What do you want to do for a living? Your parents ask it, just like your career counselor did, as do your friends, your uni tutor, boss, and so on.
The question bombards us, and with every lap around the sun comes the expectation to have found an answer. Often, reality isn’t such. Confusion swells and anxiety rises, and suddenly, you’re stuck in some office in a field you’ve no interest in.
So what do you do?
Do you follow your field of study? What about skills? Are you better off pursuing them? How about your passion? Is now the time to take that leap of faith?
Logic tells us that you need some sort of plan. However, there are two certainties one must consider.
- You’ll change
- And so will the world.
For all we know, your industry of choice may cease to exist in 20 years, and who’s to say you’ll even be interested in it in 5?
How the hell do you plan for that?
As Eisenhower once said, “Plans are useless, but planning is essential.” Whatever ‘plan’ you come up with will probably change, but you’ll still benefit from having it.
And so begs the question…
How on earth do I decide what to do with my career?
Here are our two cents.
Limit Your Options
How often are you told to “keep your options open?”
On paper, it makes sense. You keep your doors open, get a job, and work to build as much career capital as possible, which you can then use to explore more interesting opportunities. It’s a sound decision.
However, reality can be deceiving.
What tends to happen is:
- You spend too long in the job, often your first, that you know you don’t want to do long term and isn’t relevant to your long term goals.
- You stop committing and pursue a middle-of-the-road job that gives you some flexibility, rather than going for something that would give you outstanding career capital and ultimately better options in the future.
- You settle in and avoid having to think hard about what’s best for you.
You’re better off having a focused list of options that help you avoid scenarios like this one.
Have a Long-Term Vision
Although the future isn’t certain, it still helps to have an idea of where you want to end up. Let’s call this your long-term vision.
This should be broad enough that it won’t constantly change but narrow enough to provide some direction.
Think about 1-5 roles or types of work you’d like to aim towards.
These should be defined by a broadly impactful skillset, such as organisation builder, communicator, or writer.
Remember, this isn’t where you’re going to end up. Rather, it’s to help you spot opportunities and guide career exploration.
Work Backwards
Consider your long-term vision, or in other words, where you’d like to end up, and identify the most direct routes to get there.
There are a few ways to do this.
- Talk to people. Ask people in the field how someone with your background can advance quickly. Maybe it’s a family friend. Perhaps your university tutor used to work in the field. Get talking.
- Think about what types of career capital will be most important. What are the building block skills and experiences you’d need to succeed?
- Look for examples of people who have advanced unusually quickly and figure out how they did it.
Work Forwards
Now that you know where you’re trying to go, it’s time to start looking at the opportunities in front of you.
Career success is inherently unpredictable. It’s a fallacy to turn down a great opportunity because you’re convinced a better or more relevant one will present itself.
So, take the time to consider the opportunities hiding under your nose. There’s a lot more out there than what’s posted on LinkedIn.
Ask your friends or colleagues about any interesting opportunities they may know about. The best are usually found through people you know.
Think about if there is anything you’re doing right now that’s going better than expected. It could be work, a side project, or a hobby. Could you spend more of your time on that?
Have a Backup: The A/B/Z Plan
Sometimes, shit hits the fan. That’s life.
When the inevitable strikes, it’s important to have a contingency plan to ensure you come out the other side safe and sound.
Insert the A/B/Z plan, developed by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman for this very scenario. It looks like this.
Plan A: Perfect world
- This is your best guess at the route you’d most like to pursue.
- This could be a particular vision you’re going to bet on and the next step that would imply.
- Plan A could also be to build valuable career capital (learn people management, get a particular degree/qualification) and then reevaluate your plan later.
Plan B: Nearby alternatives
- These are promising alternatives you could switch to if your Plan A doesn’t work out.
- Ask yourself:
- What are the most likely ways your Plan A doesn’t work out? If that happens, what will you do?
- What other good options are there? List any promising nearby alternatives to Plan A, which may be other promising longer-term paths or different entry routes to the same paths.
- Then, come up with two or three alternatives.
Plan Z: Temporary fallback
- This is your temporary fallback if everything crumbles.
- How will you pay the bills and get back on your feet?
- Having a Plan Z can not only help you avoid unacceptable personal outcomes, but it can also help you get more comfortable with taking risks — knowing you’ll ultimately be OK makes it easier to be ambitious.
- Plan Z includes sleeping on a friend’s sofa, living off savings, going back to your old job, moving back in with mum and dad, or taking a job you find relatively undemanding.
Hopefully this helps.