I need to figure out how to figure out what I want to do in life.

September 12, 2013 10:48 AM

Executive summary: I'm approaching 40 and feel pretty burned out on my current line of work. But I'm not sure what new lines I should look into. I'd like to hear about resources or techniques that people found useful for figuring this stuff out in similar positions.

Books, websites, quizzes, concepts like "see a career counselor," you name it. I'd like to hear about it and how it worked out for you.

posted by COBRA! to Work & Money (6 answers total)

What Color Is Your Parachute was pretty useful for me when I was 31 or so (I'm 42 now), trying to figure out how to transition back to life in Canada after 10 years living and working oversea.

The book is made up of two parts, and the second part has a bunch of exercises you can do to help you think outside of the box and find the "dream job."

It should be noted that the creator of What Is Your Parachute comes from an Evangelical background. I'm not particularly religious or whatever, but the idea of "having faith" is a strong current throughout the book that I found to be quite inspiring.

Another book that does sort of the same thing is The Pathfinder. It's pretty neat.

Fundamentally, talking to other people formed a big part of my career change(s). When we returned to Canada, I spent a lot of time at a job seeker resource center that was aimed at immigrants to Canada. The guy who ran the computer lab had had a very interesting career as a consultant, and had retired to my small city in Canada. Anyway, it turned out that he had never even graduated from high school, yet had made his way through life just fine.

So he had lots of ideas and advice for me.

I also met as many people as I could to figure out what I could do with my (limited) skillset, and built a professional network from the ground up.

"Networking" is not something cheesy that photocopier toner salesmen do, it's the act and art of joining a community of likeminded people and engaging with them.

So I met a lot of people for coffee. I also spent a lot of time reaching out to people I didn't know. Eventually I would spin this penchant for networking into a job working for a non-profit that served an industry, and that job got me another job in government within three years of returning to Canada.

And then I got laid off and had to start all over again!
posted by KokuRyu at 11:17 AM on September 12, 2013 [5 favorites]

I just finished Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You and found it a nice contrast to the "follow your passion" advice more commonly found in this arena. His (extremely paraphrased) advice is to accumulate career capital in the form of skills, contacts, experiences, etc. that are uncommon and valuable. Then combine those in small projects that let you do low-cost experiments in finding higher-order work and stepping stones toward something that's a more suitable mix of impact, respect, autonomy and innovation. I liked the reminder that meaningful work and passions are not always (or even often) self-evident, but may require a foundation of work and experience that may not always seem relevant to your goal. It's allowed me to view my sometimes aimless career in a different and more positive light. Hope it can do the same for you. Good luck!
posted by sapere aude at 12:38 PM on September 12, 2013 [5 favorites]

I definitely agree after my decade of career transformation that skills do indeed trump passion.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:48 PM on September 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

I also found What Color is Your Parachute to be helpful, particularly the early worksheets that can help you tease out what you love and hate in a workplace. I think people often over-emphasize the topic of their work ("I want to work in transportation") and don't pay enough attention to the fundamentals of what really matters to them in a workplace - indoors vs. outdoors, social vs. solitary, power vs. freedom from responsibility, feeling like you're changing the world vs. drawing a solid paycheck and never having to think about work the moment you leave, etc. As someone with a real work history, you're actually in a better position to evaluate what you seek, because you can assemble a picture based on the highs and lows of your experiences.

The hard part can be translating that vision into viable careers. Seek out opportunities to see the inner workings of other people's jobs through volunteering, social networks, Ask MeFi, even affiliate groups and meetups of certain professions. Many people enjoy the chance to talk about what they do, what they love and hate about it, and you might wrangle the chance to shadow someone for better sense of whether the job environment would be a good fit.
posted by itstheclamsname at 5:03 AM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks, all. Books are on order.
posted by COBRA! at 5:34 AM on September 13, 2013

I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was by Barbara Sher

Also good for just figuring out what hobbies you'd like to be doing to feel more fulfilled, where you'd like to live, etc etc.
posted by Elysum at 9:49 PM on September 18, 2013 [2 favorites]