How to Get Past a Career Rut

NEW YORK (MainStreet) -- Stay in the real world long enough and you're bound to get burned out. Longer workweeks, toxic co-workers, poor managers and bleak prospects for advancing one's career can be a recipe for a Catch-22 in which you long to quit your job but feel pressured to hold on to it out of fear of becoming unemployed and not being able to make ends meet.

But while it's easy to blame the recession for these issues, experts say the real reason your career has stalled probably has more to do with poor planning and a lack of initiative, not to mention a lack of one or more of the transferable skills every employee needs to succeed and stand out in today's tough economy.

If your career has stalled, start planning better, take initiative and acquire some transferable skills.

"Sure, there are external factors," says Tim Handal, CEO of the Dale Carnegie Institute, a professional development center. "It could be a divorce or health or the recession. But really it can be the individual who isn't prepared for the real world. Intangible people skills are very important, and in a lot of respects more important than what somebody has."

If it seems like you're working for the weekend but aren't making progress, keep reading for advice on how to put your job back on track and cut through the fog to land that promotion or your next dream job.

Stuck in neutral
A career rut is hard to define, but Alexandra Levit, author of New Job, New You, says any time you're not looking forward to waking up in the morning or are having trouble focusing on the work at hand are sign you're plodding along in your job and are headed for trouble.

"When nothing you're working on gets you jazzed anymore, everything is just sort of blah and even when you do something well you find it hard to enjoy it, that's a sign you need to pull yourself out of your rut," she says.

Other indications you might be unhappy with your work situation include excessive drinking, physical symptoms such as feeling sick or tired, doing poorly at work and lacking attention to detail.

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