How and when to choose the best career for you- 8 Rules to know

Conditions Apply: The below-mentioned rules are only applicable to people who are singly sustaining themselves and not a family. So, better get on that road while you are still single and don't have to support a family. For having to support a family will change the equations for all of the below.

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Growing up in a society where any career-thought other than ‘Engineering and Medicine’ is considered as blasphemous, we all are made to do whatever we are SUPPOSED to do and not what we WANT to do. We are made to think what we are supposed to think not what we want to think. 

And, in that process, the fervor of doing things that we are really good at gets dissolved and washed away.

I am writing this post just to motivate the crazy lot of you to pick up the little remnants of whatever fervor and caliber is left within you and get on the ship for a new expedition to explore what’s best for you.

There are a few rules to finding the best career for you.

 Rule 1.     Don’t let your University degree rule you over, if you don't like what you are doing

Only if we were all born wise and free, we would have all gotten ourselves the most appropriate Graduate degree possible to let us be the masters of our own careers. Unfortunately that is not the case for most of us. Despite taking every next step warily and choosing our education after a lot of contemplation and discussions, we still find ourselves dissatisfied with what we are doing/studying. Revelations about your own career are not defined by time, they can happen anytime during your life. Be it 2 years into graduation or 10 years after.

You gotta let the revelations rule you over until you decide to break those bars and are free to try the next best thing for you.

Give yourself time and let not a friggin’ piece of paper (University degree that is) define what you are SUPPOSED to do.

If you are good at story-telling, be a Story Teller.
If you are good at jamming, just go out and jam.
If you are good at training dogs, do it!

Don’t let the education define your career!

 Rule 2.      Stop worrying about what people will think if you’d do it

If you are too worried about what people would think when you’d take a job with a travel magazine after studying Economics at University, or if you’d want to work on an organic farm after pursuing a MS in Artificial Intelligence. Stop Right There! Take a break! Question Yourself!

What makes your life worthwhile? Doing what you love? Or putting on a show?

Let those answers ringing in your head decide what you should do next.

People will always talk for years and years to come, they will put in their best to let you down. But what if that same organic farm is feeding millions, 10 years thence? What then? Would you really care about what people thought or said back then?

So, choose what you like and choose it wisely. And then give it your best. Make it bloom for the world to see. Make people regret for what they once said about you. And then just put on that ‘Swagger’ and go around.

Rule 3.    Don’t let your age define what you should do next

No matter if you are 15 or 25 or 35 or even older, don’t let the age define what you are supposed to do.
Even if you have spent 35 years of your life doing something that you abhorred, you can at least save the rest by not doing the same. Like I said Career Revelations are not time defined. So, even if it’s at 35 you realize you were put in the wrong role all these years. Open those seat belts and get ready for a Skydive.
If you’ve been a Software Engineer all these years, but love to teach Math. Go ahead, be a Math teacher.

 Rule 4.  Don’t let the money you earn decide what you should do 

Ohh! Burps! This one I’d say is the most difficult thing to give up on when you have gotten used to the comforts of those cushions you just bought. You might be earning a lakh a month or may be two and still not be happy with what you are doing. So, I’d say-It’s a trade- off here and you’d have to make a choice if it’s the money you want or it’s the love for something that you just realized and would want to follow it. Tough Call! Ain’t it?
But, you never know, if you give up your job for learning how to brew a beer and someday come up with your own concoction that the whole world is swigging every night. You’d be making 100 times more money than what you’d be making if you were in the same job for all those years, and to top it off you’ve enjoyed your time to the most reaching that level.

Rule 5.  Build your skills, not your resume

One of my favorite quotes by Sheryl Sandberg- “Build your skills, not your resume”. You spend 75% of your lives figuring out how to embellish your resume to climb the career ladder up higher, but does it really matter if every evening, sitting with your friends, you crib about how horrible your job is and how much you hate it?
And still struggling to make your way up, huh? How ironical?
No wonder we all live in the world of Ironies.

I liked how Sheryl Sandberg, at one of the Harvard commencement speech, talked how this whole career thing isn’t like a ladder anymore, it’s like a ‘Jungle Gym’. You should be ready to step down, up, sideways, just to know what’s best for you.
So, even if you’ve been a manager of a finance team, you might want to try the HR for once, if you think you are slightly good at it, and you never know what changes you might bring around.

So, I’d say you should always be ready to experiment new things even if it means stepping down a level or 10, you will only be developing new skills and will sooner or later find what you are best at.

 Rule 6.  Don’t let the past experiences define your future

Make the past experiences count, but not define what you want to do next. Not only education, even if our past experiences don’t comply with what we like to do next, we always take a back seat without even bothering to give it a second thought.

So, even if you’ve been into fashion industry for 10 years and want to try your hand as a Public Health associate, go ahead  and do it!

Rule 7. Gather as many experiences as possible

I’ll be talking mostly about myself here J Having had a passion to just read Shakespeare’s works as a kid, I still got into Biotechnology (reasons: the usual), but I still never gave up on the experiential learning in my life. The books will never give you what experiences do.
As for the experiences: I have worked with Subway making sandwiches, as an assistant at CBI (CFSL) extracting DNA, as a Research Scholar at Harvard Medical School studying organ transplantation in mice, as a Content Writer, as a Research analyst, done the corporate shit and now given up on all, to teach a couple of slum kids in my front yard and to start working on something new with my friend.

And, I’m still in the process of finding what’s best for me. So, don’t settle for anything usual, I’d say. Immerse yourself in a new experience every now and then to figure out what is it that you really want to do.

Rule 8. Be ready to take risks in your career

Transitioning isn’t easy. It depends on what your risk appetite is. Do whatever to enhance that appetite. And like Steve Jobs said – “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”