We all know people who want to make a change in their careers but do not act on this desire. Yet this phenomenon, recently labeled “career inaction” (Verbruggen & De Vos, 2020), has received almost no research attention to date. To address this gap and enrich our understanding of career inaction, this paper explores the lived experiences of 43 individuals characterized by inaction. Employing a qualitative research design and informed by the broader literature on psychodynamics, we find that people's experience of inaction is emotionally tense and situated among the interaction of three psychodynamic “me”-identifications: the “striving me,” the “comfortable me,” and the “uncertain me.” Our study further identifies various tension-easing strategies that help people ease the psychological strain of career inaction, even though their inaction often continued. Altogether, our study enriches and extends extant theorizing on career inaction and calls for a renewed focus on bounded rationality and emotionality in contemporary careers.

我们都知道有些人想要改变自己的职业生涯，但没有按照这种愿望采取行动。然而，这种最近被称为“职业不作为”的现象（Verbruggen & De Vos，2020）迄今为止几乎没有受到任何研究关注。为了解决这一差距并丰富我们对职业不作为的理解，本文探讨了以不作为为特征的 43 个人的生活经历。采用定性研究设计并参考更广泛的心理动力学文献，我们发现人们的无为体验在情绪上是紧张的，并且位于三种心理动力学“我”身份的相互作用中：“努力的我”、“舒适的我”、和“不确定我”。我们的研究进一步确定了各种缓解压力的策略，这些策略可以帮助人们缓解职业不作为的心理压力，尽管他们的不作为经常继续。总之，我们的研究丰富和扩展了现有的关于职业不作为的理论，并呼吁重新关注当代职业中的有限理性和情感。