# The best job for you is the one you are good at Created: 2022_05_11 08:14 Tags: [[Advice]] ![[Loop of What You Do.excalidraw.svg]] Pretty early on, I had an interest in trying to understand how a computer worked. In first grade, I asked my teacher in "computers" class how a game worked, how were they made, and she did not know the answer. So my goal, for some time, was to figure it out on my own, just from searching around on Google. To make a long story short, I was hooked, constantly trying to understand how computers worked and feeling like a wizard when helping family and friends set up new things or fix broken ones. I was lucky, though, I found something that I was both genuinely interested in and eventually became "good" at. My career path was pretty straight and narrow, this is not the case for many, or even most! Because of my luck, people would often mistake my happenstance for actual conscious choice. I used to always say to people that the best job is one that you love (maybe leaning too much on my own experience). I never tried to purposely mislead people by saying I had all the right answers or anything, but I now realize that my answer was not a complete one. So this essay is meant to answer the question "What is the best job for me?" as completely as I can. ## What is the best job for me? Maybe a leading question, but, to answer a question like this, in the general case, is obviously a difficult thing to do - it has no single answer, and depends highly on where you are in your journey. So, let's break it down into categories of people. Try to answer the following questions: - Do you have a job? Yes/No - Do you know what you are good at (a marketable skill)? Yes/No - Do you have a passion for it? Yes/No Follow the corresponding link if you answered in the same way: - [[The best job for you is the one you are good at#People with passion & skill|No, Yes, Yes]] - [[The best job for you is the one you are good at#People with a job, they have no passion for|Yes, Yes, No]] - [[The best job for you is the one you are good at#People in any other category|Any other answer set]] ### People with passion & skill ![[People with passion and skill but no job.excalidraw.svg]] If you have a skill, and you have a passion for it and have had trouble finding a job in it. Find an adjacent field, if possible, and master it. Are you interested in writing? Try technical documentation, marketing, editing, anything that lets you write. The idea is that by being in something adjacent you can still do the thing that you are good at and the passion for it might not 100% line up to start, but as you go on you'll find that mastery is a reward in itself. With time, you'll grow your network as described in [[The Formula The Universal Laws of Success - Albert-László Barabási|The Formula]] by Albert-László Barabási. Which will increase your opportunity to take your next step, you can control your own luck in that way - _your previous successes determine how likely your future successes will be_. If this fails you, the next step would be to try to specialize in something you are naturally good at. By choosing something that you know that you are already good at, it should hopefully make it less burdensome in your day to day so that you can pursue your true passion separately. You can liken this route to the weekend garage band, it allows you to earn your bread but is enough to fulfill you. Who knows? One day, maybe you can just pursue your passion. ### People with a job, they have no passion for ![[People with a job without passion.excalidraw.svg]] Mastering something is often fulfilling in and of itself, often this can lead to new opportunities (e.g. a promotion) where you can find more meaning from what you do. But, maybe you just don't know which way you are supposed to be heading. You are in a job that you are good at, but it doesn't feel like it "fulfills you" like what you've heard happens to other people. You may say to yourself that "it's a good job", so what do you have to complain about? The answer here isn't found in your work but in your own purpose, it is a matter of finding it. This is a journey that is talked about in the book [[The Second Mountain - David Brooks|The Second Mountain]] by David Brooks. The metaphor is that life pushed you up the first mountain which builds yourself (think school & career). But now you have realized that this isn't the mountain you want to stay on forever, you want your own meaning and purpose. But before that, you will have to descend into the [[The Second Mountain - David Brooks#The Valley|the valley]] to then build meaning for your own life. This is a difficult process, but what you find on the [[The Second Mountain - David Brooks#Second Mountain|next mountain]] is truly your own mountain of meaning. I think that this is what makes a midlife crisis, it is that transition from one mountain to the next. By the end of this transition, you should have an answer to the famous question of [[Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl|Man's Search for Meaning]] by Viktor Frankl: **What is life asking of me?** ### People in any other category Let me make some assumptions here, you are likely younger and looking for your foothold into the world. But don't yet know which step to take. You've been asked your whole life, what do you want to be when you've grown up? You had some inklings of an answer to that, but now circumstances have changed, or they don't really excite you or maybe never viable in the first place. Not only that, but you probably feel like there is a lot of pressure on you to "take the next step". But how should you know what that next step is? ## Conclusion You aren’t going to know what you want to do for the rest of your life. Even I who had something just fall on my lap, is now looking to do other things. People aren't this static thing, they need to grow. You just need to have the confidence in yourself that you can explore to find your next passion. [[Don't follow your dreams, find them]]. ## References - David Brooks, in the book [[The Second Mountain - David Brooks|The Second Mountain]], makes a distinction between a vocation and a career. Where a [[The Second Mountain - David Brooks#Vocation vs. Career|vocation]] is a sort of calling (passion) and a [[The Second Mountain - David Brooks#Vocation vs. Career|career]] as matching your skills to the marketplace (strength). - This is somewhat related to [[You have to love the work, not the end goal]] but the caveat between these two ideas is that the end goal is living your life for a fiction ignoring the day to day struggles, both get at the same thing. You have to like putting in the work of that day to day. The end goal is just a carrot on a stick.