What Should I Do?
How to pick a satisfying career path.
What should I do with my life?
If you're like many, that question has probably plagued you since you were first asked it in your teenage years. It may be the most challenging question to answer, but it is also the most critical. The average 50-year career is roughly 2,000 weeks. Assuming you work 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, that's 80,000 hours of your life devoted to work. You'll spend twice as much time with your coworkers as your spouse, children, and friends. Since most of your adult life is spent working, loving what you do is the key to success.
According to the most recent Pew Research poll, 50% of workers are dissatisfied with their careers. How can half of the workforce hate what they do? I believe the answer can be found inside a tiny 55-page book called Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker. Drucker argues that history's most outstanding achievers — Napoleon, da Vinci, Mozart — were rare talents, but they also were world-class at managing themselves.
Managing Oneself
The book is organized as a series of questions to ask and answer for yourself.
What are my strengths?
The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect to happen. Six months later, compare the actual results with your expectations. This method will show you where your strengths lie within one or two years.
Put yourself where your strengths can produce results. Concentrate on your strengths and consistently work on improving them. Feedback analysis will show you where to improve skills or acquire new ones. Discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it. Many analytical people take pride in not understanding people, and many emotionally intelligent people take pride in not understanding mathematics. Being proud of ignorant thinking is self-defeating. Acquire the skills and knowledge to realize your strengths fully.
Conversely, we all have vast areas in which we lack talent or skill and have little chance of becoming even mediocre. Therefore, we must avoid taking on work, jobs, or assignments in those areas. We should also waste as little effort as possible on improving our areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than to strengthen from excellence to mastery. Therefore, time, energy, and resources should be invested in making a competent person into a star performer.
What are my bad habits?
What do you do or fail to do that inhibits your effectiveness and performance? For example, a planner may find their immaculate plans fail because they do not follow through. They must learn to overcome their inaction or find other people to carry out the plan. Others may have bad manners. It's a law of nature that when two people are in contact with each other, it creates friction. Manners are the social lubricant that enables people to work well together whether or not they like each other. The chains of habit are often too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be lifted. Focus on overcoming your bad habits, or your bad habits will be your unbecoming.
How do I learn?
Many writers do poorly in school. This is because they do not learn by listening or reading but by writing. Schools do not allow them to learn this way, so they get poor grades. Some people learn by taking copious notes. Others learn by doing or hearing themselves talk. Are you a reader, a writer, a listener, a talker, a doer, or a mix?
How do I perform?
Some people perform best with others, while others perform best in isolation. Some people perform best when following their intuition, while others perform best when they think things through in detail. Some thrive in large corporations, while others perform best in small startups. Some perform best as coaches or mentors, while others perform best as decision-makers. Some people perform well under stress, while others need a highly structured and predictable environment. Few people work well in all environments. What environments do you work best in?
What are my values?
Organizations, like people, have values. To be effective in an organization, one's values must be compatible with the organization's values. They do not need to be the same, but they must be close enough to coexist. A person's strengths and performance rarely conflict; the two are complementary. However, there is often a conflict between a person's values and their strengths. For example, an investment banker may have a brilliant analytical mind but despise the cutthroat culture. What one does well may not fit with their value system. In that case, it may not be worth devoting their life to their work. Values should be the ultimate test.
Where do I belong?
This question can only be answered once one fully understands their strengths, performance, and values. It's better first to figure out where one does not belong. Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, work methods, and values. Being where one belongs will transform an ordinary person into an outstanding performer.
What should I contribute?
The answer to this question is the highest-order work you will do in your career. To answer the question, you must address three elements: What does the situation require? Given my strengths, methods of performance, and values, how can I contribute most to what needs to be done? And finally, what results have to be achieved to make a difference?
A contribution plan can cover no more than 18 months to remain clear and specific. The results should be challenging and require stretching, but they should also be within reach. The results should be meaningful and make a difference. Finally, the results should be visible and measurable. From this will come a course of action: what to do, where and how to start, and what goals and deadlines to set.
The Second Half of Life
The first half of a career is spent learning and developing strengths, refining performance methods, uncovering values, figuring out where one belongs, building relationships, and contributing to an organization.
Historically, organizations outlived workers, and people stayed put. The opposite is true today—people outlive organizations, everyone switches jobs, and technology disrupts everything. We hear a lot about the midlife crisis, which is mostly boredom. At 45, most people have reached the peak of their careers, and they know it. After 20 years of doing the same work, they've become very good at their jobs. But they are no longer learning, contributing, or deriving challenges and satisfaction from the job. And yet, they still have another 20 to 25 years of work left. This is why having another area—whether a second career, a parallel career, or a social venture—is vital. The best time to develop a second career is well before you peak in your first career.
Tips, Tools, & Resources
Videos
Quiet Lives of Desperation - Joe Rogan
Find Your Passion: 9 Lives Exercise
Books
Websites
Final Thoughts
The greats of history had various careers. Often, they came from humble origins, raised on a farm or a village. Many joined the army and achieved valor in combat. After retiring from service, they went on to found a business. Once they had made enough money, they entered politics. In their old age, they would retire as professors or philosophers and spend their remaining days teaching and writing.
The notion of picking a career in university and sticking to it for fifty years is a relatively modern phenomenon. As you age, you change, and so do your interests. Therefore, it’s only natural that your career should evolve. Focus on your strengths, understand how you learn and work best, uncover your values, figure out where you belong and what to contribute, and never stop growing. That is the key to a happy and successful career.