{"id":235312,"date":"2018-01-19T07:41:26","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T15:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/?p=235312"},"modified":"2023-10-26T11:11:50","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T17:11:50","slug":"dream-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/dream-job\/","title":{"rendered":"How to find a job you love: Land a dream job that brings both joy and money"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>In 1987, Marsha Sinetar published Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow<\/a><\/em>, a popular book about finding your dream job based on your passions. She urged readers to “follow their own hearts to the work of their dreams”.<\/p>\n Sinetar is a proponent of what she calls Right Livelihood: Doing your best at what you do best.<\/p>\n “Each of us, no matter how ordinary we consider our talents, wants and needs to use them. Right Livelihood is the natural expression of this need,” she wrote. “When we consciously choose to do work we enjoy, not only can we get things done, we can get them done well and be intrinsically rewarded for the effort.<\/strong> Money and security cease to be our only payments.”<\/p>\n “Do what you love” sounds<\/em> like a great idea — who wouldn’t want a dream job that was both fun and paid the bills? — but as many people have pointed out over the past thirty years, it’s generally poor career advice. When folks cling to the belief that they’ll have no trouble if they do what they love, they run the risk of not being able to make ends meet.<\/p>\n One obvious problem is that not everything you enjoy doing can generate a reliable source of income. I like videogames, for instance, but I’ll never make big bucks playing Hearthstone<\/a>. It’d be foolish to try.<\/p>\n A few years ago, career columnist Penelope Trunk put it this way<\/a>: “I am a writer, but I love sex more than I love writing…I don\u2019t sit up at night thinking, should I do writing or sex? Because career decisions are not decisions about ‘what do I love most?'”<\/p>\n There’s another problem that’s seldom mentioned. When people do<\/em> manage to find what they think is their dream job, to make a career out of what they love, they frequently lose enthusiasm for the very thing they once valued. I’ve experienced this first-hand.<\/p>\n When I started Get Rich Slowly<\/a> in 2006, I was working as a salesman for the family box factory<\/a>. I didn’t like my day job, so blogging was a fun escape. Eventually, I made enough from blogging that I could quit my job selling boxes to write full time. I was going to do what I loved! Awesome, right? In many ways, it was<\/em> awesome — but it also quickly became a curse. Writing went from a fun escape to a tedious chore, a slog instead of a joy. (That’s one reason I sold this site<\/a> in 2009.) When I repurchased the site last fall, I thought long and hard about how to avoid falling into that trap once again. (So far, so good!)<\/p>\n Having said all that, I don’t think it’s bad to seek your dream job. In fact, I believe it’s a worthwhile goal — as long as you have realistic expectations (and can be patient). The challenge is to juggle what you’re good at, what you enjoy, and what people will pay you to do.<\/p>\n In 2016, my friend and colleague Chris Guillebeau published a book called Born for This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n “There’s more than one possible path to career success,” Guillebeau writes, “but you want to find the best one — the thing you were born to do.” He says that this “best path” is located at the intersection of joy, money, and flow.<\/p>\n Ideally:<\/p>\n A perfect job — and there may be more than one “perfect job” for you — can be found where joy, money, and flow come together.<\/strong> An illustration from the book might help you visualize this concept:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The key, of course, is actually finding work at the intersection of joy, money, and flow. It’s one thing to talk about wanting this sort of perfect career, but it’s another thing entirely to discover a job that sits in the sweet spot. That’s what Born for This<\/em> is all about.<\/p>\n Clarification:<\/strong><\/em> I don’t like Guillebeau’s use of the term “flow” in this context. It doesn’t match the psychological definition<\/a>, so it creates confusion rather than clarity. Instead of “flow”, I think it makes more sense to talk in terms of talent or skill: Your ideal job(s) can be found at the intersection of joy, money, and skill.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/a>The bulk of Born for This<\/em> — roughly 250 pages — teaches readers how to identify possible dream jobs, and how make those dreams come true. Guillebeau covers a lot of ideas. Let’s look at a few of my favorites.<\/p>\n To help find work you were meant to do, Guillebeau advocates drawing up a large list of career possibilities, then pruning that list to a handful of dream jobs. Based on concepts in Born for This<\/em>, I’ve created a simple exercise that I think can help provide direction for those who feel lost in their careers.<\/p>\n Once you’ve made your list of dream jobs, learn more about these fields of work. Develop the skills you need to pursue these professions. Schedule informational interviews<\/a> with people who do the kind of work you’re interested in doing. Over the months and years ahead, use this list to plot your career path.<\/p>\n If you want to improve your marketability overall — not just within your field — Guillebeau says it’s vital to “improve the right skills”. If you boost technical skills specific to your field, that’ll help you climb the career ladder for your current profession. But if you strengthen universal “soft skills”, you’ll not only become a better employee but a better person overall<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Useful universal skills include things like:<\/p>\n These soft skills will help with anything you choose to do, whether in your current field or an entirely different career. Plus, most of them will come in handy for life outside the workplace.<\/p>\nThe Intersection of Joy, Money, and Flow<\/h2>\n
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How to Find Your Dream Job<\/h2>\n
Expand your options \u2014 then limit them<\/h3>\n
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Master the Right Skills<\/h3>\n
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