(FORTUNE Magazine) – It's happened to almost everyone. You realize you haven't been happy at your job for a long while. Perhaps the work has gotten dull. Perhaps the boss has finally gone over the edge. Or not earning enough has really started to wear thin. Whatever the case, your endless complaining has become a drag for your friends and possibly dangerous at work. Isn't it time to start looking?

In today's opportunity-rich economy, it is no longer inertia's moment. "A person would be a fool to stay stuck," says John McDorman, a career counselor with a weekly radio talk show in Dallas. This is particularly true for what government statisticians call "managerial and professional specialty" employees. Their unemployment rate is always less than half that of the country as a whole, and this June stood at a seasonally adjusted 1.7%--which it has never dropped below since the Bureau of Labor Statistics adopted its present system of keeping track in 1983. And outplacement specialist Challenger Gray & Christmas reports that 94% of its clients found jobs that paid at least as well within around three months. What's more, at the rate companies are transforming themselves nowadays--because of fast-changing markets, mergers, new technology--the notion of staying in the same job may be a chimera anyway.

So why on earth don't disaffected managers do something? The reasons, it turns out, fall into a few simple categories, and boil down to two of the commonest human frailties--laziness and fear. Learn to master them, and you stand a better chance of emerging triumphant the next time you're visited by job malaise.

Sometimes a hesitation to look around is unconnected to a character flaw. Some people, especially those who settled into their jobs shortly after college, or during the last recession, simply don't know how to look. Others know perfectly well how, but are worried they'll get rejected if they do. A third group of sufferers has the opposite fear--that they'll get the job, and it will turn out to be so unpleasant they'll rue leaving their present one. A fourth category are people who crave drastic change but don't know where else they fit.

Make no mistake, says Baila Zeitz, a psychologist specializing in employment issues: A job search is a "supercolossal hassle." The right approach, offers career counselor Michelle Tullier, is to "break it down into manageable steps."

Many would-be job seekers labor over their resumes for months, allowing this essentially clerical chore to hold up the entire job search. Rather than let resume writing hold you up, dive right into the next part of the job hunt: networking. Call every contact you can think of--friends, colleagues, fellow alumni--and ask each to suggest a few others who might be willing to talk to you. Become active in professional organizations, and if you don't already have working relationships with at least three headhunters, develop them. Calling in old favors and interviewing with people you've never met--not to ask for a job but to get some guidance and possibly a few names to call--are par for the course, Zeitz says. Finally, ask a few friends to serve as springboards for ideas as well as enforcers of deadlines. Or get an "executive coach" to do the same.

Many people put off looking for work out of fear that their skills are not transferable or that they are somehow less competent than their colleagues imagine. "There's a fear of leaving and failing," says Dalia Vernikovsky, a sales manager in the San Jose office of Greene Tweed & Co., a specialty seal maker in Kulpsville, Pa. Vernikovsky--who was so clearly unhappy over not being chosen to lead her firm's semiconductor division that the firm paired her with a career coach--ultimately concluded the problem might be her own aggressive manner, which would inevitably accompany her to any new job. She has remained with Greene Tweed, choosing to work on her attitude instead of taking it on the road.

Steven Berglas, an employment psychologist, likes the phrase "self-handicapping behavior." Some managers are so afraid of being blamed when anything goes wrong that they shield themselves by attributing brutish impulses to their employers. You'd think they'd try to escape, but they don't, because they are equally afraid of a stranger's negative evaluation. "People make careers out of this," says Berglas.

"The one known antidote," Berglas says, "is getting criticism at low levels." If you tend to put off applying for new jobs mainly because you fear your personality or qualifications will be found wanting, ask a former boss or co-worker to lunch--and for an unvarnished portrait of your weaknesses. "You're inoculating yourself against devastation from criticism," he explains.

No matter how awful your current job may be, no one can deny that a new job could be worse, perhaps even ending in termination. But wary types tend to exaggerate the risk. The evidence? Even those who venture into the job market involuntarily "will tell you two years later, more often than not, that it was the best thing that ever happened to them," says Zeitz. With unemployment so low these days, a second job that turns out to be a dud is likely to lead to a third.

How to help managers who want to chuck not only their job but their career, yet cower before the void? Mary Jo Perley says she was such a case. A former nurse with a Ph.D. in communication, Perley spent ten years with two large hospital chains, ultimately managing about 800 nurses and allied health professionals. She says a process she undertook with McDorman called storylining helped sort things out.

First, you reflect on your entire life, dividing it into seven-year intervals. From each period, you identify activities that have the following characteristics: (1) They were a real source of joy, and (2) they provided you with a sense of mastery. Choose eight to 12, trying not to focus exclusively on recent ones, and write one- to two-page accounts of each. Next, make a table, in which you submit each activity to the following interrogation:

--Why: What was the activity's overall purpose?

--What: Did it have a distinctive subject matter?

--How: Which of my abilities was I using?

--Where: In what context--political, social, economic--did the need for the activity arise?

--Who: What sorts of people did I work with? Were there many or just a few?

--When: How long did it take? Did I complete it before my patience or attention began to flag?

It's a good exercise for anyone to try at least once, though it can take an entire weekend. If everything goes right, the same patterns will keep popping up. Boil these down to five or six phrases in descending order of importance and write a paragraph on each. You will end up with a one-page motivational profile. Perley sent her activity summaries to a firm called The DOMA Group in Canton Center, Conn., which distilled her deepest aspirations. They included playing "a pioneering role where you can make a difference/affect society."

The process is described in Richard Bolles' classic book, What Color Is Your Parachute?, and reduced to step-by-step exercises in Intercristo's Career Kit, a package of booklets and tapes published by a Christian group in Seattle. The booklets give sound advice for people of all religions, despite the frequent biblical asides.

In many cases, people find that their current jobs--the ones they supposedly despise--closely match the profile but are missing just one key piece, says Betsy Collard, program director of the Career Action Center in Cupertino, Calif. Employees like these may be able to mold their current jobs into nearly ideal ones simply by sitting down with their boss or an HR person and making a few adjustments. "Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, my advice is to stay," says executive coach Lewis Kravitz.

That's what Perley tried to do. She looked for ways to set up a center she'd manage that would be dedicated to meeting the spiritual and emotional needs of cancer patients. But the chain rejected the idea as a money loser. So three years ago she founded her own nonprofit center. At the moment Perley's organization is setting up a Dallas chapter of Gilda's Club, the group of cancer support centers started in memory of the actress Gilda Radner.

Perley is still a manager of sorts, but she also gets to work with patients directly--a dimension she says was missing from her last job. Clearly, it's a challenge to combine the two roles. "My guess," she says, "is that I will end up developing Gilda's Clubs" throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

Perley's approach can serve as a model. By drawing upon the positive experiences you've had both outside your present job and within it, you may find something like satisfaction.