Defining Your Perfect Job / Career – Part 2

In Part 1 of this series I recommended that people ask themselves two questions to help them define their perfect job or career.

However, I know many people will get stuck with the following block:

“What if I don’t know what I want to do for a living?”

Here’s the thing – you don’t necessarily need to know that right now.  When you’re asking yourself the first question “What am I willing to be / do / give to live the ideal lifestyle that I want“, I want you to forget job titles and career positions.

Don’t think in terms of labels like “I’m willing to be an accountant” or “I’m willing to be a coach” or things like that, unless of course you already know you want to be those things.

Instead, try to describe the conditions, qualities and features of the type of work you’re willing to do.

For example, here are some questions that may spark your imagination a bit:

• Are you willing to work outdoors, or would you prefer indoors?
• Are you OK with traveling or would you prefer to work from one location?
• If you’re willing to travel, how much traveling are you willing to do and for how long?
• What size of business would you prefer to work at?  Your own, a small company, medium sized company, large organization, government, charity?
• What time would you want to start work, and what time would you want to finish?
• Which areas of your life would you be willing to step out of your comfort zone a bit and grow?
• Who would you like to work with?
• What kind of customers would you like to deal with?
• How many hours per week would you like to work?
• What skills would you be willing to learn or develop further?
• etc.

See how asking those kinds of questions is different than just trying to pick a job title that you’re willing to “do”?

By describing what you’re willing to do, be, give, it gives you clues as to what type of work would be best for you.  At first it may seem pointless because you may think that all the things that you answer as a preference are going to be shared by everyone else, but I assure you that is not the case.

If you prefer to work indoors, I assure you there are many people out there who hate working indoors.  They’d much rather work outside.

If you prefer to work for a large corporation or government type job that’s stable, there are many out there who hate that kind of work.

You may not know exactly what kind of work you’d like to do, and a big part of that may be that your “perfect career” hasn’t even been invented yet.  Maybe it will take some time to work yourself into it.

I remember when I was in high school, I was so confused as to what kind of career I wanted to have.  Nothing seemed exactly what I wanted, and I actually didn’t really know what I wanted – besides something that made some money.

My teacher told me something that totally changed my life.  She told me that 95% of the jobs that will be out in the market just 5 years after I graduate haven’t even been invented yet.

That really helped me out because it took away a lot of worry I had at that time since nothing in the standard list of career paths that college / universities were training for seemed like exactly what I wanted.

She was totally right too, because within 5 years the world totally changed with incredible advances on the Internet and I was working in a career that didn’t even exist 5 years prior.

In today’s world, we need to think differently.  Don’t think in terms of job titles like doctor, architect, lawyer, accountant, manager etc.  Instead, try to define the parameters of what you enjoy doing and you’ll attract opportunities that fit within those parameters.

Think of it kind of like a sketch artist working with a witness to draw the face of a suspect.  By asking questions like “What shape was his nose?” and “Were his eyes round or almond shaped?” or whatever questions they ask, they are able to narrow things down and create a sketch profile of a suspect.  Then when the detectives identify a suspect they can compare him to the sketch.

Do the same thing with your career path.  Create a profile for it and match opportunities that come up against it.

Here’s an example profile that a person might come up with:

• Willing to travel, 4-6 times a year to places / events I’m interested in
• Willing to research and learn new ideas to share with people
• Willing to learn marketing strategies
• Not willing to try selling things to people face-to-face or over the telephone
• Prefer to work indoors
• Willing to learn new technologies
• Prefer not to manage / deal with employees
• etc.

After creating a profile like this, the person might realize that becoming a professional Blogger is right up his alley for example.

Try this with the second question of what you’re not willing to be / do / give as well.