This presentation describes a course, "Lifework Planning," designed to help women evaluate their current job status and plan career changes commensurate with long-range life goals. The framework for the program is self-directed learning, through which women develop coping strategies for change. Participants and leaders make mutual decisions regarding course content, and participants map out individual goals. The presentation lists several characteristics of life-planning programs: (1) they are developmental, helping women to accept changes in life plans as natural outcomes of developing needs and values; (2) they promote self-confidence; (3) they are supportive, involving friends and family and the program group itself in providing feedback and encouragement; (4) they emphasize taking responsibility for one's own life; (5) they offer strategies and means for gathering information about career options and about one's own interests, abilities, and values; (6) they show participants how to use all available resources for career development; and (7) they teach such career-related skills as assertive communication, stress and time management, and goal-setting. The presentation gives examples of these program traits as they have been realized in Lifework Planning groups. The appendix provides a course outline. (Author/CS)