“It reminds me how bad I am at making predictions”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

Every week our talented roster has been answering our reader submitted questions. Now that the year is drawing to a close – we thought they’d like to take a break. We’ve taken over this week’s question to give our advice givers a chance to look back and forward to the new year.

This week’s question:

Think back on the questions you’ve answered throughout the year – what common themes or topics came up? Did your hopes from last year come true? What are you looking forward to in 2026? And are there any areas or topics you’re excited to explore more in the new year?

Alex Bec, co-founder of It’s Nice That, Creative Lives in Progress and If You Could Jobs:

I’m always torn by end of year reflections. On one hand, I love the chance to sit down, take stock and see how things have developed over the course of 12 months. On the other hand, it reminds me how bad I am at making predictions, and forces me to confront the fact I thought Man United might get into the top four last year (they finished 15th, for anyone who’s not following English football!).

Anyway, on with business. Looking back at the articles I’ve written for this wonderful column this year, there are some clear themes that jump out for me. Firstly, 2025 really took on the ‘challenging times economically’ baton from 2024 with gusto. I’ve written numerous times attempting to provide some guidance for people tackling uncertainty and a challenging economic landscape. From leaders struggling with team cuts to international students facing sponsorship challenges to professionals questioning their career paths; 2025 wasn’t the return to abundance we all hoped for.

There were also clearly lots of you thinking about change and mixing up your career status quo. Several questions revealed people grappling with major life changes; a new parent struggling to balance creative work with family time, someone wanting to leave London for lifestyle reasons, and creatives questioning whether they’d made the right career moves.

These two themes probably don’t live in isolation though; one feeding another and making for a year where lots of wondering, dreaming and imagining a new dawn was done.

My hope for 2025 is that we all find ways to deal with the choppy waters with grace. My hunch is that this level of economic uncertainty is now the new normal and it’s important we all give ourselves a break. We are clearly operating in what will be historically difficult times – so I hope we can take solace in the fact that we can only control what we can control and that nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. All we can ask of ourselves is to take small, practical steps towards the things we’re after. Even baby steps in the right direction should feel like proper progress.

But first, I hope all our readers can enjoy a bit too much time with your loved ones, and give yourself the chance to rest before things gear up again in January…

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

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