Some of us remember when portable GPS units would say “recalculating” the moment you deviated from the predetermined route. It would pause for a second, then adjust the course based on where you actually were. There was no judgment. Just a quiet acknowledgment that new information was available and a better path was now possible. Most of us don’t extend that same grace to ourselves. We treat a change of direction as an admission of failure rather than what it actually is: a course correction

We set our life’s destination early, often before we have enough information to choose well. Career paths chosen between 18 and 25, when the human brain isn’t yet fully developed. Financial habits inherited from parents. Life plans written by societal norms. And then we follow the original route long after better ones have appeared, not because we can’t see them, but because recalculating feels like admitting we were wrong.

I’ve experienced this firsthand. After 26 years in the military, where I pivoted mid-career from a RADAR technician to a registered nurse, I transitioned to the civilian sector at age 45. Nursing is a career most people stay in until full retirement. The logical next move, the one the map suggested, was to keep doing what I’d always done. Stay clinical. Stay familiar. Stay on route.

Instead, I recalculated.

I pivoted into healthcare project management, an area that leveraged everything I’d learned but took me down a road I hadn’t originally planned to travel. It wasn’t a detour. It was a better route that only became visible after decades of experience gave me the information I needed to see it. That pivot didn’t happen because I had it all figured out at 18 or even at 35. It happened because I gave myself permission to recalculate when the landscape changed.

So why is it so hard for most people to change course once they’re well into the journey? It’s not a lack of courage or vision. Psychologists call it the sunk cost fallacy: our deeply human tendency to continue on a path because of what we’ve already invested, rather than evaluating where that path is actually taking us. We stay in careers, financial strategies, and life plans not because they’re working, but because we’ve spent years, sometimes decades, on them already. Walking away feels like losing everything we put in.

But here’s what the GPS understands that we often miss: it doesn’t factor in how long you’ve been driving the wrong way when it recalculates. It doesn’t weigh the miles already traveled. It simply finds the best route from where you are right now. The time already spent is gone. You’re not getting it back. The only question that matters is where you go from here.

The insight isn’t that your original plan was bad. You made the best decision you could with the information you had at the time. The best navigators aren’t the ones who never go off course — they’re the ones who recalculate without hesitation when a better path appears.

Three questions worth sitting with this week:

1.    What route am I currently following that I chose before I had the information I have now?

2.    In what area have I been recalculating internally but haven’t yet given myself permission to act on it?

3.    What would I do differently if I started from where I am today rather than where I originally began?

Three things worth your time this week:

📚  Read

Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One by Jenny Blake — a methodical, practical guide to career reinvention that focuses on leveraging what you already have rather than starting over from scratch. Uses the same navigational mindset as this issue.

🧠  Concept worth knowing

The Sunk Cost Fallacy — Behavioral Economics Hub explainer — a clean, credible overview of the psychology behind why we stay on routes we should have left. Understanding it is the first step to overcoming it.

📊  Stat worth sharing

According to 2024 data cited in The Mid-Life Career Pivot by David Morgan, 82% of professionals who successfully changed careers after 40 reported higher job satisfaction. The recalculation is worth it.

Zoom out. See what’s possible.

— Chuck