How can I learn to be more certain about what choices I should make in my life?

July 22, 2008 10:35 PM

I'm 27 years old now and haven't started a serious career yet, but I have graduated with an engineering degree. I decided I wasn't interested in engineering after some work experiences in the past and so I've tried to move into other fields. By now, I've dabbled in 3-4 other areas, but still can't make a decision. I'm afraid that this switching around is going to continue my whole life and waste my precious time.

I often have this feeling that I have trouble making choices that are really my own. I tend to overdo things and try too hard at the wrong times. In some university courses I took, I disregarded homework problems until the last minute because I wanted to "understand" the material--i.e., I cared about the details too much. When I socialize, I think too much and end up saying little, and so in the end people don't know me. There are other things that fit this pattern too--like waiting for perfect opportunities, when maybe they don't exist or an imperfect opportunity would have made me happy anyway. Over the years, I've had a couple of very short relationships, but it's been a while now.

I went through years of "soul searching" and at some points forgot who I am. At this point, I'm only focusing on making a career choice, but despite all my efforts I'm not any closer to choosing something I want to commit to.

Overall, I feel that I'm always overextending myself in details and being dishonest with myself and in front of other people. I'm hoping this knowledge will guide me in making my choices.

Even in typing this question, I may have included too many details at the expense of clarity.

What do you all think?

posted by dengxp to health & fitness (23 comments total)

I think you should keep trying.
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:45 PM on July 22, 2008

Thanks ikkyu2, but what do you mean? Just keep applying more effort and analyzing myself?
posted by dengxp at 10:55 PM on July 22, 2008

I think you need more details!

- what is your current living situation? are you living on your own, with roommates? are you in a big city?
- Are you working right now? What have been your most recent jobs? which ones did you enjoy the most?

I don't really buy the whole "finding yourself" thing -- sometimes, you just need to get busy and do something, anything. Take a job, see if you like it or don't like it, and you learn from that.

But I'd be interested in hearing more about you. I'm also 27, and ever since I turned that magical number I've been thinking more and more about things like this.
posted by Flying Squirrel at 10:57 PM on July 22, 2008

No, just keep trying to find the right fit for you. It may come when you're not expecting it.
posted by ikkyu2 at 11:03 PM on July 22, 2008

Flying Squirrel:

I'm living at my parent's place, but obviously, I'd love to move out soon and completely support myself.

I've actually been unemployed for a while as I've found it difficult to commit to something that I don't want to be doing for more than a few months. This is a big problem a have. I know, I'm being stupid about it.

I agree with you completely--doing something is key and "finding yourself" doesn't work very well.

Lately, I've just gotten the feeling that everything would be better if I just relaxed and didn't care so much about saying the right thing and doing the right thing and instead, being honest with myself and in front of other people. I'm not saying that I want to insult everyone in front of the their face, but I'm talking about the kind of honesty that's respectful and flexible.
posted by dengxp at 11:06 PM on July 22, 2008

There are too many "shoulds" in my life that I've gotten tired of and not enough things I just want to do.
posted by dengxp at 11:09 PM on July 22, 2008

My own experience has shown me that perfectionism isnt a good quality. In fact its pretty negative. A lot of people, like myself, really love the details and hate doing anything without knowing the big picture. I've found we're a minority and its best to develop some tolerance for uncertainty. You can always geek-out about the details on your free time.

I recommend settling with something and sticking to it. Look, at this point, if you started a good entry-level position at age 25 you would have already had some kind of promotion and be moving up the ladder. Instead youre 27, unemployed, and asking people on the internet what kind of job you should take.

Your post sounds a bit neurotic, especially the bits about finding oneself and never opening up socially. I know its an old cannard, but perhaps youre the kind of person who might benefit from some counseling or therapy.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:12 PM on July 22, 2008

I totally hear you. I think a lot of these problems will be solved if you:
1. Get a job. Any job.
2. Get an apartment and move out.

I'm saying this from experience. I moved back with my parents for 6 or 8 months after graduating. Big mistake. I love my parents, and I am sure that my bedroom will remain intact until they are no longer in this house, but there are big problems with living at home. It gets worse when you live at home and have no job.

#1. You are enjoying a standard of living you can't maintain on your own. The longer you stay there, the more stuff you will accumulate, the nicer your cellphone will be, the nicer your car will be, the better food in the fridge and I bet the laundry service is great!

When you move out, it'll likely be somewhat divey. That's OK, because you'll have your freedom, and a lot of the other problems you mentioned will go away.

#2. They are likely going to work and doing their day to day routines and you feel lousy when they come home and you haven't done much all day.

You will find your self esteem becomes lower and lower, your motivation decreases, and you don't feel like much of a person. (or maybe this was just my experience).

Just get a job. Get a full time job. It won't be your dream job. It won't necessarily be in the right "career" direction. But it will get you back into the work world, and you will be making money so that you can move out.

I prologued moving out because I didn't think I could afford it. I had (have) large student loan debt and rent is very expensive. I saved up some money then just took the leap and moved to a big city with a friend of mine. Didn't have a lot of support from my parents because they were happy to have me home and didn't know if I could make it with the finances.

But you know what? Everything was fine. I was living in an amazing neighbourhood, took a job where I built a lot of new skills (not my dream job, but I learned a lot) and met a lot of people in the exact same situation I was in -- 20 somethings figuring out what they wanted to do with their life. It made a world of difference.

Follow these two steps and I guarantee you things will start turning around. MeFiMail me if you want to talk further -- I've been there!

Don't expect your parents to be supportive of this plan. It's hard for parents to let go -- even when their kid is 27 and living at home! But think about it -- not being overly concerned with what "other people" think (and the "other people" so very often turn out to be our parents!!) is exactly what you want and need out of life right now!

There's a whole world waiting for you -- get out there!
posted by Flying Squirrel at 11:22 PM on July 22, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

It's a cliche-revision-of-a-cliche... But you don't "find yourself", you discover yourself. There isn't some platonic ideal of YOU deep inside - you find out who you are through experience.... and one thing leads to another and you learn who you are and what you want and what you're made of by living. You aren't going to learn a goddamn thing about yourself by lying around your parents' house. You are a grownup, and grownups work and live on their own - get that underway, and knowledge will follow.
posted by moxiedoll at 11:44 PM on July 22, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Why don't you look into working overseas for a year or two? If you have the skills, finding a job wouldn't be a problem, you'll be immersed in another culture (and possibly language) and I guarantee it'll help you figure out what you really want to do.
posted by jozzas at 11:50 PM on July 22, 2008

Actually, I have worked overseas in China before and it was a great experience. I think my question above made my situation sound more serious that it is, although, all the comments are very helpful--even the the ones that are more critical.

The bottom line is that I don't have work right now and so I will make the situation better right away.
posted by dengxp at 11:55 PM on July 22, 2008

Maybe you're overthinking it. Is there a reason, other than a certain amount of upward mobility, that you need to be certain about everything you do right now? It's like moxiedoll said - you have to discover yourself, and you need to get out of the house to do it.

>> I'm afraid that this switching around is going to continue my whole life and waste my precious time.

I daresay you're wasting it now. Get out there, accumulate some more experience, and sooner or later you'll either stumble upon something you like and stick with, or you'll move on and have an interesting story to tell about it. If you're dealing with a fear of failure, ditto - you don't learn to deal with it until you face it.

Also, what do you do in your spare time now that you're unemployed? If you're unwilling to move out and instead want to take some baby steps, can you do some P/T jobs in something cool you've always wanted do? The nice thing about those is that you don't have to commit to them for more than a few months.
posted by universal_qlc at 12:01 AM on July 23, 2008

Sorry - rather than P/T jobs, I meant internships - something that implies a learning experience that's a temporary arrangement. 27 isn't too old, really, especially for someone changing fields.
posted by universal_qlc at 12:02 AM on July 23, 2008

They say that constraints are a great help for making art: pen and ink rather than a whole palette, censorship rather than freedom of expression, live recording rather than studio multi-tracking. Sometimes the constraints are already there - if they are not then it can help to impose them; it is a particularly good technique to help perfectionists and prevaricators. Choosing a career is a task that also benefits from constraints I think and you sound like you are in danger of "choice paralysis". Consider limiting yourself to getting any job that will give you enough money to move to your own place within the next 2 months for example. Consider filling in all the forms in "What Colour is Your Parachute?" and then resolving to utterly apply yourself to getting whatever career this process considers most appropriate. Consider booking a ticket to country X or city Y with a view of spending a year there and getting whatever job you can.
posted by rongorongo at 3:50 AM on July 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm an engineer as well, the same age as you. I dealt with the perfectionism a long time ago.

Perfectionism sounds great on paper, but it's not a good quality to have in many situations. As an engineer, you should know that you have to look for 'optimum' solutions. Life rarely presents a perfect opportunity or a perfect career, and it's a mistake to keep everything suspended waiting for either of those. With almost everything, there is a tradeoff -- you gain something at the expense of something else.

Take what comes across your way and turn it into the perfect opportunity. Be proactive. Don't overthink and overanalyze. Allow yourself to go with the flow. You have an engineering degree, I suggest you make use of it. Good luck!
posted by the_ancient_mariner at 5:52 AM on July 23, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Engineering is a broad field. If you can't find something within it to make you happy then you probably aren't trying very hard. If you are motivated enough you could start your own company. Get back into engineering and find something even if you have to widen the net. Never quit a job without having something lined up.

Sure, happiness is always a goal in a job but when you get down to it, a job is just a job. Do fun things when you get home at 5pm to make your life fulfilling. A steady job with a good paycheck will make your real life more interesting and you won't have to depend on the parents for lunch money.
posted by JJ86 at 6:08 AM on July 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I did something similar when I graduated with a chemical engineering degree. I bartended and did system administration for a clinic's medical information system. While I enjoyed the freedom this gave me, I sort of hated myself for 'wasting my degree'.

So I took a job doing environmental engineering and have switched around to different aspects of that for three years. And it turns out that I kind of hated this too. However, taking this job has given me the means to improve the situation.

So I advise you to apply for every engineering job you can, get out of your parents house, and toil in your position until you figure out what you need to be doing. Nothing is a better kick in the ass to figuring something out careerwise than going to work every day.
posted by gravity at 7:23 AM on July 23, 2008

I'm 22 myself and just graduated with a B.S. I'm going for an MBA because I'm not ready for the working world, so I can relate to your situation.

The career field I find myself leaning toward is consulting. You mentioned you want a job where you aren't doing something you hate for the rest of your life. As a consultant, you may have a client you work with for a few months and then you are with another. New environments, new people and new problems. The change for people like me, and it sounds like yourself, is good.

I sometimes do the introverted thing and analyze myself. But sometimes you just have to say "f*ck it" and go for it. Realize that if you stay within the bounds of the law, the consequences of most of your actions are negligible to non-existent. Never be afraid to say "Hey, how's it going?" to anybody because everyone needs someone to talk to.

And as for your life, the best bit of advice I ever heard was this: "Take whatever life gives you and turn it to your advantage."

Good luck.
posted by thebreaks at 7:37 AM on July 23, 2008

Careers are overrated.

Are you enjoying what you're doing right now? Does it pay the bills? Are you putting away money for retirement?

If the answer to those questions are 'yes', congratulations — you're probably doing better than 50% of people who have a "career" already. If the answer to one or more of those questions is 'no', start looking for a new job.

The number of people I've met who actually seemed to have a "career" that they planned and stuck to is vastly smaller than the number whose "career" was an ex post facto narrative that they created for themselves. My firm belief after putting a not insubstantial amount of thought into this is that a "career" is what you create when you sit down and write up all the jobs you've held on your resume, in an attempt to make it seem like a logical progression to someone who isn't interested in the real reasons why you held all those jobs.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:20 AM on July 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

There are no perfect careers anymore- there aren't many jobs left that offer the kind of security and company loyalty as previous generations.

Most young people change jobs frequently. It's not uncommon for people in their twenties to change jobs every year now. I think it's becoming much more acceptable to job hop and career change. You shouldn't feel bad about it-- although I know how frustrating it can sometimes be. At 26, I've had probably 10 jobs since I graduated college 4.5 years ago. Some of them were just temp work, some longer gigs (up to 18 months). Some I turned down promotions for because I realized I didn't want to be locked into a job description.

I think a lot of people in their twenties are confused about what they really want to do with their lives. All bets are off in some ways-- the social and economic landscape have changed so much in the past 30 years, there's been almost an entire restructuring of the economy.

But this is good news, in some ways. We have the opportunity to come up with new work codes and new ways of relating to the work place, one that blends professional and personal life.
posted by Rocket26 at 8:32 AM on July 23, 2008

first: for heaven's sake, move out of the house.
then: work in coal mining, roofing, ditch digging, or a similar job for one year. When you're done, I think this problem will resolve itself.
posted by nameless.k at 9:28 AM on July 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

My friends and I have been having a similar discussion about a variety of men in our lives. The whole idea of self-exploration as the sole means of finding oneself, we have decided, is a massive failure of an idea. When we turn inward and look at ourselves, we have to gauge not just abstract thoughts and feelings, but rather draw from a wellspring of past experiences, and those experiences are firmly grounded in engaging with the outside world.

Now, when I left for college, I had a certain idea of how my life was going to progress, and of course, those plans went oft awry. However, I don't regret working crappy reception jobs, crappy retail jobs, having crappy boyfriends, bouncing through three or four different fields of study that I just failed to mesh with. And even at the time, I wasn't too sad about it. Better than that though - now I'm in a field I love, I'm going into a field I love even more, and I did all that because I got to doing things rather than fretting about the shoulds and shouldn'ts of any given situation. Some forethought? Sure - don't be reckless and decide that you need a BIG CHANGE, the kind of change that can only result from becoming, say, a firejumper or something.

I have lived on my own since I was 19, and I'm 25 now. I've had some rocky financial times, but once I was out of the folks' house, there has never been any question in my mind of returning. Things take longer to do when you're poor(er), but they matter more and smaller things in life become more interesting and satisfactory.


Good luck!
posted by palindromic at 10:08 AM on July 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

"Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day in Raymond K. Russell's life"
posted by LakesideOrion at 11:29 AM on July 23, 2008