and EnergyMap, quoting my words. 2. Three career paths, at least one close to my current role and one bigger change. For each: what the work looks like day to day, why it fits my themes, what drains me in it, and a fit score out of 10 for skills, energy, and Values, with the reason for each score. 3. Skill gap table per path: skills I have, skills to build, the fastest credible way to show each (project, portfolio piece, short course, volunteer work). 4. Pay and demand check: tell me to look up each path in the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook or O*NET and in real job postings near me, and list the exact job titles to search. Do not state salary figures yourself. 5. Low-risk tests: two experiments per path I can run in under 5 hours each, such as an informational interview, a small paid project, or a shadow day. 6. Informational interview kit: how to find 5 people, a short outreach message, and 8 questions. 7. 90-day plan: weeks 1 to 4, 5 to 8, 9 to 12 with weekly hours within Constraints, a checkpoint at day 30, 60, and 90, and what result tells me to continue, switch paths, or stay put. 8. Decision rule: the 3 signals that would make me commit to a path. Rules: - Respect my Constraints; never suggest quitting before tests show a path is real. - Use plain language and my own words where possible.
Instructions
Paste the prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini with honest answers, especially about energy and constraints. Check pay and job outlook yourself in the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, O*NET, and real job postings before you decide.
Generated Output
This image was generated using the prompt above.
Examples
Example Input
CurrentRole: middle school math teacher, 8 years; most of my week is lesson planning, grading, parent emails, and running the school's data team meetings Skills: built the spreadsheet our grade level uses to track quiz scores and spot struggling students; trained 12 teachers on it; explain hard ideas simply EnergyMap: energized by building tools and seeing patterns in data, and by one-on-one coaching; drained by classroom management and late-night grading Values: stable income, home by 6 PM, work that still helps students or learners; my pay floor is my current salary Constraints: 6 months of savings; two kids; 5 hours a week for learning; I will not do a full degree right now Curious: instructional design, data analyst
Example Output
1. PATTERN READ - "Building tools": you made the tracking spreadsheet the grade level runs on. - "Seeing patterns in data": you lead data team meetings and spot struggling students. - "Explain hard ideas simply": you trained 12 teachers. 2. THREE PATHS A. School or district data coach (close move). Day to day: building dashboards, running data meetings, coaching teachers. Fits all three themes; no classroom management. Drains: still some evening meetings. Fit: skills 9 (you do this now), energy 8, values 8 (stays in education, stable). Total 25/30. B. Instructional designer for edtech or corporate training (medium change). Day to day: turning content into courses, storyboards, and quizzes. Fits explaining and tools; less data. Drains: stakeholder revisions. Fit: skills 7, energy 7, values 7 (helps learners; hours vary by company). 21/30. C. Junior data analyst (bigger change). Day to day: cleaning data, writing SQL, building reports. Fits patterns and tools; less coaching. Drains: little one-on-one teaching. Fit: skills 6 (strong spreadsheets, no SQL yet), energy 7, values 6 (helping students only in education companies). 19/30. 3. SKILL GAPS A: have dashboards and training; build data privacy rules for student records; show it with a one-page anonymized case study of your spreadsheet. B: have lesson design; build an authoring tool and storyboard skills; show it with one 10-minute sample module. C: have spreadsheets; build SQL and a visualization tool; show it with a small project on public education data. 4. PAY AND DEMAND CHECK Look up "instructional coordinators" and "data scientists" or "operations research analysts" in the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, and the same titles in O*NET. Search postings near you for: "data coach", "assessment and data specialist", "instructional designer", "learning experience designer", "junior data analyst", "education data analyst". Compare posted ranges to your pay floor. 5. LOW-RISK TESTS (under 5 hours each) A: ask your district about data coach roles and job descriptions; offer to run one cross-school data meeting. B: build a 10-minute sample module on fractions; interview one instructional designer. C: finish a free intro SQL lesson and query one public data set; interview one analyst at an edtech company. 6. INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEWS Find people: former teachers on LinkedIn with your target titles, district office staff, your teacher training network, local edtech meetups, alumni groups. Message: "Hi, I'm a middle school math teacher of 8 years exploring [title]. Could I ask you 20 minutes of questions about your work? Happy to fit your schedule." Questions: what a normal week looks like; what surprised you; skills that mattered most; how you got hired; what you would do differently; typical hours; how teachers do in this role; who else I should talk to. 7. 90-DAY PLAN (5 hours a week) Weeks 1 to 4: interviews for A and B (2 each); run test A. Day 30 checkpoint: which path did people describe in a way that excited you? Weeks 5 to 8: build the sample module or the SQL project for your top two; one more interview each. Day 60: which test felt like energy, not effort? Weeks 9 to 12: apply to 3 to 5 roles on the leading path or ask for a pilot project. Day 90: continue if you got real interest; switch if both tests drained you; stay put and add data coaching inside your school if neither path meets your pay floor. 8. DECISION RULE Commit when: 2 people in the role say your background fits; posted pay meets your floor; your test left you wanting more.