What to do with my life? Find what you love!

Spend your life doing something you're good at

What should you do with your life? That is the fundamental question many of us ask ourselves. Where should I go? There are too many paths to choose from. Let's make it easier and divide all possible paths into two categories. Spend your life doing something you suck at or something you're good at. Which one would you prefer? Most people want to spend their lives doing something they are good at; so let's start there.

To do something well you have to like it

Becoming truly good at something requires three things: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can't change your natural ability, so you're stuck with practice and effort. Both of these take years to pay their dividends. You need to put in the time and the most likely way you will do that is by enjoying what you're doing. In other words: to do something well you have to like doing it.

Work vs Fun

School has taught most of us that work and fun are two separate worlds that never meet. You can either do dull homework or you can play outside. If you are lucky, you will realize at some point that this dichotomy is false. The separation of work and fun is only meaningful if you don't love your work. The idea of a free weekend you work towards in a boring job is the wrong thing to strive for. You want to find something that you like enough to make this distinction meaningless.

How to search for what you love?

The question is not how to find what you love, the question is how to search for it effectively. Explore as much terrain as possible while paying attention to your own mind. Ask yourself: What comes easy to me? What gives me energy versus what is dull and drains me? What are other people puzzlingly bad at? You want to spend quite some time exploring as many different jobs as possible. Once you have found something that clicks; fully commit.

How to know when you found it?

The real trouble is knowing when to stop searching. How should you know if you have found something you love? We can try to approximate a rule of thumb. Don't aim too low. You don't want to stop exploring too early because something is good enough, or something fulfills the expectations of your parents. Don't aim too high. Don't look for something that you will love doing every minute of every day. That bar is impossible to clear for most people. Here is a good rule: Would you do this work even if you weren't paid for it? Would you still do this if you won the lottery? If the answer is no, then keep searching.

Beware of prestige and money

You have to make sure you actually enjoy the work not just the idea of it. We are often trapped by liking the idea of a job because it brings prestige. Prestige is especially seductive for ambitious and reward-driven people (i.e. high in Extraversion). The same is true for high-paying jobs. The deadliest combination is careers with high prestige and money, which few people would do without being paid for it. Think investment banking, corporate law, or consulting. These three careers suck up a disproportionate number of the smartest kids without adding much value to our society¹. Make sure you truly like your work and are not seduced by prestige or money. They can be the cherry on top, but they are not the prize.

3 steps to a new career

There are only three steps to take charge of your career path.

1. Take the personality career test
2. Unlock your career matches
3. Find a meaningful career

Exploration takes discipline

Few people know what they want to be at age 10. Fewer yet are actually right. You don't want to be shackled to the romantic idea of a 12-year-old child that used to be you. Exploring the landscape of possible things to do in life takes time and discipline. One way to improve this exploration process is to always produce. If you want to be a writer, write every day. An engineer should produce code or designs. Find a clearly measurable product of your chosen path and produce something at all times. Always producing has the benefit of constant feedback. You will automatically be drawn to the things you like and repelled by the things that bore you.

Two routes to get there

You might say that most people can't afford to do what they love. They have to pay the bills and care for others for instance, and you would be right. Modern life makes it harder to pursue something you love, financial reality restrains us. There are two pathways to doing what you love. Slow and steady and in parallel. Slow and steady is the organic approach. You work hard on your skills and over time you work more on things you like and less on things you don't. Like a young engineer taking any work they can get early on and over time becoming more competent and taking only projects they enjoy. In parallel is to have an easy job that pays the bills while you direct your energy and effort into the work you love on the side. This provides more financial stability than just hoping for a breakthrough. But can make you feel like you're working two jobs, which can be draining or difficult to.

Pick a path that opens many doors

If you are unsure about your path, pick the one that opens the most doors down the line. Don't paint yourself into a corner educationally. If you have the choice between two degrees that you like equally pick the one that increases your degrees of freedom in the future. The cliche is the liberal arts degree that closes many more doors than it opens. Unless you have already found what you love make sure to pick paths that have the potential for work you love doing and the potential for more than one path at the next crossroads.