Have you been ignoring the rattles in your career for a while?

In this episode of Joy at Work, I answer a heartfelt listener question: “When is the best time to change careers after 40?”

If you're over 40 and feeling that something's just... off — like you're driving a car that no longer fits the journey you're on — you're not alone. I talk through the quiet warning signs that we so often ignore, and the real cost of waiting too long to make a change.

Midlife career change isn’t about starting over. It’s about tuning up, resetting your GPS, and taking the next small, intentional step.

🔧 You don’t need to burn it all down — but you do need to lift the bonnet and take a look inside.

🎁 If you’re feeling stuck in a career cul-de-sac, grab this mini-worksheet on questions worth answering:

👉 Download the Free Guided Worksheet

Hi, I'm Lucia Knight and this is the Joy At Work Podcast.

Here's this week's question from a listener.

Things haven't been right for a while.

At work, I keep procrastinating on figuring out what's next for me.

And now I'm wondering when is the best time to change careers after 40?

Thank you for this question.

It's a really popular question, and I honestly struggle to answer it because

the answer is always so personal, but a valuable way to think about it is.

Have you ever driven a car where it just doesn't feel right?

Something somewhere is just off.

Maybe it starts with a tiny warning light, uh, a niggling knocking or a faint rattle,

something small, barely noticeable.

So you choose not to notice it fully.

And instead you turn up the volume on your podcast or lose yourself

in an audio book and keep going.

A few weeks later, you, you sort of notice the breaks feel

a little spier than normal.

You make a mental note, call the garage soon, and then you get

home and something else takes your attention and the next time you

drive it, the car feels fine again.

Whew.

Then a little later, an engine light flares up, more insistent,

impossible to ignore, and you still keep driving marveling at the wonders

of modern cars, self fixing machines.

All you have to do is turn it off.

Turn it on and magically it keeps going, and thank goodness because

you've got places to be, commitments to keep and people to please,

so you shove those warnings to the back of your mind and wait for a better time.

Until one day, it's not just a rattle.

The windows won't go up or dime the air con's dead as a dodo.

And the wheels, they don't just turn, they wobble.

The car can't take you where you want to go anymore.

In fact, it can't take you anywhere.

That's the thing about making changes in your career after 40, you've been

driving on this road for a while.

You know how to muscle through.

Hell, you've been doing it for a while already.

You've got oodles of resilience, but even steel wheels wear down, don't they?

So when is the right time to change lanes?

To pull in for a service to reroute your whole GPS or to switch cars entirely?

Well.

Let's come at this from a different angle.

The worst time is when the wheels are fallen off, when your boredom has

driven your energy into a ditch, and when your burnout backfires and drives

you straight to the doctor's office.

And sure in an ideal world, the best time is when you hear the first few

rattles and niggling knocks when you know that what you're doing is wrong,

but you don't know how wrong just yet.

Because then you might just need a little tuneup that's

quick and easy and cheap to fix.

When Sunday night blues creep in quietly when the work that used to light you

up barely flickers you awake, and when there has to be more than this feeling

starts shouting louder than your need for a job title or a monthly paycheck.

And one of the best things about making career changes, either big or small after

40, is that you're not starting over.

You're just stripping back and tuning up and resetting that GPS,

you've already got miles of wisdom.

And a big roadmap of experience.

And with the right sense of direction, you get to go on a

decade long career adventure.

So while there's no guarantee, if you do the right kind of thinking and take

the right kind of action, there's a good chance that the next period of

your work life could be your best yet.

So I'd love to tell our listener and anyone else out there to not to wait to

lift the bonnet of your work life now, and if something feels off, it probably is.

Don't wait for things to get really bad.

Initiate an overhaul, a deep dive into what you really want and need from your

work life to feel fulfilled, to enjoy true satisfaction from doing work that

matters, that fits you and feels great.

And that sounds like joy at work to me.