2026 Dream Job Exercise: Unlocking Your Future

Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel

Careers, Business

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2026

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What is your dream job? What will your life look like in ten years? Kick off the New Year with a favorite Hello Monday activity: the Dream Job Exercise. In this episode, host Jessi Hempel kicks off the new year with a powerful ritual she returns to every January: the Dream Job Exercise. It’s not about chasing a title or predicting the future—it’s about reclaiming imagination, agency, and hope in a moment when many professionals feel stuck or anxious about what comes next. Jessi explains why imagination may be the most essential career skill of the next decade—and how a simple writing exercise can help you clarify what you really want from your work and your life. Jessi walks listeners step by step through the Dream Job Exercise, sharing why looking 10 years ahead creates space to stop editing yourself and start dreaming again. Along the way, she reflects on how this practice helped her land a version of her own dream role—and why it can work as a decision-making filter in an era of constant change. In this episode, Jessi explores: The role of hope and personal agency in navigating career change Why imagination is a critical future-of-work skill How the Dream Job Exercise helps clarify what you actually want Why looking 10 years ahead unlocks bolder career thinking How this exercise can guide better career decisions year after year Whether you’re questioning your next move, feeling unsettled in a job you once loved, or simply craving more clarity as the year begins, this episode offers a grounding reset—and a practical tool to help you move forward with intention.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I have come to believe that we can only achieve what we can imagine.
0:04.3	And that's why every year we come back to this ritual together, the dream job exercise.
0:12.0	Now, its significance is that it wakes up that part of us that still knows how to imagine.
0:17.4	Drafting my dream job, well, it broke me out of the limits, the constraints of how I thought
0:22.1	about what I could do. Once I could dream it up, that job became much easier to find.
0:31.1	From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jesse Hempel, and this is Hello Monday. It's our show about the changing nature of work and how that work
0:39.2	is changing all of us. And here we are again, a new year. It's that strange little pause where
0:46.8	everything feels possible, right? Nothing at all feels certain yet. Happy New Year. I really mean that.
0:55.3	I hope this one brings you some steadiness and maybe even some clarity.
1:01.2	Because if you're listening today, I know that you are feeling the shift under your feet.
1:06.2	I am too.
1:07.7	You know, I'm starting this year with more questions than I have had about my own job or my own career in a very long time.
1:16.0	Here's what I know, but I just can't really unsee anymore.
1:20.6	Work is changing, but not in that future of work, panel discussion kind of way.
1:25.9	No, in some more real way, right now. Everyone I know
1:31.2	is feeling it. I'm feeling it. I mean, look at me. I have this job I really love. Hello Monday
1:38.0	is only part of it. You know, I also host live conversations for our premium members here at
1:43.2	LinkedIn. I get to help shape media strategy for the company broadly.
1:48.0	My colleagues are smart, kind people.
1:51.0	They care as much as I do about this mission that we have.
1:54.0	We get to help shape how tens of millions of people understand and advance their careers.
2:00.0	I'm just going to say, this is the kind of meaningful work I was going for when I got started
	...

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