How do I make the right career choice for myself?

It’s one of those questions that we have to ask ourselves, at some point or the other. While the answer is definitely not easy, it gets worse because everyone you know will have an opinion on what you should be doing with your life.

The society, especially the Indian society, loves conventional wisdom and stories of that distant cousin or that overachieving neighbor who has made it “into the world.” The hope is that you will do something similar and that’s quite okay.

However, there is a huge difference in telling somebody else’s story and figuring out your own. This post is an attempt to address the latter.

This post is not about advising you on a career choice really. It is more about giving you a vocabulary, a mental model to think about approaching careers and work. It’s about helping you become self-aware about who you are and what you want in our rapidly changing work and workplaces.

A Mental Model for Career Choices

It was a few months ago. I had just completed my MBA and had been selected by one of the biggest MNC companies for a consulting role. All my friends and batch mates had also been accepted into various companies and there was this general discussion about getting into the work life and starting our career paths.

It was during one of these discussions, I had a realization which changed my view on the way I operated and more importantly, the way I made decisions.

As it turns out, there is a way to look at career paths and work choices that align with who we really are and what we want to be. As it turns out, the people who really like their jobs and think that they are in the right path, follow the same approach. And it’s completely opposite to what we usually do or what the society tells us through conventional wisdom.

All I did was to try and codify this approach by giving it structure and labels, so that it’s easier for us to associate and recognize. I call it “The Three Moments” model of right career choices.

The Three Moments

There are three moments that really help us decide if a career or a work choice is right for us or not. This simple idea explains why some people have a dream job and a career that aligns with their personality while others feel miserable and discontent in their choice of work.

The three moments are:

• Moment of Inspiration
• Moment of Truth
• Moment of Decision

Moment of Inspiration

I have a friend called Tanmay, who plays the Piano exceptionally well. In one of his performances, he played a song called “The Arrival of Birds”, which is a brilliant instrumental piece of music in the end scenes of the movie Theory of Everything.

It’s one of my favourite pieces. I knew till then that Tanmay was an excellent piano player, but that day, something was different.

I felt inspired.

As I saw him playing my favourite tune so effortlessly, I was inspired to play piano. I imagined myself playing Arrival of Birds in front of a large crowd and everyone applauding me.

This is what I mean by having a Moment of Inspiration. A moment which overwhelms you and gives you a vision of yourself doing that activity someday in the future.

Think about it.

Any activity that you thoroughly enjoyed started with one moment of inspiration. It gave you a push, it motivated you to try.

One of the easiest examples I can think of is Cricket coaching. During my childhood, Cricket in India was equivalent to Sachin Tendulkar. Every kid that I knew would be glued to the TV screen when Sachin came to bat. This became a moment of inspiration for thousands of kids, including Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virat Kohli. This moment of inspiration motivated so many kids to take action and get enrolled in a coaching class.

One can argue that it is easier to find moments of inspiration in extra-curricular activities and hobbies, but not when it comes to professional career choices.

While it’s easier to blame the workings of our educational system for that, I think the problem is rooted in a much bigger issue of exposure to different environments.

We have a tendency to get trapped into a bubble – a routine of familiar people and familiar stories. Think about the countless stories of “MBA after Engineering” that you have heard. But how many of us have heard the real story of a Pilot or a Professional Chef?

An important pre-requisite to find you Moment of Inspiration is exposure. Exposure to different people, different stories, different experiences, different workplaces and different environments.

How else will you get that feeling of “This looks so exciting. I want to try it once.” How else will you get your initial Moment of Inspiration?

“It is important to find moments that inspire you and overwhelm you. The earlier it happens in your life, the better it is. “

Moment of Truth

Suppose one day someone tells you that you have to eat South-Indian food for the rest of your life. Through divine providence, it is decided. You will start by eating Idli-Sambar for some time. Then you will start eating Dosa and eventually you will start loving it and you will eat the same thing till you die.

This doesn’t make sense right. You can’t just decide that you are going to have a particular kind of food for the rest of your life. You don’t even know about the thousands of different cuisines available out there and you haven’t even tried any of them.

You need to try at least a few of those cuisines before you decide which is your favourite and the one you won’t mind eating for few years, let alone the rest of your life.

Maybe you like Chinese or maybe you like Italian but unless and until you have tried that cuisine for some days, you won’t know right?

How can you decide what you want to do if you haven’t tried it before?

Finding your moment of inspiration is a brilliant start of your journey but the next step is the most significant.

It’s your Moment of Truth.

Just like you have to at least try each cuisine before you decide which is your favourite and you would like to eat for a long period of time, you have to at least take an action in the direction of your moment of inspiration. It doesn’t matter if the action is too small, but it has to be in the right direction.

Rather, I would argue that small actions are way better than big commitments.

The idea behind experiencing the Moments of Truth is to get our hands dirty and take that first step in the activity that inspired us. They are meant to help us understand ourselves better and show us if we can carry our inspiration to actual real-life work.

They help us in selecting the work that we love but more importantly they help us in eliminating the work that we don’t love.

There are times when we have our moments of inspiration, but when we actually experience the activity first-hand, we realize that it’s not probably our cup of tea. That’s really okay.

Mark Manson in his book The Subtle Art of not giving a Fuck emphasizes that our success is really determined by the struggles we are willing to go through and not the happy end result.

“What is the pain that you are willing to sustain? That’s the question that really matters. That’s the question that will really get you somewhere.”

Our Moment of Truth is an attempt at answering this question. It will show us whether we are in love with just the result or are we willing to sustain the pain of the process.

So, once you have moments that inspire you, make an effort and take some time to see if they pass the Moment of Truth test. Work part-time, take internship and do some live projects in that field to get the real idea about what it’s like in that environment.

It’s okay if things don’t work out. But now you know for real and not just in your imagination.

Moment of Decision

I mentioned at the beginning of the post that most of the people follow an opposite process of finding the careers.

That is, everyone starts with their moments of decision.

We decide beforehand if we are going to choose Science or Commerce, if we are going to choose Engineering or CA, if we are going to give GATE or CAT or any other entrance examination.

Unfortunately, we start with the moment of decision and when it doesn’t turn out the way we wanted, we have our moment of truth. The whole thing falls apart because we didn’t start by getting inspired for real. Maybe it was parental pressure, maybe peer influence or maybe something else.    

The moment of decision is not easy. People in all age groups are having trouble with it. Think about your stand-up comedians who have left their jobs at the age of 30s and 40s. Think of your entrepreneurs who finally started their own ventures after years of side-hustling.

But you know what the best thing is?

Even if you didn’t get to choose where you came from or made some mistakes in the past, you can always choose to start afresh. You can always choose where to go from here. It’s never late.

There are dozens of stories on the Internet to show you that. Ray Croc, the man behind making McDonalds famous, started his grind at the age of 52, along with his regular job of selling multi-mixers. Colonel Sanders, the man behind Kentucky Fried Chicken, franchised the brand KFC for the first time, when he was 62.

The point is making a decision to pursue something for the major part of your life is a hard decision with a long process.

From here to there

Break the bubble of routine and find your Moments of Inspiration. Have the courage to chase them. Get your hands dirty in the real world and realize your Moments of Truth. Have the patience to accept them. Finally, when your inspiration overwhelms you and turns into a passion which can keep you motivated through the ups and downs of life, make the decisions that take you slowly but steadily in the right direction, towards your dreams.

If you are a 16-year-old who is just starting out, start by making a list of things that inspire you and get you excited. Get exposed to as many different experiences and environments as possible.

If you are anybody else who feels that he is not in the right career, think of this phase as your Moment of Truth. This is your grind.

You have tried something and it’s not working out. Go back to the basics and find out your moments of inspiration. Narrow them down and pursue the ones which are possible for you. Do a side-hustle. Make it your evening project.

There is enough evidence in the world to show you that if you start by getting inspired and fall in love with the struggle of the process, there will come a moment of decision, which would turn out to be the best career choice that you will make professionally.