Is This What Work Actually Is?
The case for understanding what actually drives you at 27, not 52.
A companion to Next Chapter: Is This Everything?, which was written for leaders near a pivot. This one is for the people just getting started.
By Peter Vaughn → LinkedIn - E-mail
You already know the advice. You're young. It's normal to feel this way. Pay your dues, give it time, your twenties are for figuring it out. Whatever quiet question you've been carrying about your work, the world has a ready answer: don't worry about it yet.
I'd actually tell you the opposite. Don't wait. That question deserves your attention now, not because something is wrong, but because of what becomes possible when you take it seriously this early.
The people I coach in their fifties almost all finish our work saying the same thing: I wish I'd done this twenty years ago. You're standing right where they wish they'd been. The only real question is whether you take advantage of it.
So here's the obvious question. Why not start now?
The Question Means You're Paying Attention
Before you talk yourself out of that question, hear me out.
That question is serious whenever you ask it, because it presupposes there's something else. But at your stage it usually means something specific. It's not the fifty-five-year-old's version that’s the big reckoning about legacy and time running short. Yours is smaller and far more answerable: is this what work actually is?
You're not asking who you are in the world. You're asking who you are as a professional, and whether the job you're in is really tapping into that. That's a much more contained thing to explore, which makes it easier to work with, not harder.
So I'll say what a lot of people won't: asking this early isn't immaturity or restlessness for its own sake. It's awareness. Something in you has registered that this could fit better than it does, and that's worth pausing on before you outrun it.
It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint
The reflex I see most in people your age is I have to solve this right now. I have to pick the right company, the right title, the right next move, and lock it in.
The fact is you don't, and the relief when that lands is real. You're not solving for your career right now. You're gathering an experience that helps guide the career you're going to build. The job you're in today, even the parts that frustrate you, is fuel. It's teaching you what engages you and what drains you, what culture you want, what problems you like to solve. All of that is data you'll use for decades.
This is one step in a direction, not the step in the direction. Once that sinks in, the question gets a lot less scary. You have the one thing the fifty-five-year-old asking it doesn't: time. And plenty of it.
You Have More Evidence Than You Think
The first thing people your age worry about in answering the question is where's the data and evidence? When I coach a senior executive I can draw on thirty years of history. You don't have that yet.
You have more than you think. Experiences are experiences. The way you attacked a summer job. The role you played on a team. How you take care of something you're proud of like a boat, a project, or a side hustle, and how it feels when it's done right. The moment in a group when you realized you were the one pulling everyone's ideas together. None of that shows up on a job description, but all of it tells me how you operate and when you're firing on all cylinders.
The fifty-year-old just has more of these to draw on. Yours simply live a little further outside the professional box, and a big part of the work I do is helping people connect them: the thing you're great at on the water or in that side project, and how it maps onto the work you should be looking for. Most people have never been asked to look at it that directly. Once you do, it's hard to unsee.
Drivers, Not Purpose
You've almost certainly been told to "find your purpose." I'd steer you away from that as a starting point, the same way I steer executives away from it. Asking what your purpose is happens to be one of the most paralyzing questions there is, and it's even more daunting at twenty-six than at sixty. You might arrive at something that feels like a purpose through this type of coaching work, but I wouldn’t start there. It has to come on its own.
I start somewhere smaller and far more useful: your drivers. What you actually like to do. What matters to you emotionally. The context you need to do your best work. We paint that picture first, and the bigger stuff takes care of itself.
Here's how surprising that can get. I worked with two clients who each introduced themselves as introverts, highly analytical, most comfortable solving a hard problem alone and putting the answer on the table. Both told me they had to avoid collaborative cultures. Then we looked at how they actually solved problems, and both showed the same pattern: they'd reach across the organization, pull in everyone's perspective, build the solution with that input, then bring people back together to make sure it worked. They got real energy from that. They'd just labeled themselves "introvert" and let the label decide what environment they could thrive in.
That's the danger. A word like introvert carries a hundred meanings, and if a boss files you under "the one who runs numbers in the back office," you can get stuck in a role that was never right for you. Knowing your real drivers, including the ones that surprise you, is a far better toolkit for deciding what comes next.
Why an Outsider Helps More Than the Dinner Table
Your generation is genuinely self-aware, more comfortable talking about emotional health, boundaries, and culture than any I've worked with. I find that refreshing. But self-awareness and being stuck can coexist, and a lot of the stuckness comes from one tension: the gap between the curated version of your life, the one that shows up online, and the authentic one underneath.
Getting unstuck could use taking a breather and someone who is a step removed from your daily life. Those close to you may tend to jump to “What company should you go to next?”, which is the wrong first question. The real one is “how much of your work is actually authentic to you, and what genuinely engages you?”. The reason a coach can ask that when the people who love you can't is simple: no baggage. No decades of history, no expectations, no assumed answers.
It's worth being precise about what a coach is, because people confuse it with mentorship. A mentor is someone you look up to who shows you how they did it, and I tell every young person to find good ones. A coach starts with you, helping you identify your own drivers and then turning that into real tools: the language, the filters, what type of role you should target, and the way you read a job description.
To be clear about outcomes, this doesn't always mean quitting your current employer. One client I worked with felt genuinely stuck, and when we dug in we found the role he already had held most of what he needed. He moved into a different position at the same company, because he could finally see it fit his drivers and he had the language to say I'm right for this, and this is right for me. Sometimes the answer is a new job. Sometimes it's reshaping the one you have.
The Compounding Case
This is the part I get genuinely excited about. The executives I coach almost all say some version of I wish I'd done this twenty years ago; I'd have had this tool for every decision along the way. So the argument writes itself: do it early, and you carry the tool for the whole career instead of finding it near the end.
It isn't a one-time exercise, either. Do it well at twenty-seven and you can do it again at thirty-five, at forty-five, as a check-in: I roughly know what drives me. Am I actually tapping into it? If not, why not? Sometimes the answer is asking your boss for the project in the next department because you can see it fits you. That awareness, built early, compounds for decades.
What Reaching Out Actually Looks Like
If coaching sounds relevant to you, I would encourage you to reach out, because not knowing what happens next is its own reason to do nothing.
Sometimes a young person reaches out directly to me about coaching. More often a friend or parent contacts me first. Either way the real starting point is the same: an informal conversation, an hour or two, well before any formal engagement. I'll ask some of the same questions I'd ask in a first coaching session, partly to explore what's going on and partly so both of us can tell whether it's a fit. Often I'll end by saying a coach could genuinely help whether that coach is me or not.
If things move forward, we’d walk through the process and what to expect over the time we'd work together, a minimum of about three months. But that first conversation is free, and it asks nothing of you except honesty about where you actually are.
A Note to any Parents Reading This
Some of you found this because your child is a few years in and something seems off, and many of you will be the one to reach out to a coach first. "Stuck" is signaled by a lot of things: low energy in the morning, nothing much to say at the dinner table or on the phone, or simply I don't love what I'm doing, but I feel like I need a job. All of it is worth taking seriously, not as an emergency but as a natural question that deserves exploration before anyone rushes to advice.
Think of this as the top layer of everything you've already invested in. All those experiences you created, the trips, the teams, the summers, carry real information about how your child operates and what motivates them. This type of work goes back and unlocks that. It's less a rescue than a gift: a set of tools that helps them read opportunities accurately, describe themselves with confidence, and choose work they'll actually be happy in.
One thing that’s critically important to me in a coaching engagement is that the relationship is with your child, not with you. What is discussed stays between us, even if I end up having a beer with their dad a few weeks later. That boundary is what makes the whole thing work.
The One Sentence
At the end of my work with senior leaders, I ask them to be able to say one thing: I know what drives me, I know what I need, and I won't accept an opportunity that doesn't honor both.
Yours is different, and it should be. Not a hand-me-down from someone thirty years ahead of you, but something more like:
"I don't have it all figured out yet, and I'm not supposed to. But I know what drives me, and I'm going to build on it, one chapter at a time."
Because that's what this is. Every book sets the stage in its first few chapters. You're not behind and you're not late. You're at the beginning of your book, laying the foundation for a much broader story that's still coming. Understanding what drives you now doesn't lock the story in; it gives you the language and the license to write the rest of it on purpose.
Your career will be a compilation of experiences either way. The only question is whether you understand them as you go, because the more you do, the better the story you'll tell. Starting today doesn't turn the marathon into a sprint. It just means more of it gets run on purpose.
So start it now. Why not?
One more thing, in case you're wondering whether this is even for you: it helps whether you're questioning everything or things are genuinely good, and no matter how self-aware you already are. You don't need something to be wrong to have the conversation. If anything, the earlier and the calmer you start, the more it compounds.
If any of this lands, whether you're the one asking the question or the parent of someone who is, I'd welcome a conversation. Not a pitch. Just a conversation.
Peter Vaughn Executive Coach & Advisor | 25-Year AmEx Veteran | Gift Card and Centurion Lounge Co-Creator | Board Member