In a recent New York Times essay, columnist Melissa Kirsch writes about La Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí’s basilica in Barcelona, which has been under construction for nearly 150 years. Gaudí didn’t expect to see it finished in his lifetime. “My client is in no hurry,” he reportedly said.

Most of us don’t approach our careers that way. We treat every job search, every promotion push, every professional goal as something that should resolve quickly. When it doesn’t, we wonder what we’re doing wrong.

But many of the best things in a career are cathedral projects. They take longer than we think they should. They require other people’s decisions, organizational timing, and circumstances we can’t control. And they reward a kind of steady, patient effort that our productivity-obsessed culture doesn’t always celebrate.

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Anyone who has been through a long job search knows the specific exhaustion of it — the applications, the silences, the inbox-checking, the wondering. Public sector roles, in particular, can move slowly: hiring timelines stretch, promotions hinge on organizational needs as much as on individual performance, and the right opportunity rarely appears on schedule.

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During those stretches, the instinct is to do more. More applications, more networking, more self-improvement. Sometimes that’s the right call. But sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is step back, give yourself permission to rest, and trust that the work you’ve already done is still working for you.

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Stepping away is not the same as giving up. Distance creates perspective. A weekend unplugged, an afternoon with people you love, time devoted to something that has nothing to do with your career — these aren’t indulgences. They’re part of how you stay sharp, resilient, and ready when the right moment arrives.

The people who tend to do well in interviews, in new roles, in difficult professional moments aren’t always the ones who worked the hardest during the waiting period. They’re often the ones who managed their energy well. Who didn’t burn through their reserves grinding against things they couldn’t control.

As Kirsch observes of our relationship with unfinished things: most of life is spent in the making and toiling and striving — and we might try to get more comfortable with that process.

The cathedral gets built one stone at a time, across many hands and many years. So does a career. You don’t have to finish it today.

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