Playing It Safe at Work Is Your Riskiest Career Move

The Career Freeze: Why Workers Are Staying Put

Right now, it feels like almost every professional is taking the same approach: staying still. Fewer people are job searching than they were a year ago. More people are picking up a side hustle instead of asking for a raise. People are staying in roles they’ve outgrown because moving feels riskier than staying put.

Monster’s 2026 WorkWatch Report found that the share of workers planning to job search this year has collapsed from 93% down to 43%, with “protect stability” replacing “explore options” as the default mindset. I understand the instinct to hold still in this economic environment, but after a conversation I just had on my podcast, I’m convinced of something else: the freeze isn’t caution. It’s the risk.

People are hedging with side income instead of making a move, treating “don’t rock the boat” as a strategy. But anchoring your sense of safety to a status quo you don’t control isn’t safety. It’s just delayed exposure.

Comfort Is the Real Risk: A Cautionary Tale

A few years back, my company landed a major media deal — the easiest money we’d ever made. A multi-six-figure client relationship that basically ran itself. I remember thinking, if this just lasted forever, we’d be set. So we did what felt natural: we shifted our business around the assumption that it would.

Then, right at the peak of our powers, it all changed. The deal ended.

Looking back, the problem wasn’t the loss itself. The problem was that comfort had quietly stopped me from preparing for anything else. I wasn’t being strategic. I was just enjoying the ride and hoping it wouldn’t end.

When you get comfortable, you don’t just enjoy the moment — you start putting your sense of security into something that was never yours to control. Anchoring your sense of safety to a status quo you don’t control isn’t safety. It’s just delayed exposure.

There’s a name for this, and it’s not a personal failing — it’s a well-documented bias. Researchers call it status quo bias: our tendency to overweight the upsides of where we already are and underweight the downsides, simply because it’s familiar.

Staying Still Trains You to Be More Risk-Averse

This is where my recent conversation with Scott Sturritt landed for me. Scott founded Venture for Canada, has helped more than 10,000 entrepreneurs launch their careers, and wrote The Uncertainty Advantage after his own pivot away from Goldman Sachs.

I posed him a thought experiment on the show: imagine two versions of himself — the one who left Goldman to build something from scratch, and one who stayed and played it safe on the traditional path. His answer stuck with me. The Goldman Sachs version of himself wouldn’t just have a different resume. He’d have trained a completely different set of instincts — how to manage risk, how to play the corporate game — instead of how to build.

Staying still doesn’t just delay change. It actively trains you into a different, more risk-averse person. That’s what a lot of us are doing to ourselves right now, one quiet, “safe” year at a time.

Building Your Risk Muscle: Small Reps of Discomfort

Risk-taking isn’t a personality you either have or don’t. It’s closer to a muscle, built through repeated, small discomfort done on purpose. You don’t need a dramatic exit to start training it this week.

Five reps to start

1. Name the thing you’re avoiding. What is the specific ask, conversation, or move you’ve been sitting on? Write it down in one sentence.
2. Audit your “safety.” List what you’re relying on to feel secure — a role, a client, a routine. Ask honestly: is this actually stable, or just unchanged so far?
3. Pick one uncomfortable rep this week. Send the email, ask for the raise, make the introduction you’ve been putting off. Small and real beats big and hypothetical.
4. Build a hedge that isn’t hiding. A side project or new skill is only useful if it’s moving you somewhere, not just softening the freeze.
5. Take the quiz. Scott’s uncertainty assessment gives you an actual score instead of a vague feeling — a concrete way to see where you stand before you decide what to change.