With your quest identified, you’re ready to use all the information you’ve gathered so far in our process to imagine a wide range of possibilities for what you could do next. This step, creating prototypes for your next move, takes advantage of what designers call divergent thinking. The goal is to create contrasting visions of your future. By doing so, you’ll deepen your understanding of what would be a good choice for you at this stage of your career and learn before switching what each of these options that sound appealing actually entails.

Brainstorm a list of jobs that might deliver your critical “must-haves.” Those will be your early prototypes. This work will likely take some dedicated time over several days or a couple weeks. If you were already offered a new job—perhaps that’s what pulled you into this job-switching process—then include that role as one of your prototypes. Once you have sketched out several options, you must flesh them out to create true prototypes that can be tested against the things that matter most to you. To help build out each one, use this template here.