Have you reached the heady heights of Peak Postdoc? Or are you experiencing the ‘meh’ of the Postdoc Plateau? Or has the doom spiral of the Postdoc Plummet begun?

As a researcher you are called to investigate, discover and reveal. A skilful vocation leverages your skill set to build a career that serves a larger purpose. Your research brings value to your discipline, your institution and society at large. You chose academic research for a myriad of great reasons. Stopping to take stock of whether academia is still delivering for you is important but gets put on the bottom of the to-do list.

Are you thriving or feeling slowly smothered by the itchy, scratchy academic comfort blanket? You’ve spent years getting educated, learning how to be a researcher in your discipline – it is a finely woven blanket of skills, experiences, triumphs and tribulations. You have earnt you place here in academia but is it still the right place for you?

Read this book and choose to stay. Brilliant.
Read this book and choose to leave. Brilliant.
But stop, look around, understand where you are and make a positive, proactive career choice. This book can help you.

Do you recognise any of these?

• Academia has played on you sense of duty
• Academia has played on your love of research
• You have learnt to put yourself last
• Making your work better and better, has crystalised a belief that you can’t do “stuff”
• Feeling as if you only had the skillset for your current role

Time to take stock, unravel the blanket and weave a new career with the three strong coloured threads of your golden values, steely strengths and purple courage that your research career has developed. Is it time to leave?