Find work you love, don’t follow your passion. The matter of work is right or the matter of career that you like is an issue that many people want answers to because they themselves want to know what career or what kind of work is suitable for them.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could get answers from when we were kids about what career is right for us?
When it comes to dream careers and jobs, not everyone can discover them since childhood. For many people, their dreams change over time. For example, when we were children, we might have wanted to be a doctor because the society around us values and respects people who are doctors so much. Or when we grow up a bit, we start to feel that engineering is a career that seems interesting. Or for some people, they might have dreamed of becoming a musician since they were children and have never changed their goals in this matter.
But at the same time, many people choose to graduate with a degree that they think is the most neutral, because they themselves do not know what line of work they will do, what they like, what they are good at, or what type of work will allow them to live with it for half their lives. Benjamin Todd is one of them.
Benjamin is currently the Founder & CEO of an organization called 80,000 Hours. His and his organization’s main focus is helping people find the right job or career, and one that can solve social or world problems.
“How can we choose a career that fulfills us?”
Benjamin said that he himself was once stuck in an unanswered question for a year. His decision about a career was later than his peers, even though he knew that he liked philosophy and martial arts. After reading books and researching, he found that if he combined his interests, the result was that his career was right for him: a Shaolin monk, which met both the requirements of philosophy and martial arts.
“80,000 hours is our entire working life.”
The hours spent in a life are not short, and it would be a waste to spend so much time doing things you don’t enjoy or are not willing to do. Benjamin founded a company called 80,000 hours to conduct research on choosing the right career for your life, with a wealth of research, articles and free online resources on 80,000hours.org to read.
“All the current career advice is wrong.”
Many people may think that Benjamin is just a kid who just graduated. How can he give advice on these things? But studies have shown that no matter how old we are, we still have a lot to learn. And of course, in the past, he learned what most people do. So why does age matter? Over the years, we have learned about choosing a career in many different ways. Each era has different methods of setting goals, such as:
“Greed is good.”
In a certain era, people were taught to be greedy in order to be proactive and strive to be great. In terms of work, it may make us diligent, ambitious and advance in our career. But on the other hand, we may be selfish, betray or face envy from people around us.
“Do as you wish”
The right job is choosing to do what we want. This sentence is something we often say and hear when choosing a job. Whatever we want, do that thing and we will do it well. He has summarized the method of doing what we want as 3 easy steps, which are:
- Find your own interests, needs and desires.
- Find a job or career that meets your needs.
- Try and pursue that career.
But the method we mentioned, we have achieved what we wanted, but why did it still fail?
The process we talk about in terms of fulfilling your needs is finding a need, doing a job that fits your needs, trying and you will succeed. This is the formula that people talk about because they believe that when we do what we love and what we want, we tend to do well. But there are always two sides to every coin. But if we follow this process and try and still fail, that means that this process cannot be concluded to be applicable to everyone.
“We fail to find the job we think is right because it doesn’t mean enough.”
From the study, it was found that people who are good at talking, expressing themselves, and presenting are all considered to be able to do sales or be good salespeople, and they think that sales is the most suitable job for them.
But after doing this job, it appears that they burn out faster, lose their passion for life more than the average person who has no talent at all in sales. This latter group of people still continuously try to develop their sales skills so that they can do it better and better in the future.
In addition, a survey of 500 Canadian students found that 90% like art, sports and music the most, but only 3% of students who graduate work in art, sports and music. The results of this survey concluded that most people who want to follow their desires do not succeed in the way they want.
Our interests are not the determining factor of success.
In real work, interest in the work we do and the desire to do the work we love are not the factors that will make us successful. There are other factors as ingredients, such as ability, opportunity or ideas, which we may miss when drawing beautiful dreams with the work we love. Most people tend to forget that their interests or loves can change over time, just like childhood dreams. Even when we grow up, in the next 5 or 10 years, our dreams and desires can change according to the situation and experiences we have.
“Choose to do something valuable.”
Since we have fulfilled our desires, there are still gaps that may cause us to make mistakes and fail. The solution that no one has ever advised us before in recommending the right career choice is to “do something valuable”.
There is a philosophy that has been taught for thousands of years that “helping others is the secret to a fulfilling and happy life” or “a man’s worth depends on the good he does in the world.” In the book, Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology, wrote about the satisfaction and happiness in human life that it comes from two ingredients: success and meaning, or meaning in terms of meaningful success.
“If you care about helping others, you will succeed because others will help you.”
Whether it’s volunteer work or charity work, we can see that sharing is so common that it’s become a norm nowadays. Paying for others, giving for others, doing things for others is happening all the time. So when you start thinking about others more than yourself, opportunities will come pouring in because they will think about you too. So, why not change your perspective and spend the rest of your life doing the work that means the most to you?
3 Steps to Make the Most of Your 80,000 Hours
1. Explore, find what we can do, test ourselves in various ways. If we want to do something valuable, we have to find out what in this world we can do, what we are good at, or what suits us.
“We can find it by thinking about what we like.”
2. Pursue, strive, and do it well. All the desired abilities must be developed so that we can use them and create the most value. We can start by developing our own interests or needs because it will make it easier for us to develop and have the motivation to develop those things.
“Our needs and preferences are part of the clues to what we will do well in the future.”
3. Look for the biggest and most urgent social problems. You may start by solving problems that are often overlooked or unfairly treated. There are too many in this world that are still waiting to be solved. But it is not necessary that we have to be doctors to treat people or travel to difficult lands to be valuable. Because no matter what the job is, where it is, or who it is for, if they ask for help and we can give it to them, it is always valuable work.
“The key to success is choosing a location that makes our abilities the most valuable.”
When our working hours are over, when we question our past work, working hard with money as the main factor will not be able to fill the gaps because when we die, we will have to leave all these things behind anyway. But when we focus on caring for the world or for others, we still leave behind something more valuable than money or property. It could be the lives of many other people. It could be the quality of someone’s life that has changed. Or it could be the world that has changed because of us.
“We only have 80,000 hours to work. Do something worthwhile and you will never regret it.”
Conclusion
We often ask ourselves about the career that we can stay with until the last working hour of our lives, but we find that careers change over time and never stop. If we try to change our perspective a little bit, by changing from looking at ourselves to looking at the world, looking at the problems that arise, looking at other people, and finding what we can change, making it more correct or more appropriate, we may find a job that fulfills our lives throughout our working hours and for the rest of our lives. Try to find what you can do, develop your skills until they are needed, and use them in the right place and with the most value. Happiness and fulfillment will definitely be fulfilled by the career that you love.
“Don’t just follow your desires, but find what you love and do it with value.”
To find work you love, don’t follow your passion | Benjamin Toddnjamin Todd
