Developing clarity on what you want to achieve in your career and life

Key Tips:

1. Develop core questions/topics that you are excited to explore further
2. List potential career paths that would allow you to focus on these topics
3. Identify people who have had these professional experiences
4. Have informational interviews to assess alignment with your interests
5. Pursue one of the paths and learn as much as possible about it

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

At the start of every year, MBA students at Harvard Business School are asked to answer this question originally posited by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver.

Faced with such a grand and complex question, it is easy for one to feel overwhelmed.?For many, this can eventually evolve into a feeling of being trapped.

In moments where I have personally felt stuck, these five steps have served as my antidote and allowed me to progress forward on my journey towards career and life clarity.

1. Develop core questions/topics that you are excited to explore further

Self-reflection is an essential first step.

Regularly journaling, engaging in therapy, and speaking with mentors have been the most helpful habits that provided me personal clarity around what I want to do with my life.

To further strengthen my self-awareness, I also completed countless introspective activities such as Reflected Best Self Exercise, a personal development tool that helps you see who you are at your best, inspiring you to live and work from this powerful place daily.

Over time, I was able to distill my interests into two core questions that I hope to address throughout my life:

• How can one best help people reach their full potential?
• How can organizations most effectively develop a culture such that people feel included and engaged within the workplace?

These two core questions serve as the North Star both as it relates to deciding on where to allocate my time on a daily basis as well as determining which jobs and opportunities I want to pursue in the years ahead.

2. List potential career paths that would allow you focus on these topics

Keeping my North Star constantly within sight, I am able to move forward with greater confidence that I am heading in the right direction.

Although the shortest route from Point A to Point B is a straight line, that is unfortunately an unrealistic expectation when it comes to our career and lives. Given the complex and unpredictable nature of the world, even an understanding of where I want to go is not sufficient enough to be clear on how I should get there.

When in doubt about my ideal direction, I have found it helpful to evaluate a set of potential paths that might move me in the right direction.

As a college student, I was on the fence between either starting my career within investment banking, management consulting, or pursuing a PhD in Organizational Behavior.?

To put my mind at ease by making tangible steps towards figuring out what I wanted to do, I mapped out what each of these career paths might mean for my future:

• If I were to go down this path for the next 5 years, what would my life look like???
• If I were to change that horizon to 10-20 years, how does that outlook change?
• If I select this path, what are my immediate next steps?
• What questions do I need to get answered before I have enough information to make this decision?
• Who can answer those questions?

3. Identify people who have had these professional experiences

For each of the potential paths, I identified several professionals that I admired who had gone down that path before.?I studied the steps that they took to get to where they are.?I asked myself whether or not I would be happy if my life turns out like theirs.

It was as though I was using their past experiences to sketch a drawing of what my future career journey could look like.?Each person that I identified provided me with more information about what I might appreciate about a path vs. what I may find unpleasant.?Each kernel of information made me increasingly more clear on my direction.

4. Have informational interviews to assess alignment with your interests

After studying the paths of people who had careers and lives that inspired me, I arranged to speak with them directly.?

These conversations provided me a safe space to have an experienced pair of eyes critique the sketches of my future self that I had drawn before committing to a particular path.

5. Pursue one of the paths and learn as much as possible about it

In the words of Sheryl Sandberg, “done is better than perfect.”??

For anybody feeling stuck and unsure of your next move, my advice would be trust your gut, pick a path, and proceed with confidence.

You may over time realize that you have gone down the wrong path.?That is perfectly normal and something that will likely to happen to most people multiple times throughout life.?

This realization that you are on the wrong route should be seen as progress because it means you have successfully eliminated one path that is not right for you!

Fortunately, you are not starting from scratch.?You are ready to begin a new chapter with a deeper understanding of yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, your interests and aspirations.?Armed with this increased self-awareness, you are ready to start down a new path with greater confidence and conviction.

How have you gone about developing clarity on what you want to achieve in your career and your life?

Please share your comments and reflections below.?They will surely be helpful for other readers navigating their journey towards personal clarity.

Related Content

Link | Zoom event recording on developing a clear view on what you want to achieve with your career and life. This session had a a particular focus on the role that finding mentors and cultivating relationships as it relates to the process of developing a clear view.

Link | Related article I wrote around answering the question "what do you want to do every day for the rest of your life?"

Link | Details on Harvard Business School Portrait Project

Link | Reflected Best Self Exercise from Ross School of Business, University of Michigan