Although we would all benefit from taking a measured, planned approach to career development, in practice human beings tend to operate on the ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ principle, having been provided with a nervous system that selectively excludes every warning sign, but which leaps into a frenzy of activity when things go spectacularly wrong. So we amble along from day to day, responding to the pressures and opportunities of the here and now, enjoying what can be enjoyed, and never taking the time to think through our working lives in any depth or breadth. Then one day it happens: it may be a nasty experience such as a redundancy, a divorce, a death, an illness, a restructuring, a difficult boss. It may be because a period of your life has come to a natural end, as in leaving school or college, or coming to the end of a vocational training or contract. Or it may be a problem of a more internal kind – a sudden realisation that you’re bored with what you are doing, an imperative to do something different, a reminder that life is marching by and if you are going to do anything exciting or worthwhile, you had better get on with it.

The most common kind of career problems are those that are related to life stages. Just about everyone experiences indecision and confusion at one or more of these. The first fertile period for career problems is during the latter years of school or university – hardly surprising, as what you are expected to do at this stage is decide what you would like to do with the rest of your life. This is an extraordinary requirement to make of young people, who are generally hampered by a paucity of experience on the one hand, and by a surfeit of advice on the other.

Finally comes the approach of retirement, with all its decisions about when to go, whether to wind down gradually, what you will do when you no longer have to work, and so on. And with people talking about the ‘fourth age’, the period of time after the three score years and ten that previous generations never expected to live beyond, the potential for career crises may be endless!

A theme running through all these potential sources of uncertainty and anxiety is the whole business of career choice. While what you choose is not nearly as crucial as you might think, the question ‘what shall I do?’ is central to many a career emergency. Understanding the pressures and reasons...