How to Figure Out What to Do with Your Life (Next)

Jennifer Turliuk

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781459747494
• eBook ISBN: 9781459747517
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

"An amazing and brilliant instruction manual on how to find purpose, build a career, and live a life of fulfillment." – DEEPAK CHOPRA A surefire guide to planning your next career move and discovering the job you really want. Jennifer Turliuk was dissatisfied in her corporate job, so she quit. But she had no idea what to do next. After university, she, like so many graduates, focused on just getting a job rather than figuring out the career she really wanted. Instead of getting another degree or going back to school to change her career path, Turliuk embarked on a "self-education journey, " interviewing and shadowing some of the world's leading professors, founders, and investors from Silicon Valley companies such as Airbnb, Square, and Kiva. What she discovered was not only a way to find out what she really wanted to do with her own life, but also a career-design process that would help others do just the same. Turliuk's career-prototyping framework uses tested strategies and exercises, including quantified self, design thinking, and lean methodology to help everyone from recent graduates to mid-career workers looking for a change. Let this book be your guide to finding a satisfying and passion-driven career that is right for you.

1

The Career Crisis

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

— T.S. ELIOT

Are you having a hard time figuring out to do with your career? Are you dissatisfied with your job? You’re not alone. Nowadays, people feel worse about their jobs and work environments than ever before¹ — over 80 percent of Americans and 75 percent of Canadians are unhappy with their jobs² — and the statistics are similar around the world. In 2011, a shocking 32 percent of workers said that they wanted to leave their jobs and 25 percent had no definite plans to leave but were apathetic and even more negative about their work than employees considering an exit.³ Employee turnover is at an all-time high, and there’s no sign that any of these statistics will improve. And at the time this book was in production, the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected both the work environment and unemployment.

Why is this important? Well, people who feel successful in their work lives are twice as likely to feel very happy than those who don’t, regardless of income level.⁴ The opposite of this is “learned helplessness,” where people simply give up and stop trying to succeed, and we’re beginning to see more and more of this with the number of workers worried about being laid off at an all-time high of 30 percent.⁵ Low job satisfaction is correlated with high rates of anxiety, depression, psychosomatic symptoms, heart disease, and poor mental health⁶ — all of which can also lead to problems with family and romance. Job dissatisfaction is terrible for the world.

Most of my classmates from university who I’ve talked to since graduation are unhappy about or only okay with their jobs, and there are consequences when you don’t do something you like. Most people only think about the financial aspects of taking a risk to do what they love. But what about the risks of doing something you dislike: such as doing something that goes against your values, doesn’t let you reach your full potential, or involves working with people you dislike? For me, this meant I got depressed, had health issues (back and wrist pains and a random eye twitch for the first time in my life), and wasn’t performing. It was one of the worst times of my life. I think this quote from the book The Monk and the Riddle perfectly exemplifies how there are more risks to consider than just financial ones:

Personal risks include the risk of working with people you don’t respect; the risk of working at a company whose values are inconsistent with your own; the risk of doing something you don’t care about; and the risk of doing something that fails to express — or even contradicts — who you are. And then there is the most dangerous risk of all: the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet that you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.⁷

Along those lines, there have been plenty of examples of people working in jobs they hate to save up for retirement and then promptly dropping dead very shortly after retiring.

For corporations, low job satisfaction leads to lower productivity and innovation, as well as increased recruiting costs due to high turnover. America’s disengagement crisis costs corporations a staggering $300 billion in lost productivity annually.⁸ The simple fact is, workers perform better when they’re happily engaged in what they do. Even worse, job dissatisfaction also leads to lower levels of innovation. If you compare the job satisfaction and innovation rates over time, you start to see some patterns.

With an army of unhappy workers, how can we expect to solve the grand global challenges? How can we make a major impact on issues such as climate change or poverty if we aren’t able to bring our full energy to work?

FIG. 1: Comparison of job satisfaction rates from 1987 to 2009 in the United States.

Source: Copyright © 2021 The Conference Board, Inc. Content reproduced with permission.

FIG. 2: Global technological innovation rates from 1455 to 2055.

Source: Jonathan Huebner, “A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 72, no. 8 (October 1, 2005): 980–86. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier.

I became passionate about this issue when working in my first job out of university — a marketing position at a large corporation. Many of my classmates viewed landing this role as a huge success, and I also thought I’d be happy in it. However, I became extremely dissatisfied almost as soon as I began working there, which had a huge effect on my whole life. I became extremely depressed, and every night I’d get home from work and fall asleep around 6:00 p.m. because I didn’t have enough energy to do much of anything else.

Yet it was extremely difficult for me to muster the courage and ability to actually leave the job. I looked around and saw that in such a bad economy many people were having a hard time even finding a job — so who was I to complain? Because I didn’t like what I was doing, I started to feel as if I was underperforming, which made me begin to lose confidence in myself. Maybe I couldn’t get a better job. And even if I could, I thought surely the “black hole” that would result on my résumé from leaving a job within less than a year would blacklist me from ever getting further positions or having a good career. Most of all, I had no idea what to do next. Sound familiar?

I realized that there weren’t many good tools available to help me choose what type of job I’d be happier in — I’d done extensive career testing that had said the corporate job was a good choice. I wasn’t sure what I was passionate about and whether I wanted to work for a non-profit or for-profit, or start my own company. So I quit my job and set up my own self-education program where I shadowed at six different companies for one to five days each, learning from them but also helping them wherever I could. It made me realize I wanted to start a for-profit startup that helps people find and choose careers they’re passionate about. This concept of validating what you actually like is a major topic of this book.

Since my self-education program, I’ve done many things that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I’d stayed at a job where I was so unhappy. I launched an accelerator program for young entrepreneurs in Toronto, where many participants ended up leaving their jobs, receiving multiple investment offers, and opening franchises of their businesses. I organized programming classes for students in Chile on programming languages such as Python that they don’t normally teach there. Then I went to Singularity University to try to figure out how to flip the statistics so that 80 percent of people are satisfied with their jobs … or 100 percent.

How can we solve this pressing issue? For individuals, the single most important factor to employee engagement is simply to feel you’re making progress in meaningful work, which can lead to joy and excitement and improve performance — a positive upward spiral. This alone carries people through many things, including long hours and low pay. It doesn’t mean picking a job off a list of the 10 happiest occupations or choosing any noble cause and devoting your life to it — it entails figuring out what kind of work is truly meaningful to you as an individual and then finding a job that allows you to do it, even if it has a low salary, although that doesn’t always have to be the case! The difference between the happiest and the most hated jobs is whether the job feels worthwhile or pointless. There are a number of different techniques to figure this out.

To provide meaningful work, companies need to redesign their human-resources strategies. Some, like Google and Facebook, are doing a great job providing supportive and flexible work environments. Others are asking talented people to “design their dream jobs” and then creating roles around them instead of trying to fit them into one-size-fits-all job descriptions. As such, individuals need to find companies and jobs that align with their passions and skills. Currently, most recruiting focuses on skills and not passions, but as I’ve mentioned, passion is one of the most important factors toward doing good work.

Corporations need to ensure they offer an environment that’s supportive for employees. They should train managers on the importance of supporting progress, removing barriers, and giving workers a direct line of sight to customers and the impact of what they do so they can see meaning in their work. Other ways to increase engagement are to allow work to be done in self-organizing teams and to provide options for career-advancing work, flexible schedules, and telecommuting. Governments can improve mobility and opportunity through education reform, pro-growth policies, and an entrepreneur-friendly economy. Companies that don’t delight customers don’t survive, but I would also argue that companies that don’t delight their employees won’t survive, either. Working adults spend more of their waking hours at work than anywhere else, so let’s make sure those hours are life enhancing.

With more people in developed countries finding careers they’re passionate about, there will be more happiness, less health issues, and more good work on critical issues such as the environment and poverty in the developing world. So, my ask of you is to make sure you find and do work you’re extremely passionate about and help others do the same. Our planet needs it.

WHAT NOT TO DO

First, let’s start with what not to do:

1. Don’t just blindly do what your parents tell you to do: Seriously, don’t. Now I love my parents very much, but let’s face it, parents have a different objective for your career than you do — security. Your parents want you to be safe and have enough money to live off of, so obviously most will, either consciously or unconsciously, point you in the direction of the most well-paying, secure option. Do you really think they’re going to be excited about the fact that you want to jaunt off to Africa to take a barely paying job helping local entrepreneurs? No! But that sounds pretty badass to me! I can’t even believe the number of people I know who, when I ask them why they picked the job or career they’re doing, answer that it’s because their parents told them to. For the love of God, don’t become one of those people. If your parents really love you, they’ll get over it and support you in whatever you do. I know mine did. At an early point in your life, pay doesn’t matter as much as great experience that can set you up for future possibilities of high pay. Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey, for example, both made very little in the early days of their careers. So unless you have massive amounts of debt, or a significant other and kids you’re supporting, choose a great experience over high pay, because it’s better to enjoy every day than to hate work and end up blowing the extra cash, anyway, on partying and vacations to try to make things palatable. You can always get more money, but you can’t always get more time.
2. Don’t believe the hype that you need experience before doing what you love: This is simply not true. Don’t get convinced that marketing dish detergent or pushing boxes around on slides will help you be a successful entrepreneur, fashion designer, or whatever your dream is. Know that some of the most successful founders (e.g. of Google, Apple, et cetera) had little or no corporate experience at all. As a Harvard Business Review article put it, “To paraphrase Warren Buffett, a career strategy based on doing what you dislike today so that you can do what you like tomorrow is as wise as deferring sex while young so that it can be enjoyed in old age.”⁹ Happiness is wanting what you have — so aim for that instead of having a deferred life enjoyment plan.
3. Don’t listen to anyone except yourself: At the end of the day, all that really matters in your career decisions is you and what you want, and ideally, what positive impact you want to have on the world. Everyone looks at things through different lenses based on their experiences, so no one can have the right answer for you — except you! Try to stay away from the gossip about who got what interview, what offer, et cetera. Knowing that information isn’t going to help you at all — it will only clutter your mind with useless thoughts that will distract you from your pursuit of awesomeness. Also, mentors and role models are great, but again, don’t take their word as gospel. They might have tried something and failed, or not been brave enough to try anything at all. But since it was their life paths and choices, in most cases they’ll defend themselves and perhaps advise you along the same path. Remember, you’re different — in a good way!

So how are you going to figure out what to do? Keep in mind a couple of points:

1. Career counsellors can’t give you the answer of what to do. They’re good at résumés and cover letters, but helping you figure out what you want to do is way tougher because there aren’t proven techniques (career testing is flawed because it only lists a limited number of occupations). Also, to make a good decision you need to decide for yourself, not let someone else do it for you.
2. Other people can’t give you the answer of what to do. As I’ve said, everyone looks at things through different lenses (e.g. failure, success) based on past experiences, so they’ll advise you on what they’d do in your situation, but not necessarily what’s best for you. So take other people’s advice with a grain of salt — even mine. Especially because asking people older than you means they grew up in a completely different time/culture, where, for example, manufacturing was hot and the internet or apps hadn’t been invented yet.
3. Remember that most people aren’t happy with their jobs. So it’s hard for someone who hasn’t found a job that makes them happy to advise you on how to find one that will make you happy.
4. Also, keep in mind that corporate experience doesn’t necessarily help to become an entrepreneur. I met a young entrepreneur who began his startup at age 19 and has been super successful. And it’s pretty easy to get sucked in and end up staying in a corporation for way longer than you wanted or expected to when...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Career Crisis
• 2 Life and Career as a Series of Tests
• 3 Introducing the Prototyping Your Career Method
• 4 Step 1: Understanding Current Research
• 5 Step 2: Casting a Net
• 6 Step 3: Narrowing It Down
• 7 Step 4: Career Design Process
• 8 Step 4.1: Identify Options
• 9 Step 4.2: Minimum Viable Commitments (MVCs)
• 10 Step 4.3: Prototype/Test
• 11 Step 4.4: Measure
• 12 Step 4.5: Narrow
• 13 Step 4.6: Repeat
• 14 Your Top Three
• 15 Closing the Deal
• 16 Land the Job
• 17 Your Résumé
• 18 Your Cover Letter
• 19 Your Online Brand
• 20 Interviewing
• 21 Make Your Own Job
• 22 What to Do When You Can’t Decide
• 23 For Students
• 24 Make Your Own Blueprint
• 25 Prototyping Life
• Closing Words
• Appendix 1: Know Thyself Tools
• Appendix 2: Anonymous Reputation Survey
• Appendix 3: Know Thyself Questions
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• About the Author
• Back Cover