According to psychologist Dr Meg Jay, if we continue to entertain endless possibilities, we just cannot decide what to do. This is especially true when you are trying to choose the right career for yourself.
You see, we all have many areas of interest. Some people are equally attracted to the idea of spending their life as a football coach as they could be to studying law. You could play the piano as well as Mozart and be excellent with numbers. Does that mean that you should sell the piano and become a stock broker instead? Should you sacrifice going to law school just to be able teach people football? Absolutely not.
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A simple solution exists. You can make use of a Venn diagram, a figure of intersecting circles. Its used to find common areas of different subjects — and here’s why it can help you narrow down what you want to do with your career.
How to Create a Venn Diagram for Your Future
Here’s how you can find that dream career path for yourself.
- What are your best talents? Write them on a piece of paper.
- Then, make a separate list of what you’re passionate about.
- Put everything in the form of a Venn diagram.
Your Venn diagram could probably look like this:
Examples
Allow us to demonstrate.
Suppose you’re good at baking, chemistry and basketball. And at the same time, you also want to build a free hospital and start a business. Your dreams do not appear to match your talents, but in reality they do. Brainstorm!
Its time you combined these ideas of yours.
Now going with this Venn diagram, you can try your hand with baking cakes shaped like sodium and hydrogen atoms (chemistry and baking in one combo). The world’s first bakery with edible equations on display!
And just like that, you have a good business/career idea. Think of how that cake would draw customers in — you’d run a decent business.
In fact, you can hope that your business is successful and lets you work on the next item on your list – a not-for-profit hospital for the needy. Or maybe you can just go with a clinic as well.
Now that leaves one item on the list shared above – basketball. Well this part may just take care of itself by now. In the courtyard of that hospital, you could build a place to play basketball. This would entertain patients and their families — and your dreams would be fulfilled.
Another Good Idea
Imagine you’re great at football — but are equally as good with gadgets. In fact, your friends often hand you their phones to fiddle with when they can’t figure out a fix to a pesky bug or so. You dream of a day when you’d run your own school.
This one is simple. There could be many intersecting solutions. You could work in a tech company for a few years and save money to open up a school — and coach the football team yourself!
But why separate the two? Invent apps and gadgets for football fanatics. The world is in need of those.
This is the Last One We Promise
Consider the possibility that you have a knack for making sculptures. You’re also very good at biology. We recommend studying it at university — and then opening up a museum for anatomy.
The world would be impressed — and you’d be living a life of passion and success. But where would you get the money to open up a museum? Why, you’d work, of course! You’d get a job as a professor or researcher and craft in your spare time.
When you’d have enough money saved, you’d put those sculptures on display.
You can also experiment with Venn diagrams like this.
Concluding Thoughts
This post may have given you plenty of ideas about how to figure out your dream job. It may not be the most definite guide, but it certainly helps you make sense of the age old question: how do you figure out what you want to do with your life?
Sure things might not always go according to plan (but hey, that’s life for you), but at the very least, you won’t regret not following your heart.
When you’ve figured out your passion, it is important to select a career in that direction. Our next post will be based on how to impress recruiters and land yourself the ideal job.
Nice approach
Excellent advice, awesome.