Discovering What You Want to Do

I knew exactly what I wanted to do in life by the time I was about fourteen years old. My father was a bricklayer and I started going to work with him on weekends and Saturdays far early than OSHA would allow today. He actually taught me to lay brick at an early age and by my mid-teen years I was both as good and as fast as most of the men he had working full time who were twice my age or more. I was also naturally curious and spent a lot of time talking to the workers in every other phase of construction until I was quite familiar with the entire process.

While my father wanted my brothers and me to learn this skill in case we ever needed it, he didn’t want us to pursue it as a primary occupation. The years of heavy work in the sun had prematurely aged him, and he didn’t want to see that happen to us. My interests were broader than that anyway. I was (and still am) fascinated by the entire homebuilding process. It was very evident to me that my path in life was to be an architect and builder.

Early in my senior year of high school, though, my path took an unexpected sharp turn. First, I encountered a Navy recruiter who was looking for top academic performers to join the Navy’s nuclear power program and then a friend from high school who had gone to the Naval Academy came home on leave. Talking with both of them, along with a few conversations with some others and some research, started me down a different path. A few months later I found myself in Annapolis wearing a uniform. The Navy turned out to be a great fit for me and I stayed for the better part of three decades.

At the end of that time, though, I had no idea what I wanted to do. It was too late to pursue my original dream of being an architect because that would have required several years of school and I needed income right away. I didn’t even know the right questions to ask to start to figure it out. Everything worked out well, but it certainly caused a lot of unnecessary stress before I got it figured out.

Since then I have read, studied, and learned, worked together with other people, even interviewed and hired many people. Now I am in a position to help others avoid much of the pain that I went through and can coach people through the process of figuring out what will be a good fit for them and then how to find that job.

The key to happiness

?Numerous authors, including me, have written about the intersection between skills and passion. No matter how good you are at something, you will never be truly fulfilled if you are not passionate about it. That can be okay for a short time. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do to get the bills paid and put food on the table. But over the longer term, this will wear you down and prevent you from being your best at what you do.

At the same time, you can be the most passionate baseball player in the world, but you will not ever play professionally if you pitch a 43 mile-per-hour fastball that only goes over the plate once every 6 or 8 pitches. It is in putting together your skills and passion that you will find the best place for you in the world of work.

In addition to these very important considerations, Kristin Sherry adds one: when you are doing work that aligns with your values (Sherry 23-24). Our values are those ideals which are most important to us. Companies represent values, though most people don’t frequently think of this. Some of those company values are very explicitly stated, while others are implicit in the work that they do. If environmentalism is a strongly held value for you, then you would probably be happier at a company that expresses (and follows through with) protecting the environment as an ideal. You probably would not enjoy working for a coal mining company quite so much.

The key to happiness in your job is finding work that fits both your skills and passion, while aligning with your values.

Career Aptitude Tests

A number of different companies have developed tests to automate this process of figuring out what you will be good at and what you will enjoy doing. This is such a difficult question for most people to answer that a whole genre of professionals has evolved to help reach that elusive answer. Available tools range from very in-depth, paid coaching programs to free tools online that ask you as few as fifteen questions.

Paid career aptitude programs

If you need professional help figuring out the next move, you may want to engage a career transition coach. Different coaches go about this process in different ways. One that I would recommend is the YouMap program, developed by Kristin Sherry. Kristin has written an excellent book by the same name (Sherry), which I recommend you buy right now, even if you already think you know what you want to do with your life. 

Her book walks you through exercises to help discover your skills, your values, what you are passionate about, how you work best and how to fit it all together to find the most meaningful work. The book is filled with real-life case studies of people who were unhappy in their job and how they made a transition. Some were in the wrong career field or position while others were simply in the wrong environment and were quite happy with Mondays after moving to a different company in the same business.

Kristin has developed a career transition coaching program and certifies coaches in using the YouMap process. A YouMap coach can walk you through this process and help you find the right fit for you.

Free online resources

Multiple online career aptitude tests are available and many of them are free. While they will obviously not give you the same level of depth as working with a professional like a YouMap coach, they can be very useful in helping you answer your internal questions. Caroline Forsey provides a brief overview of seven of these tests (Forsey). 

Two free online tests that I recommend are the 123 Career Test and the Princeton Review Career Quiz. Links to both of these are provided in the Forsey article. The 123 test contains 15 questions and the Princeton test is comprised of 24 questions, so both can be completed in a few minutes, but the results may surprise you. My results came out very close to things that I already know that I am well-suited for, and in fact, am already doing. The 123 test asks you to choose between four pictures which you would most prefer and which you would least prefer. The Princeton test is basically the same except it is all written questions instead of pictures. The results are presented as “career personalities” and a list of sample career fields with a percent fit to your career personalities.

Write a manifesto

Thorin Klosowski recommends four activities to help narrow down the career choice. One of those is to write a personal manifesto (Klosowski). I will readily admit that this one sounded quite hokey to me until I started to really put some thought into it. In fact, hearing the word “manifesto” usually brings to mind something negative. When the media uses the word manifesto, it is almost always preceded by the descriptor “hate-filled” and is talked about when someone does something really crazy like shooting up a school. But that is not at all what we are talking about here. 

By definition, a manifesto is just a statement of beliefs, which can be either good or nefarious. According to www.merriam-webster.com, it is “a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer.” The definition is expanded a bit at www.dictionary.com to include “a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization.” Even Psychology Today has published a piece on the value of writing a personal manifesto, and references such a document written by Frank Lloyd Wright (Rubin). 

The manifesto will lay out what is important to you. Remember that one of the keys to happiness in the workplace is doing work that aligns with your values. Even if you have never though through your values to the point that you have clearly defined them and written them down, you still have values. When those values are violated, you feel stress which can lead to long-term unhappiness. This exercise will help you define those values. Klosowski provides three tips for creating a meaningful manifesto:

1. Concentrate on important topics. Write down topics that are important to you in a job. While you will not yet be defining the specific job you want, you should already know many characteristics which are important to you. These may include working hours, level of flexibility, option to work remotely, how often you have to interact with other people, how much travel is required, and so forth.
2. Define your principles. Write out your beliefs, your ideals, your moral values that are important to you. This will help you narrow your list of companies and probably even industries.
3. Use affirmative language. Say “I will”, not “I want to”. This puts a stake in the ground to help push you forward into action.

This exercise probably won’t reveal to you your dream job. However, it will help you to discover and define many attributes of that dream job. Many small things about a career choice or the workplace really don’t matter much at all. They don’t enhance your life or make you miserable. But the characteristics you uncover through writing your manifesto are those which are very important, and you should pay close attention to how well any prospective job meshes with them. It also provides a concrete document that you can be held accountable to through the transition process.

Asking yourself the big questions

Most career discovery advice is based upon asking yourself questions, analyzing the answers somehow, and using that information to make decisions. I don’t think there is any perfect set of questions, nor are there any truly original ones. I have attributed each of these to the authors from whom I first read them, but many others have written on these same topics and many of them have come up in conversations that I have had with many different people over the years. 

Where will you be (what will you be doing) in five years?

Think about where you will be in five years. This question pops up again and again in the job search, and anytime you are discussing growth. You can expect to see this question in many job interviews, and if not in the formal interview itself, then in discussions with hiring managers, HR professionals, and other people you will talk to when you visit prospective employers. 

This question is notoriously difficult to answer, and as Klosowski says “it’s pretty much impossible to answer in a concrete way.” But that is actually what makes it so powerful. You don’t really need the answer itself, and no matter how you answer it, you probably won’t really be doing that in five years anyway. The mental exercise of working though the question is what is valuable, not the answer.

Scott Christ’s 7 powerful questions

Writer, entrepreneur, and founder of the Pure Food Company, Scott Christ, suggests seven questions which I believe are very powerful in helping you to nail down what you want to do next. Christ says, and I agree completely, that it is easy to just go through the motions and do whatever it is that you have drifted into through circumstance, pressure from friends or family, or as a result of prior decisions you’ve made in life. Change can be terrifying, especially the huge change of switching careers, but some deep soul-searching which will be facilitated by these questions can be what you need to get on the path to true fulfilment.

1. What am I most passionate about? There is something, or a few things, that just excite you more than all else. There is probably something that you talk about all the time. If your spouse or friends tell you “I know, I know. Please don’t tell it again”, then that is probably the thing that you are passionate about. Write it down.
2. What are my greatest accomplishments? Even if you don’t like your current job, you are accomplishing something there. You have amassed a few accomplishments at previous jobs. This doesn’t have to be just related to work, though. Is there something that you have done at home, for your children, in a hobby, or in some other context, that you consider to be among your greatest accomplishments? Write those down too. The things you consider to be great accomplishments will give you some insight into what you are good at, but also what you consider to be important.
3. What would I do if there were no limits? I know I wrote earlier that if you can only throw a baseball 43 miles-per-hour then you will never be a major league pitcher. I’m not backing down on that now, but if playing professional baseball is what you would do in a world where anything is possible, then write it down. Sorry, you still can’t be a major league pitcher, but it can help you on this path. Maybe you can be a sports announcer (even if not in the major leagues), or maybe you could open a hotdog franchise at the stadium, or maybe you can do screen printing to produce sports team uniforms, or you could be a facilities manager to maintain the grounds. Whatever it is, even if you can’t do that exact thing, it helps to get you thinking about all the related jobs where you might be very happy.
4. What are my goals? Don’t only consider career goals, but your goals in every aspect of life. You need to look at what is important to you in the job, financially, with your family, your health, your spiritual well-being. How does any potential job contribute to, or get in the way of, each of those? Write them down.
5. Whom do I admire most? Think about the people you admire most. What do they have in common? What can you learn from observing them?
6. What do I not want to do? Sometime what you don’t want to do is as important as what you do want to do! If your children are very important to you and you only have custody on weekends, then you cannot be happy working a weekend shift. Scratch that job off your list right now! Write down your full list of deal breakers and don’t pursue jobs that would require you to violate any of them.
7. How hard am I willing to work to get there? If you feel like you have to be a lawyer in order to be happy, but you have a high school education, a wife and three children, and a mortgage, then you will have to put in a lot of sacrifice for a very long time to reach that dream job. It can be done and many other people have already done it, but you will have to be willing to sacrifice just about every free minute and work harder than you can imagine for many years to get there. You have to decide whether you really have to have that job or if you can be fulfilled in something else.

The answers to these questions, in and of themselves, will not tell you your correct employment path. Thinking through the questions and carefully considering the answers, however, will get you to thinking about the things that matter in a job. Then you can search for jobs that fall within these criteria (Christ).

Jaime Chapman’s career clarity exercise

This one isn’t exactly a series of questions, but it is an exercise that is similar. Career coach Jaime Chapman recommends following these steps to narrow down the right path for you and find jobs that will fit you best (Chapman).

1.      List your talents. This is similar to asking what your skills are or what are your greatest accomplishments. The point here is to uncover those things which you are already good at.

2.      Research jobs requiring your talents and see what interests you. This step will not only identify jobs that you have the skill set to do, but also what interests you. This is where you mesh together your skills and passion.

3.      Informational interviews with people doing those jobs. These informational interviews will help you to learn more about each of these career fields to aid in making a decision. An entire section on informational interviews follows below.

4.      Narrow down your options. You will probably find that there are many jobs that fit within your skillset and passions. In fact, there will be too many to truly devote the energy needed to each. You will need to examine that list and choose only those which interest you most to dig deeper.

5.      Re-brand yourself and start applying. We have already covered personal branding in an earlier chapter, though you may want to consider adjusting your exact branding strategy after going through these questions and exercises. Then search for the specific jobs that meet your criteria and apply to those (after appropriate networking, of course).

If you knew you were going to die

Mark Manson suggests what may appear to be a quite unusual question, “If you knew you were going to die one year from today, what would you do and how would you want to be remembered?” In general, people don’t enjoy thinking about their own death. I certainly don’t. But, as Manson says, “Ultimately, death is the only thing that gives us perspective on the value of our life” (Manson). In other words, thinking about the time when we are no longer alive can quickly clarify for us what is truly important.

My younger brother was first a liaison between contract poultry farmers and the chicken company, then a bricklayer, and later both a pastor and a maintenance manager at an in-patient facility for mentally challenged people. Those four jobs may not at first seem to be closely connected, but they all have one very important thing in common – they all require close interactions with large numbers of other people. I know, from many conversations with him over the years, that positively impacting the lives of people was very important to him. 

He passed away in April 2019 after a thirteen-month-long battle with cancer. His wake and funeral proved clearly to me that he had succeeded in achieving that most important goal. At one point in the middle of the wake, I walked outside the funeral home and saw that the line to get in stretched around the block. That makes quite a statement in a south Mississippi town of only three thousand people. I quickly lost count of the numerous conversations, emails, and Facebook posts in which people shared with me how he had impacted their lives.

Seeing him go through that illness and then losing him certainly caused me to reflect on what is important and to clarify my own path forward. You don’t have to confront death this closely to gain this value, though. You can imagine your own funeral and consider what it is that you want people to remember. What will you want them to say about you? What are the things that you want people to remember in a world with you no longer in it? 

Maybe you should start working toward those objectives now. None of us knows the day in which we will depart this earth, and it is very unlikely to be exactly one year from today, but most assuredly that day will come. Don’t think back on that day and wish that you had followed this advice then. Figure out what is important to you now and choose a job that will help enable that.

Test drive a career

Would you buy a new car without test driving it first? Most of us won’t even buy a pair of pants without trying them on. Yet many people will change careers without truly knowing firsthand what that new career is all about. When you think you have narrowed it down to one or a few choices, try to cultivate opportunities to learn more about those careers. You can seek out volunteer opportunities to do work that is similar to the career you are contemplating. This gives you the chance to learn more about that career field with little or no risk. 

You can also ask people who are already doing that job to let you “job shadow” them for a half day or a day. That, of course, is not the same as doing the work yourself, but you can learn a lot about the job. You will probably also meet more people who may become valuable networking partners in that industry as well.

Finally, you can try it out but getting involved in a hobby or starting a side business doing that kind of work. As long as you don’t invest too much money in the hobby or business, this is another low-risk opportunity to learn more. Another benefit to all three of these approaches is that they will give you some experience that you can use on your resume, cover letter, and interview to help establish your ability to do the job (Klosowski).

Learning more – informational interviews

Once you have narrowed your list of industries and career fields, you will want to learn more about them to be sure of what is right for you. A very effective way to do that is to conduct informational interviews. Doing these interviews will also increase the size of your network and start building relationships with insiders at companies who can alert you to positions that you will be interested in and advocate for you with HR and hiring managers when you do apply.

As you connect with people on LinkedIn, at in-person networking events, or at other venues, you can reach out to them to let them know that you are interested in their career field or company or industry and ask them to schedule an informational interview. You are not asking them for a job and you should not do that at any time in this interview process. You are asking them to talk to you so that you can learn more about what they do. Dalton lays out a specific email format for requesting these informational interviews (pp. 108-120).

Prepare for the interview by doing some basic research on the company. Read the “about us” section of their company web site and company LinkedIn page. Look for headlines on the company web site and Google the company for any recent news. You can also Google the person you are interviewing and review their LinkedIn profile to learn more about them but be careful with how you bring up any information you find to avoid sounding like you are stalking them.

Dalton also recommends that you prepare yourself to answer what he calls the “Big Three” questions:

1.      Tell me about yourself. This is one of the stories that I recommended that you prepare in the storytelling section and it is a tricky one. Be careful to connect the dots to show this interviewee how you would have the experience to do a job there, even though you are not asking for a job at this point.

2.      Why are you interested in this company? This is where you can use information gleaned from your research to show that you are interested and have already put some effort into learning rather than just wait for them to tell you the answers.

3.      Why do you want to work in this industry or function? You have worked through a lot of questions and exercises before doing informational interviews so you should know the answer to this one. Write it down and practice beforehand. This is not a job interview, but if you don’t put in some effort to answer these questions well, there probably won’t ever be a job interview at that company (Dalton 159-64)!

How to conduct the interview

Start the interview with small talk and show genuine interest in the person you are interviewing. You can ask them questions such as how their day is going, projects they are currently working on, how they came to be in this industry/company/position. Follow the interviewee’s lead and don’t spend much time talking about yourself – you want to demonstrate your interest in the other person and build rapport (Dalton 168-170).

Next you will move into question and answer phase of the interview. Use the framework Dalton calls TIARA: trends, insights, advice, resources, and assignments. He provides multiple sample questions for each of these areas (Dalton 174-190). This is a significant section of his book, which I strongly recommend you read as soon as possible.

Finally, you will want to close the interview by addressing next steps. Thank the interviewee and ask them if they mind if you reach back out to them after you digest this information to discuss next steps. In that second phase, you will ask them what they see as next steps to maximize your chances of succeeding at getting an interview to come work for the company. If they give you a vague answer, you can ask them to recommend someone else for you to interview (Dalton 191-196).

Taking the pressure off – you don’t have to get it right on the first try!

We have now explored a number of different approaches to narrowing down what it is that you want to do next. Keep in mind that most people out there don’t know what they want to do either. In the end you have to take what of this works for you, leave what doesn’t, put it together with other things you learn from other places, and just decide on something. 

You can’t put too much pressure on yourself to make the perfect choice. Many, probably even most, people who transition off active duty into civilian employment change jobs again within the first year or two. If you are planning to have the perfect life in the perfect job and finally be happy when you get out then you are going to be very disappointed!  You need to take this seriously and put in the work to make the best decision for you and for your family based on your current circumstances and future priorities, but if you don’t get it right the first time, it’s not the end of the world. Most of us don’t.

Notes:

1.      Sherry, Kristin A. YouMap: Find Yourself. Blaze Your Path. Show the World!, Black Rose Writing, 2018. pp. 23-24.

2.      Forsey, Caroline. “7 Free Career Aptitude Test You Can Take Online Today.” HubSpot, September 18, 2018, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/career-aptitude-tests.

3.      Klosowski, Thorin. “Four Ways to Figure Out What You Really Want to Do with Your Life.” Lifehacker, June 13, 2013 and updated May 14, 2019, https://lifehacker.com/four-ways-to-figure-out-what-you-really-want-to-do-with-513095544.

4.      Rubin, Gretchen. “Frank Lloyd Wright’s 10-Point Manifesto for His Apprentices.” Psychology Today, February 24, 2011, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-happiness-project/201102/frank-lloyd-wrights-10-point-manifesto-his-apprentices.

5.      Christ, Scott. “7 Powerful Questions To Find Out What You Want To Do With Your Life.” Lifehack, May 14, 2019, https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/7-powerful-questions-find-out-what-you-want-with-your-life.html.

6.      Chapman, Jaime. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” LinkedIn, August 2019, https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/chapmanjaime_clarity-career-job-activity-6554343132102701056-AkY3

7.      Manson, Mark. “7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose”, February 18, 2019, https://markmanson.net/life-purpose.

8.      Dalton, Steve. The 2-Hour Job Search, Ten Speed Press, 2012, pp. 108-120, 159-164, 168-170, 174-190, 191-196.