The article below builds upon insights taken from: Bolles, R.N. (1978). What Color is Your Parachute? Berkley, CA. Ten Speed Press. and Cavoulacos, A., & Minshew, K. (2017). The new rules of work: The modern playbook for navigating your career. Crown Business. Image by PublicDomainPictures.
Your instincts
Your natural interests determine what you will actually do well, more so than your intelligence, talents or skills. Strength of desire outweighs everything else (Bolles, 1978). Therefore you must find out what you instinctively feel drawn toward. Often such interests emerge during childhood when you are not yet conditioned too much by the expectations of society.
Who do you want to be?
One way to find your vocational preference is to simply ask yourself what person you want to be. If you could have any kind of job, what would it be? Invent your own, if need be (Bolles, 1978).
Investigate different functions and industries
Another way to get the ball rolling is to use a list of functions and industries to brainstorm about what areas of expertise interest you. Both the authors of the Muse and the job vacancy website Indeed.com have a list of industries available.
Other questions that you could ask yourself can be related to your life goals:
What are your goals in life?
- Would you like to become an entrepreneur?
- Start a family?
- Travel the world?
- Master a particular subject?
- What would be your ideal work conditions (e.g. work/life balance or work location)?
Try to articulate these goals as clearly as possible. Be completely free in your brainstorming. But also revisit your initial ideas later on to eliminate unrealistic ones or replace them with feasible alternatives. For example would it be possible for you to combine the stressful life of an entrepreneur with starting a family?
What you don’t want
Maybe, however, you have a much clearer idea of what makes you unhappy. For example, in figuring out your favorite working conditions, you start with listing negative working conditions you’ve endured thus far. Next, you replace each negative term with its positive opposite. Now you have your desired working conditions (Bolles, 1978).
Go to article 2.2 ‘Assess the quality of your life‘.