Are you happy with what you are doing in life? A simple question that only needs a yes or no answer. Are you happy? Do you drag yourself to work every day or do you look forward to applying your skills and talents in an environment that energizes you? Do you work to get paid or do you work to exercise your God given talents? (The money is a reward for your hard work) Every day, are you honoring God, your family and yourself by pouring your talents and skills onto society to help others and to improve cultures, systems, and processes? If you are upper thirty something or early forty something is your job what you want to do from now until retirement? Can you honestly see yourself in your current job at the age of retirement? Do you dread Mondays? Do you come home at night in a bad frame of mind? What do you really enjoy doing? Are you passionate about your career? Or do you only have a job? How does the work you do affect your personality? Do you come home energized or does the work sap your energy? Do you hate taking orders? Do you like to be led or do you like to lead? If you are twenty something, are you focused on your strengths and talents or are you focused on making money? Is your work an extension of your studies in college or are in you in a completely different arena? Do you sometimes feels that you majored in the wrong subject or do you know for sure that you spent four years preparing for your career?
Are you preparing to have children? If so, are you in a career that fulfills you and makes you a better person. Do you work to exercise your talents or do you work for money? Do you get paid for what you know or do or do you get a set amount that only changes once per year? What drives you crazy in life? What pleases you in life? How do these items manifest themselves in your career? Positively and negatively? What do you want your tombstone to say? I will tell you how to decide on a career. But first, you must understand yourself. You must know what you like to do and don’t like to do. You must be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses. If you can’t perform this introspection, then the questions will be hard to answer. If you can analyze yourself, sit down with a paper and pencil and follow the process outlined below. I developed this process because I was in the same position you are in right now. I was thirty nine with three children working in a job for a paycheck that was not enough to provide for my family. My wife worked in a job that made her unhappy. I was a hostage to my job. It governed me. I was bonded to the monthly check. I knew my strengths and weaknesses but still remained in the daily grind called the rat race. In my mid thirties, I went back to school for a masters degree. I told myself that my career must be in the right direction before my fortieth birthday. As I write, the birthday is three months away.
A Career or a Job
There are countless reasons to not versus few reasons to pursue a goal. Seemingly the reasons not to do something dwarf the reasons to act. Needing a paycheck. Health insurance. Being able to pay bills. Sure we need to satisfy daily necessities but what I have learned from experience and from reading and listening is that your career must be what you want to do. It must bring out the best in you. You inner being must escape your pores to guide your career. The work should be done with talents provided by God. Therefore, we work to honor him. If you aren’t, then first, you are ignoring God; secondly, you are penalizing yourself. Why waste your talent? My father once told me that people will pay you for what you know. I never listened to him but now know it to be true. Like an athlete that practices his skills, you must be practicing your skills every day. If not, they sit dormant and help no one. Faith without works is dead. Do nothing and you will get nothing. Do something, work hard and eventually something will happen. It make take time, but stay the course and your effort will be rewarded. I am a big proponent of the five why concept. If you have a problem, ask yourself why five times. This line of questioning will get you to the root of your problem fast. For example, if you are unhappy at home, ask yourself why. I have done so often and the majority of times answered that my job was making me unhappy. Why is my job making me unhappy? I often listed a multitude of reasons and most dealt with crappy leadership at work and the environment that surrounded me. Over time, I knew that I wanted to work on my own but was afraid to do so. I even started my own company with
an aggressive partner only to succumb to the reasons why not to do it. He was frustrated with me. We parted ways with him starting his own company which is now flourishing. A career is the embodiment of what you do with your skills and talents, likes and dislikes. Your career captures who you are. A coach. A teacher. An engineer. A job is what you do within the career. At the micro level, it is the daily display of your skills and talents. For the job to be correct, the career must be correct. The career doesn’t just apply to the work you do. It applies to what you did to help society and others that interacted with you. For example, for years, my job was to be an engineer in a manufacturing plant. Every day, I went to work, sat at a desk, and did engineering stuff. When I went home, I was just a father and husband. I was not an engineer. As I matured, I developed a love of research and analysis. I went back to graduate school and obtained a masters degree in statistics. I saw my career as being a statistician. I loved analyzing data at work but also loved applying my talents in data analysis outside of work. In short, my career was as a statistician. I knew that for my long term happiness, what I did every day had to be in this career direction.
The Process for Deciding What to Do for a Career and a Job within a Career
1. Make a list of the things you like to do. Write them in bullet format. Each line should contain a verb and an object. 2. Make a list of the things you do not like to do in your personal life or the things that you do not like about your current job. 3. Go through the “don’t like” list and where possible, convert to the “like to do” list.
4. Go through the “like to do” list and mark the things that you love to do (passion=love) and the things you like to do (a little less passion). You are trying to separate out what your passion is. Be honest about your passion. Think hard at this step as it dictates what is to follow. 5. Take the “love to do” things and simplify the list. Try to boil each thing into a verb and an object. 6. Make two columns: verb and object. Write the verbs from step five and the corresponding objects in the columns. The verbs indicate what you should be doing in your career. The objects define the arenas to apply your skills. 7. Organize the verbs in a hierarchy. Does one verb precede another? How do the verbs relate in the totality of what you love to do? 8. Now fill in the objects with the corresponding verbs. This is the blueprint for your career. Study it. Become comfortable with it. Post it on your wall if you need a constant reminder. If you were honest, then this is what you should be doing. 9. Now, write a career mission statement using the verbs and objects and their relationship depicted in step seven. Don’t leave this step until you like what you have written. Would you want this statement to be on your tombstone? 10. Form the mission statement; make a list of the criteria that your career must meet and criteria that you like for it to meet. A Word of advise: Leave family issues out of the must section. Why? If you pick the right career, then you will be a better spouse and parent. 11. At this point, the career may become crystal clear. If so, congratulations. Skip to the last step.
12. If the way is not clear, then make a list of career opportunities that interest you or you know about. Take your time. Think it through. 13. Construct a decision table with the opportunities across the top and the musts and likes down the left column. You can do this in a spreadsheet (easiest) or on a piece of paper. 14. First, go through the possibilities and rate them using the must criteria. It either meets the criteria (yes) and doesn’t (no). 15. Assign a weight to each like criteria. Weight them on a scale of 0 to 100. 16. Rank the possibilities for each “like criteria” using scale 1 to 7 with 1 being the worst and 7 being the best. 17. For each possibility, multiply the weight for each criterion by the score for each possibility. 18. Calculate a total score for each possibility. 19. The possibility with the highest score is what you should focus on. Make sure that it did not violate any of the must criteria. 20. At this point, I recommend taking a personality test to confirm what you have said and concluded about yourself. There is no worse critic than thyself so this objective analysis hopefully confirms what you know to be true. 21. Write down what you will do tomorrow as a result of the above process. Start working immediately. Don’t wait.
An Example (My life) Steps One and Two: List of things I like and don’t like to do
What I like Analyzing data and reaching conclusions Teaching things that I know a lot about Following sports Working alone Reading the newspaper Drinking coffee Writing what’s in my head Philosophical conversations Creating structure Writing meeting minutes Creating timelines Designing trials Having a lot to do Understanding why things vary over time Staying at the macro level until the micro level is needed Listening to music (all kinds) Working on something that I am passionate about To not be at my desk all day What I don’t like Taking orders Being a pawn in a system Working for a check Having a fixed income Staying at a desk all day My pay not tied to what I know or do Performance reviews Being jealous Dreading Mondays Doing things after work with co-workers People that do things incorrectly when I know the correct way Doing the same thing every day Being un-structured Being a focal point Working on things that I don’t know much about Being asked for answers on the spot Going to the micro level before it is time Associating with poor leaders Working with dishonest people
Step Four: Refining the Like to Do List into Things I Love to do and Like to do Love to do Like to do
Analyzing data and reaching conclusions Teaching things that I know a lot about Following sports Reading the newspaper Writing what’s in my head Philosophical conversations Creating structure Designing trials Having a lot to do Understanding why things vary over time Staying at the macro level until the micro level is needed Working alone Drinking coffee Writing meeting minutes Creating timelines Listening to music (all kinds) Working on something that I am passionate about To not be at my desk all day
Steps Five and Six: Simplification of the Love to Do List Verb Object
Analyze Conclude Teach Read Write Talk Create Design Data Analysis What I know Newspapers What’s in my head Philosophy Structure (macro/micro levels, sources of variation) Structure
Steps Seven and Eight: Hierarchy of Verbs and Objects
Read -newspapers -magazines Design -experiments -trials
Get ideas from above Create Structure -develop models -define macro/micro levels -illustrate systems and processes -define common and special variation Analyze -structure
Conclude -analysis
Write -conclusions Teach -what I know -what I have written
Step Nine: Mission Statement for My Career
To honor myself, my God, and my family, my career must be focused on writing about conclusions and teaching what I have written and what I know. My conclusions will come from analyzing models, sources of variation, systems and processes, and macro/micro levels. These objects of analysis will come from ideas generated from the reading of newspapers and magazines and the carrying out of experiments designed by me.
Step Ten: Musts and Likes for My Career Musts for my Career Likes for my Career
Honor myself Honor God Honor family Research Write Teach Analyze Stay in Charleston Linda quit working third shift Occasional travel Pay based on performance Quit dreading Mondays Not work in environment of fear
Step Twelve: Opportunities that Interest Me
Quality Engineer for a company Consultant Self employed researcher Keep current job Teach in college Quality Manager for a company Self employed trainer Self employed writer Statistical Engineer for a company
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