Discover The Right Career By Asking a Different Question

If you're like many people, you may know that your current job or career choice isn't right for you... yet, you may not know what else to do.

So in an effort to help you find the "ideal" job or career you may ask yourself, "what do I want to do?" But that question may do more harm than good. Unfortunately, you may not be able to come up with an answer that really helps you... if you think of an answer at all. This may be because you don't know what you want to do... or because there are just too many things you want to do... or because it's a loaded question: it implies that there must be one answer, which you just can't decide on.

Well, I'm here to tell you that you don't have to have an answer to the question of what you want to do. Indeed, if you want an "answer" to help you in your quest to find a fulfilling career, I urge you to ask yourself something else: what do you want to learn? On that basis, I suggest you get some paper and a pen and write down everything you'd like to learn in a career or job. Once you've done this, assign a priority to each item. Then, your next step is to work out what job or career will likely enable you to learn what you want to learn based on that order or priority.

Now don't think that any single job - or even company - will necessarily teach you everything you want to learn in the order you want to learn it. It may be more realistic to think in terms of planning to change jobs, careers or organizations. And, of course, what you want to learn may change also - and that's completely fine! As part of your career management, I suggest you revise your list a couple of times per year.

However, for the time being at least, you know what you want to learn now... and which jobs or careers will allow you to learn it.

Now, the assumption behind this process is that what you want to learn is the best indicator of your next career move... and will ultimately help you find the right job(s) or career(s) (remembering that there might be more than one "right" job or career over the course of your professional life). However, I think it's a fair assumption to make when it's a matter of making the leap from unsatisfying work to a truly rewarding job or career.

Therefore, stop trying to find an answer to the question of what you want to do. Go through the fun exercise above and let your answers as to what you want to learn guide you towards the right job(s) and/or career(s) for you.