Why You Can’t Find a Career You Like and What to do About it
· Growing up you were asked the same rotten, unhelpful, no-good question at least 100,002 times a year.
· “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
· If you were like most kids, you always had an answer prepared. Ideally a career in mind with high status, or heroic and Very Important.
· But now you’re an adult. And you’re struggling to decide on a career.
· Why?
You can’t find a career you like because your childhood dream is not your dream job, like all humans you have competing needs and desires, and having a so-called “boring” job is seen as slacking off or lacking ambition.
Most childhood career dreams are built on shaky ground. Even if your mum or dad had the job you thought you’d love, how much detail did they give you? Maybe the highlights or a general overview. And if no one close to you had that job, you’ll know even less.
No one tells a young aspiring veterinarian they’ll need to be emotionally strong enough to accept not saving every animal. Or that they’ll need to put down some of their adorable fluffy patients.
If you say you want to be a vet because you love animals, you rarely get a long list of possible careers—except maybe zookeeper and dog trainer —which you may or may not like more. Maybe you’d enjoy being a cat behaviourist, or a job taking care of lab mice.
You grow up to find you don’t want the career you thought you wanted. Now you don’t know what career you do want.
It’s even worse if you worked for your entire childhood, adolescence and maybe even early adulthood towards this career path. Because you suffer from what psychologists call Identity Foreclosure.
This means you made a commitment to an identity without exploring options. You never experimented with your identity before establishing one based on the choices or values of other people.
Values like adults expecting an answer to that rotten, unhelpful, no-good question
· “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
· (It’s not really their fault. They didn’t know any better, and were trying their best.)
· But that’s not the only reason.
You have competing needs and desires
Like every human being on Earth (and the people spread across the galaxy if our descendants ever get there) you’re complicated. You want things and need things, many of which clash with each other.
For example, an amazing new non-profit organisation offered you a job, but they can’t pay you enough to cover your rent. And children are expensive. (Seriously, kids seem to grow out of their new shoes within two days. You fed them three whole times today, but you need to feed them again tomorrow. And the next day. For 18 years.)
Tim Urban described the situation in his popular blog, Wait But Why. Specifically in a post titled How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You). He wrote:
“Some motivations have conflicting interests with others, you cannot, by definition, have everything you want. Going for one thing you want means, by definition, not going for others, and sometimes, it’ll specifically mean going directly against others.”
Your dream job might be a “boring” job
The checklist of what makes the perfect career is different for everyone. Some people want a career based on their passions. For them, “find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is absolutely 100% true.
It’s not true for everyone. It might not be true for you. But we’re taught that having a job society considers boring, or in an industry society considers boring, is settling. That it’s almost a failure.
Not trying to climb the career ladder to the top means you’re considered a slacker, or unambitious. Which are supposed to be bad things.
Even if we’d be miserable as a manager, or simply not suited to the responsibilities, we’re expected to aim for a promotion. We’re told we should be going for the next shiny, higher-status, higher-power title. And we’re told everyone dreams of having more status and more power.
You might like a career that simply pays you enough for your lifestyle, gives you enough work life balance to pursue your hobbies, and isn’t too stressful. That’s okay. Not every passion needs to be monetized. You can create rock music without trying to become a star.
We’re trained to focus on the most exciting career roles and the most exciting companies.
Meanwhile, you might be happier working as a salesperson at Dunder Mifflin than an engineer at SpaceX.
You just haven’t considered it.
So, what should you do?
Ask yourself if you’re willing to pay the price
And not just the financial cost.
Are you really willing to dedicate a decade of your life, gallons of skull sweat to study your textbooks, and long tiring nights to become a surgeon?
Or whatever the equivalent is for the profession you’re interested in.
Be honest with yourself. Are you really willing to take on the downsides, the sacrifices, and pain associated with that career choice? Not just willing, but almost enjoying the price?
Oh, don’t forget opportunity costs. You can’t spend the time, money, and effort you put towards becoming a surgeon on becoming an accountant. Just like if you go out to a diner for dinner you can’t spend the same money and time ordering a pizza and eating it at home.
Start with what you don’t want
Humans have a strange quirk.
Often, we know much more about what we don’t want. We can spend days making lists of it. I’m sure there are careers you know immediately you won’t like.
So, start here. Think about why you lack interest in those careers. Go beyond the surface. Do they require you to make split second decisions but you prefer thoroughly evaluating the situation before responding? Do you prefer getting a result that’s either correct or incorrect, with zero ambiguity?
Write it down. Use it to evaluate your career options.
Speak to a career consultant
Part of our mission at Misulis Group is to help you find a career you like. We give you a safe non-judgmental place to explore and evaluate your career options.
Our career consultants help you figure out which desires and needs you prioritize most. We’ll also help you find efficient fast ways to research professions you think you might enjoy.
We guide you on your journey, but never try to decide for you. Find more information on our MG For You page.