Latest / Career Coaching with Fexingo: Professional Coaches, Career Counselors, and Guidance for Workers / How a Career Curiosity Audit Unlocks Your Next Move
Transcript
- Lucas: I was talking to a marketing manager last week — been in her role for about six years, good at her job, but she kept saying she felt 'stuck.' Not bored, not burned out. Stuck. Luna: That's a tough place to be. What was the root cause? Lucas: We started digging into what she actually thought about during the day — what she read, what she clicked on, what conversations energized her. And it turned out she was obsessed with behavioral economics. She'd spend her lunch breaks reading Kahneman and Thaler. Luna: But her job didn't involve any of that. Lucas: Exactly. She was in standard brand marketing — campaign calendars, vendor management, reporting dashboards. Competent work, but none of it tapped into that curiosity. And that gap was the stuckness. Luna: So the problem wasn't her job per se — it was that her curiosity was underfed. Lucas: Right. And that led me to a tool I've been playing with: what I call a career curiosity audit. It's a structured way to look at where your attention naturally goes, without judgment, and then ask — is that curiosity a signal or just a distraction? Luna: I love that framing. Because I think a lot of people confuse curiosity with a hobby. Like, 'I like baking bread, so I should quit my job and open a bakery.' Lucas: Exactly. And that's the nuance. The audit helps you separate curiosity from hobby, and then curiosity from genuine professional pull. So let me lay it out. Lucas: Step one: For one week, keep a simple log. Three columns: what you read, what you talked about, and what you thought about when you didn't have to think about anything. The key is to be honest — no editing. Luna: So not 'I should read more industry reports.' You want the actual stuff. Lucas: The actual stuff. Our marketing manager logged that she read three articles about nudge theory, watched a TEDx on choice architecture, and spent twenty minutes looking at a course syllabus for a behavioral econ masters. That's a pattern. Luna: And the pattern is: applied behavioral science. Lucas: Step two: Score each curiosity on two axes. One: how much does it energize you versus drain you? Two: how much does it overlap with problems people will pay you to solve? The marketing manager's behavioral econ curiosity scored high on energy, but low on overlap with her current role. Luna: That's where people get stuck. They think 'no overlap means I have to change careers.' But maybe it's just a matter of finding a smaller overlap. Lucas: Exactly. Step three is the experiment. Take one curiosity and give it a time box — say, two hours a week for six weeks. Do something concrete. For her, that meant volunteering to run an A/B test on a landing page using a behavioral econ principle — loss aversion framing. Luna: And how did that go? Lucas: The test outperformed the control by 12 percent. She got noticed. And more importantly, she realized she didn't need to leave her job — she needed to reshape it. Luna: That's the magic of the audit. It's not a career change tool; it's a career enrichment tool. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why I think it's so valuable. Most career frameworks are about what you should do — skills gaps, strengths finders, personality tests. The curiosity audit is about what you actually do when no one's watching. Luna: I want to push back a little, though. What if someone's curiosity is totally unrelated to their field? Like, I love Renaissance art. I could spend hours on it. But I'm not going to become an art historian. Lucas: Then that's a hobby. And that's fine. The audit helps you see it clearly. If it energizes you but has zero overlap with any market problem, you can enjoy it as a hobby without guilt. The problem is when people feel they have to monetize everything. Luna: So the audit gives you permission to let some things stay hobbies. Lucas: Permission is exactly the right word. And conversely, it gives you permission to take a curiosity seriously if it keeps showing up. I had a client — a finance analyst — who kept reading about operations research. He thought it was just a nerdy interest. The audit revealed he'd spent 40 hours in a month on it. Luna: That's not a hobby anymore. That's a signal. Lucas: He ended up transitioning into a supply chain analytics role. Same company, different function. No resume gap, no pay cut. Just a realignment. Luna: I think the hardest part is actually doing the log. People are busy. They forget. How do you make it stick? Lucas: Set a phone reminder at three points in the day — morning, after lunch, before bed. Just a quick note. It doesn't have to be perfect. Even three days of data can reveal a pattern. Luna: And then what? You score it and run an experiment. But what if the experiment fails? What if the A/B test doesn't outperform? Lucas: Then you learn something else. Maybe the curiosity is more intellectual than applied. Or maybe the context wasn't right. The point isn't success — it's signal clarity. You're not trying to validate a career change; you're trying to understand your own attention. Luna: That's actually freeing. It takes the pressure off. Lucas: And I think that's what makes it different from something like a skill gap analysis. A skill gap analysis tells you what you lack. A curiosity audit tells you what you already lean toward. It's asset-based, not deficit-based. Luna: I've been thinking about doing something similar myself. I have this weird curiosity about the history of economic bubbles — tulip mania, South Sea, the whole thing. I even have a shelf of books. Lucas: That's perfect. Score it. High energy? Low overlap with most jobs? Maybe it stays a hobby. Or maybe you find a way to write about it for a newsletter. That's a small experiment. Luna: I think I will. And I think a lot of our listeners could benefit from this. It's low-stakes, honest, and actionable. Lucas: If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It keeps the show going and helps us keep episodes like this free for everyone. Luna: Absolutely. And it's a small way of saying this content matters. We appreciate it. Lucas: So back to the audit. The last thing I'll say is: do it twice a year. Your curiosity shifts. What fascinated you six months ago might feel stale now. The audit is a way to stay in touch with your own evolving interests. Luna: I like that. It's not a one-and-done. It's a regular check-in. Lucas: And if you do it honestly, you'll probably surprise yourself. The marketing manager I mentioned? She's now leading a small behavioral science practice inside her company. All because she paid attention to what she was already paying attention to. Luna: That's a great note to end on. Pay attention to what you're already paying attention to.