Call for career ideas (based solely on motivations and interests)

January 10, 2016 1:10 PM

Based solely on who I am and what I care about, could you recommend 2 or 3 specifc careers that might be a good fit? Intentionally omitting my current job interests, work background, and education in order to generate more ideas.

I'm working through one of the exercises in "How to Find Fulfilling Work", the purpose of which is to generate ideas for future careers and help see one's many possible selves. Hoping to just get some ideas from different walks of life, based on the following:

* Passions: sex, physical fitness, health and nutrition, self-improvement, music, sound design, audio tech, Japanese culture and language, cars, organizing things, productivity lifehacks, nature and the outdoors.

* Talents: organizing, analyzing, musicality, artistic creativity, teaching, connecting with others.

* Causes I care about: protecting the environment, education, the arts, global health.

* Qualities: amiable, kind, adaptable, creative, cool, organized, disciplined.

* Other: minimum salary = $75k USD.

posted by mannermode to Work & Money (11 answers total)

Look for a startup related to one of your passions and send them an email saying you'd love to work with them on doing general customer outreach stuff and helping with input on marketing, event organization (many of them do stuff like hackathons, retreats, etc), and stuff. I'm not sure what the exact job would be but if you can make yourself useful daily and also be a cool person to help organize stuff and produce creative things, that's valuable.
posted by mbrock at 1:18 PM on January 10, 2016

Without knowing your education and skillset, it's going to be hard to be specific.

For example, you would make an excellent public health nurse/administrator based upon your interests, but if you don't have that background, or you're not willing to train for it, it's rather pointless to suggest it. If this is something you'd be interested in, check out these jobs via WHO.

If you like organizing and analyzing you can be a data analyst. I do that, I think it's fun.

Those are some thoughts straight off the top of my head.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:19 PM on January 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

A minimum salary of 75k is kind of a lot to ask without knowing some of your background. I mean, if you're a 20-year-old HS graduate whose only experience is delivering pizzas, you're just not going to be qualified for a 75k job. On the other hand, if you've spent ten years on Wall Street, there are any number of 75k (or more) jobs that would love to have you.

The thing about 75k+ jobs is that they generally require either significant experience or significant skills training. There are very few entry-level jobs where you can walk in off the street and make six figures.

That said, one of them is insurance sales. It doesn't really fit with your interests, but it's a job where you really have a lot of flexibility, and so you can tailor your work schedule around your non-work interests.
posted by kevinbelt at 2:07 PM on January 10, 2016 [13 favorites]

speech language pathologist

teacher

fitness instructor

Japanese interpreter/translator (dependent on your skills)

(I think only speech pathologist might earn you 75 k and it would require training/school)
posted by bearette at 2:26 PM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is pretty much the same question you asked last month, except you included your "current job interests, work background, and education."
posted by Linnee at 2:36 PM on January 10, 2016 [6 favorites]

You mentioned organization skills a lot. How about life coach / personal organizer? Or dietician / personal trainer?
posted by Threeve at 2:43 PM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

None of the things you enjoy will get you to 75k, except maybe speech path, as bearette said.

I don't know much about it, but some people (who I think must have a particular talent in that direction) add to their income by playing the stock market on their own time. (I wouldn't do that unless I sure as shit knew what I was doing, though.)

If you're willing to accept something less than 75k (like 40-60k), a lot of things are open to you, including dietitian (which I think is a better bet from a longevity POV than personal training or physiotherapy or the like, given that you're in your 30s now), translator, etc.

You could be an instructor for outdoor education programs that work with youth, like Outward Bound. Or start a business or charity like that on your own, if you have access to capital and are ok with at least temporarily sucking up to rich people. You could do that with music and other art-related programs, too, but realistically, I think there'd be more money/funding around for educational initiatives that are related to ecology/sustainability (anything tangentially sciencey).

Also, administering or recruiting for educational exchange programs (Japan <> US or whereever you are) and universities. People sometimes get to travel with those jobs. But that involves working your way up in HE recruitment, marketing & admin.

Music/sound and cars, probably keep that for fun on the side.

Once you get enough ideas and have narrowed things down according to whatever criteria, the question to ask yourself, I think, is, "how do I want to actually spend most of the hours of the day?" Good idea then to volunteer, and do research and informational interviews, to get realistic answers to that question (e.g.).
posted by cotton dress sock at 3:07 PM on January 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Honestly? What Threeve said above: A life coach. It would combine helping individual people find solutions to all aspects of their daily life: organization, productivity, physical fitness/nutrition, creativity, work/life balance, interpersonal relationships and sex, and so forth. There are a lot of institutions that seem to offer education and certification in this. You do not have to have a Masters/Doctorate in psychotherapy or social work, but I have met Life Coaches who are degreed. This article discusses Life Coaches vs. Psychotherapists as well as this one. The most notable difference seems to be that Life Coaches are for people already 'in good mental health' who want additional assistance with certain projects or goals in their life.

I also think it's probably quite possible to make $75k, if not more, as a life coach.
posted by nightrecordings at 4:05 PM on January 10, 2016

Running a personal training / small group fitness business hits a lot of your points, including music and audio tech once you have your studio up and running. And it will pay you far more than $75,000. (Most big cities have dozens to many hundreds of Japanese ex-pat executives and their spouses ... doing their fitness would be a cool niche!).
posted by MattD at 4:56 PM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have brought this up here before, but consider investing $20ish in the JVIS, a test designed to tell you what jobs are done by people with similar interests to yours. It does not measure your skills or background (because it's intended primarily for people who have yet to develop either). It will look at your interests, the kinds of work you like (work with your hands, sit at a desk, interact with people etc.) and what you value in a job (money, stability, flexibility, autonomy etc.). It recommends jobs that require all different levels of education and across fields. Most people who are not teenagers or young adults find it less useful because it doesn't take education or experience into account, but that seems to be what you want.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:08 PM on January 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Event planning sounds like it would be an ideal fit. Not like corporate conferences--maybe concerts, big charity events, that sort of thing.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:50 AM on January 11, 2016 [2 favorites]