Exploring Career Choices (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Exploring Career Choices

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

What do you already enjoy doing for free? What do you pay money for the privilege of doing? For every money-draining hobby, someone is already making good money by using their skill to provide a valuable service.

Interesting article. When you read that, I thought "Figuring out how to conquer the world on Civ3"! Then you answered it by saying go do game-related stuff. But really, I don't want a career in gaming, as I feel that's a total waste of time. Gonna go ponder some more tonight.

Hmmm, something to think. This post kind of says "Just do it" with what you enjoy. Then one of the previous post says "Think hard about who you are". So to sum up, you mean think hard about who you are, and then once you got that, just do it.

[Ron Stoppable]

Writing college papers was a breeze compared to his assignments, which included writing an essay without using the letter E.

Assuming it's digitally stored, may we see a snippet of this, Steve? It seems a thoroughly intriguing challenge.

[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by seeker5

Hmmm, something to think. This post kind of says "Just do it" with what you enjoy. Then one of the previous post says "Think hard about who you are". So to sum up, you mean think hard about who you are, and then once you got that, just do it.

A finger pointing to the moon

I don't think each article in this series is a continuation of the article that came before it (unlike the Meaning of Life series that was much more structured). The articles are definitely related and overlap a fair bit, but I don't think it really serves as a step-by-step process by any means.

It's more so an example of a mindset, and each article serves to more fully flesh out this particular mindset with ideas and specific examples to help you understand it better and eventually assimilate it.

My experience with the articles

For example, so far only two articles in the series really resonate with me ('Do You Have a Deeply Fulfilling Career?' and 'Exploring Career Choices'), but I believe that’s because the other articles were covering part of the mindset that I already “get” and don’t really need to assimilate. Either that, or the ideas just don’t really apply to me (which is sort of the same thing in essence).

What I’ve found most useful is realising that (A) I shouldn’t settle – at all (even with lots of pressure around me indirectly implying that I should), and (B) the only way I’m ever going to really get the sort of forward momentum I want is to do more of what I enjoy and explore ways of expressing that while paying attention to my preferences/emotional guidance. I'll make no progress "finding what I want to do" if I'm trying to do that by doing something I don't enjoy!

It's all very much common sense, but I didn't really "get it" before. Hearing such things from Steve and contrasting that understanding with my experience (ie. my constant failure ) helps me to to see the limitations of my current way of thinking and allows me to start transitioning to something more effective. And that's really what it's about -- degrees of effectiveness, not perfect ideals that usually stem from the wrong mindset. Ultimately, this is about raising your awareness.

Use the boat to get where you want to go, then leave it behind

So yeah, my suggestion would be to look at the career article series as a set of ideas and examples that point to a mindset, and ultimately, a state of being. If you are anything like me, it’s the state of being you are primarily concerned about, and everything else is just details.

To conclude, I'll leave you with a fitting quote:

The fish trap exists because of the fish.
Once you've gotten the fish you can forget
the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of
the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit,
you can forget the snare. Words exist because
of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning,
you can forget the words. Where can I find a
man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
- Chuang Tzu

[carenkh]

As I made additional career decisions, I asked myself, “What would be fun and interesting to do next?” as opposed to “What permanent career choice should I make?”

Aaaahhh... thanks so much, Steve. A block I had, that I didn't even realize I had until I read this!

There have been lots of thoughts floating around my head about scarcity/abundance. My contemporaries (I was about to write "the world", then realized - I don't really keep up with "the world") seem to be moving from basing decisions on scarcity, to basing them on an abundance mindset. (Hey! Does that mean *I am*, too? ) This flows right along with that... I'll only have one job my whole life, so I'd better make a good choice, 'cause I'll be stuck with it; vs. There are many, many ways to earn an income, and income comes to me easily - what do I enjoy?

Time to revisit some of your articles on abundance...

(Thanks so much for doing what you do.)