What if this time next year, nothing has changed?

When we think about making changes to our working lives, we tend to think first about the risks. Could I afford to reduce my hours? What would happen to my pension? Could we still afford the mortgage? What if I tried something different and it didn’t work out? What if I make a decision I’ll regret? Could we still have the life we have become accustomed to? These are sensible questions, particularly when you’ve been teaching for a long time and have a salary, security and family commitments to consider.

But there’s another question we don’t ask nearly as often. What happens if you change nothing?

Fast-forward one year. It’s September 2027. The new school year has started and, on paper, very little has changed. Perhaps you’re still telling yourself you’ll get back to the gym once things settle down. You just need to get through this busy part of term, and you’ll start meal prepping again. You’re still getting to Friday with very little left in the tank. Your weekends are still partly spent recovering from the week before, and Sunday comes around far too quickly.

You still love walking into a classroom and teaching. There are still lessons that remind you exactly why you chose this career. You’re still good at what you do. But the rest of the job is still taking more from you than you want it to. And another year has passed.

I don’t say that to be dramatic. Sometimes choosing not to change anything is absolutely the right decision. But doing nothing is still a decision, and it has consequences too. We can become so focused on what we might lose by changing something that we forget to consider what staying the same might cost us.

That cost might be another year of being too tired to exercise regularly, saying no to plans because you don’t have the energy or spending weekends recovering rather than making memories with your family. It might be another year of everyone you love getting the tired and grumpy version of you. Or simply another year of thinking, “I’ll sort this out when things calm down”.

So perhaps a more useful question is… what would you like to be different by this time next year?

That doesn’t necessarily mean leaving teaching. September 2027 might find you in the same school, teaching the same subject and still loving what you do. But perhaps you’re working differently. Perhaps you’ve reduced your hours, changed a responsibility, started exploring another interest alongside teaching or found a way for work to occupy less space in the rest of your life.

The change doesn’t have to be enormous to make your life feel different, and you certainly don’t need to have the answer today. But if you already know that you don’t want September 2027 to look exactly like September 2026, perhaps now is a good time to start thinking about what you do want to be different.

How would you feel if nothing about your working life changed over the next year?