One way to look at a career is to see it as a continuous sequence of puzzles.
Each new job, role, or opportunity is a different puzzle that has a unique set of characteristics.
Some are easy, some might be confusing, some may take a long time to solve. Some may be puzzles you’d happily work on in your free time, and others might be ones you’ll happily walk away from.
Seen through this light, one way to optimise a career is finding puzzles worth solving, and trying to find and solve more of these over time.