How to Design Your Career in the AI Age

Reimagine your work, skills, and value in an AI-driven world.

Author

Janelle Howell
July 22, 2025

Inside this Special Edition

✉️ A Note from Nelle Let’s Talk About the Fear No One Wants to Admit About Work…

🖥️ What AI Can’t Replace Your Edge: What AI Can’t Do

🧠 Life Design 101 Make Work “Work” for You: Design Thinking for a New Era

📸 Free Resource The Career Clarity Snapshot (Worksheet)

🔍 Your Possibility Inventory 3 Questions to Jumpstart Your Career Exploration

📨 An Invitation to Action Want to Design What’s Next with Me?

Let’s Talk About the Fear No One Wants to Admit About Work…

Hey! I’m glad you’re here.

We need to talk about the state of the workplace right now, specifically the emergence of AI.

It’s literally impossible to go 24 hours without hearing the words, “AI,” “Artificial Intelligence,” or “ChatGPT,” these days. We’re constantly being inundated with news articles, interviews, and soundbites from CEOs and tech gurus warning us about AI taking over, eliminating jobs, and making companies millions of dollars with less than a fraction of the manpower.

And hearing things like this causes panic as a career professional.

You’ve worked hard, built a successful career, and now it feels like the rug is being pulled from underneath you. While the LinkedIn influencers are hyping up their latest AI dream machine in an emoji-filled post, you start to think,“Am I becoming irrelevant?”

With everything going on, it’s hard not to fall into that line of thinking.

But what if you’re not being replaced, but redirected to adopt a new mindset, new skills, and a new purpose? Perhaps this “AI revolution” is just the beginning of your reinvention?

In this special edition, we’ll explore what you can do to reimagine your career in a way that works for this next era and position yourself to win in an increasingly AI-dominant world.

Stay tuned.

The best is yet to come.

~Nelle

“The danger of AI is not that it will rise of machines, but the fall of humanity.”

-Toby Walsh

Your Edge: What AI Can’t Do

Now, before you start reading this section I need you to be positive and try not fall into the: "Well, AI can’t do that - yet” mindset. No matter how much AI is being pushed just know our existence as human beings is one that is filled with nuance, uniqueness, and varied perspectives that make duplicating our exact actions, thoughts, and even dreams incredibly difficult.

AI might be able to streamline workflows and analyze data, but it can't walk someone through a tough decision, mediate a team conflict, or mentor someone who’s losing confidence. It can’t read the room, tell a highly emotional and personal story that hits the heartstrings, or inspire a group to move forward when everything feels uncertain. Sure, you can ask AI for help, but you need to understand people on a deeper level (especially individually) to make that connection.

What matters now isn’t learning how to become a world renowned prompt-master with the latest LLM (learning language machine), it’s about doubling down on what makes you irreplaceable like having transferable skills such as emotional intelligence, relationship-building, communication, critical thinking, and adaptability. These aren’t just "soft skills,” they are your power skills. They help you navigate challenges and design meaningful work.

So how can these skills give you a leg up on AI?

  • Emotional intelligence: Understanding verbal and nonverbal cues are all areas AI can’t compete. It also can’t sense when a team is going through the motions or completely disengaged in the workplace. But you can.

  • Relationship-building: Texting might be the dominant form of communication, but understanding how to leverage the art of face-to-face communication is worth its weight in gold. People who are fluent in building relationships become the connectors, the go-to collaborators, and the culture-shapers who inspire others, transform society, and make things happen. AI can’t “do lunch”, meet up for coffee chats, or create psychological safety. You, however, can.

  • Leadership and mentoring: As organizations flatten and change rapidly, the power of leadership becomes less focused on hierarchy and more about influence. Your ability to mentor, support, and champion others makes you not only resilient, but deeply respected. And it’s a legacy only you, not AI can create.

  • Adaptability through lived experience: Your life experience alone shows how you’ve evolved through hardship. You’ve grown through layoffs, technology implementations, mergers, parenting, caregiving, etc. You literally have resilience baked in your veins. That depth of perspective is what helps organizations stay grounded in uncertain times and allows you to incorporate those experiences in your work, projects, and more.

  • Meaning-making (the ability to connect purpose to action): People desire direction, not regurgitated data. They want someone to help them make the connections between the what, where, when, why and how to motivate them to act. A large part of being able to do that successfully relies on trust and having a rapport with your people, something AI doesn’t have an advantage over.

Just looking at these areas you might assume they’re just basic run of the mill skills, but they can make all the difference in helping you stay ahead of the curve. Remember, no matter how much AI is hyped: This isn’t the end of your relevance.

Make Work “Work” for You: Design Thinking for a New Era

The world of work is changing in the blink of an eye. Careers that exist today may be gone tomorrow, and for anyone navigating the job search right now, it can feel nearly impossible to tell what’s really available out there or what might be a good fit.

But what if your next career move didn’t have to be a shot in the dark? What if it could be a low-risk experiment instead of a high-stakes leap?

Well, with Life Design, now you can.

What is Life Design?

The origins of Life Design are inspired from Stanford’s design thinking methodology, an approach that helps you move from reaction to creation - not by forcing big decisions, but by building small, sustainable experiments that reveal what’s next.

With Life Design, we can:

  • Prototype new roles and passions (before quitting anything)

  • Explore different paths with curiosity, not fear

  • Build a life and work portfolio, not just a job title

For example, instead of quitting your job at a moment’s notice, you can prototype new roles, careers, or paths through conversation, up close and personal observation, side projects, skills training, or short-term collaborations. This is about exploring with curiosity (not fear) and test-driving possibilities before you commit. And it works.

Choices, Choices, Choices

In 2025, it’s not about locking into one perfect title anymore. Those days are over. It’s about building a work-life that reflects your values, strengths, and evolving identity.

Maybe your next move is to consult or design something from scratch because you’re itching to solve a problem that doesn’t have a solution yet. Or maybe your next step is something completely out of the box.

The point is: It’s okay to try on different roles, careers, and paths to see what fits. You may end up finding more than one that does (and that’s okay, too!). Life Design is a personalized experience that helps you start exploring and designing a career that fits your life - not the other way around. When you use design thinking tools, you’re not just preparing for what’s next. You’re actively taking part in shaping it.

In this new era of work, you have to stay ready to pivot, think creatively, and keep your options open and Life Design can help you do it smartly.

The Career Clarity Snapshot

The Career Clarity Snapshot Worksheet

Dreading to get up to go to work every day or tired of trying to find an excuse to opt-out of meetings every week? Well, it’s time to sit down and rethink the trajectory of your work life and the Career Clarity Snapshot worksheet can help you do that.

The Career Clarity Snapshot is a one-page tool designed to help you pause, reflect, and take honest inventory of where you are in your work life and what might be calling you next. It’s a chance to ask better questions, reconnect with your strengths, and spot the patterns that could point to your next move.

Why It Works: The Career Clarity Snapshot helps you make the invisible visible, so instead of reacting to fear or uncertainty, you can start recognizing patterns and designing next steps with intention.

3 Questions to Jumpstart Your Career Exploration

So, you’re finally ready to switch gears and find a new career?

Before you decide which direction to go in, give yourself a chance to explore what’s possible. The goal isn’t to land on a perfect title - it’s to get curious and figure out how to use what you already have in new ways.

Start by asking:

  • What inspires me right now? (What am I reading, watching, drawn to?)

  • What feels fun, easy, or energizing? (Even if it doesn’t seem “career-worthy.”)

  • What do I know how to do? (Skills, strengths, stories - even outside of work.)

  • What am I willing to learn? (Soft skills, technical skills, life skills)

From there, you can begin to notice patterns and possibilities. Whether it’s insurance, interior design, independent consulting, or something else - what matters is why it speaks to you and how you might try it on.

You don’t need a full plan - yet.

You just need a starting point.

Want to Design What’s Next with Me?

I created Life Design with Nelle to help career professionals like you stop guessing and start designing with more clarity, intention, and direction.

If you’ve been feeling the nudge to shift, grow, or reimagine what’s next, this might be the moment to explore it more deeply. Coaching isn’t for everyone, but if you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start moving with purpose, it just might be the support you’ve been looking for.

Book a free discovery call and see if coaching is a good fit for the season you’re in.

~Nelle