Sital Ruparelia

Here’s a tease from the tip in my weekly newsletter ‘Straight Talk’ – if you haven’t already, I hope you’ll sign up

My first ever real job was working as a buyer in the procurement team at British Airways in the early 90s (although I’m sure my dad would convince you that working in his shop at weekends and holidays was a ‘real job’!)

In my first few weeks, an engineer taught me a key lesson about operating any airline:   

“It takes more fuel, more energy, more people and more stress to get a plane into the sky than anything else we do.”

But once the plane was in the sky, the level of fuel consumption drops radically – to fly the plane only needs one pilot to fly it – and in fact most of the time it doesn’t need a pilot at all – it’s on autopilot and the flight management computer takes care of everything.

This is just the same as making any kind of job change, career change or adjustments to the way you structure your work life (e.g. trying to improving your work-life balance).

The early stages of making any change – or ‘taking off’ – requires more energy, more people, more stress.

Most people planning any kind of change don’t take this into account and consequently fail make any progress after the initial enthusiasm.