I know im young and stuff but i feel lost like i have no sense of what i want to do now or later. How did you decide what to do with your life? What free wisdom can you share?
You don’t have to commit to any one thing in this life. I’m doing very little at age 51 that I was doing at age 27.
I also wasn’t doing what I truly wanted to do most in life until my 40s.
I fell into it. Needed a job, saw a sign, liked it, now I’m manager.
Same. Started working retail, floated over into the pharmacy since they needed help, and I’ve been there since.
My mom always said “you don’t need to know what you are doing for the rest of your life, just decide what you are doing for the next five years”.
Interestingly, this is basically the approach of some of the best management/leadership thinkers these days (e.g. Cynefin). I think the basic premise is “the world is changing so fast that any plans you make now might be meaningless in a decade, so focus on what’s knowable in the here and now, and your next step”. Dave Snowden from Cynefin points to Ana’s “The Next Right Thing” from Frozen 2 as excellent advice 😅
Stop looking at other people’s answers. Every time I ever looked out instead of in for the next big step it ended up being a gigantic mistake that blew up in my face.
the only reason I look out sometimes is because my world is so small and I know there’s so much else out there that I don’t know about. Plus, I was a sheltered child so asking outwards means I get a variety of perspectives to choose and learn from rather than whatever bs my parents taught me
Good answer. Ironically, pretty much all the answers here are good, and worth looking at (because they are mostly broad, general advice)
You don’t need a job you love, hardly anyone gets to do that. It’s amazing if you can, but a job you can tolerate is really all you need. Keep your eyes open for opportunities, take them if it feels right. Trust your instincts.
Save some money. Having a bit of financial freedom can drastically help you with having flexibility to do different things, and you need to do lots of different things to figure out what you like.
You will have to sacrifice comfort at some point and take some leaps into the unknown when the opportunity presents itself.
Most of all, get out of your hometown. The single biggest influence I’ve seen on people turning out great or people getting stuck in their ways is experiencing different things. College can get you part way there, but travel and living away from your hometown, especially if you can swing something international for a while, can help you immensely.
A job is a place you go where somebody pays you to do something you don’t want to do. You then use that money to fuck off and do the things you do want to do.
There are few people in the world who legit like their job.
Even if you go into your passion field, you might love it for a year but soon enough that too will become the “thing you have to do”.
I like legos, so now I’m an engineer.
I too like legos so I am now a capitalist
I like Legos, now I’m at the ER getting my stomach x-ray’d
Soon to be shitting bricks, eh?
I’m just praying they don’t stack
If they do, then may the old gods and the new have mercy on your hole
I was changing majors in college like changing clothes… but was the only one in my dorm that had her own computer and dot matrix printer and knew how to fix it. (yes I’m old) Took me way too long to figure out that my hobby was the foundation for a career.
…point being that you might be good at something that has value and you aren’t recognizing it.
Just try stuff and see where it takes you. Talk to lots of people from different walks of life too.
Go out and do things.
Anything, really, just don’t stay in. Try to do something fun and interesting. You’ll find paths through doing that you can’t get by applying for things.
The only air conditioned room at my first duty station was a closet they called a server room… No one wanted to do the computer stuff when the cool toys were on the airstrip.
As for advice… Don’t be scared, every adult you meet is faking it to some extent and it took me a long time to realize it. Also, be wary of random advice on the internet lol.
I’m not sure I know what I want for life but I have a number of things I don’t want so I’m trying my best to steer clear of those.
Did a whole bunch of different things. Stopped doing things I didn’t like when I had the security (money, support, etc.) to do so.
I found this book when I was almost 30 and it changed my life.
“Discover What You Are Best At” by Linda Gail.
It’s a series of self tests you can complete in a few hours and a list of the jobs that use those skills.
If you have a job that you don’t hate, you’ve solved a lot of life’s problems.
If you have a job that you don’t hate, you’ve solved a lot of life’s problems.
I’ll second this. There’s a reason people are paying you to do it. It won’t be fun every day, but not dreading having to go to work EVERY DAY is worth its weight in gold! Except for the whole “being able to spend it on good and services” thing.
I’ll third.
I think the best advice I can give is "stay focused, alert, and highly flexible. I certainly did not end up where I thought I was going to go.
- At 16 I wanted to study psychology.
- At 17 (college freshman) I studied philosophy assuming I’d go into law like my father.
- I graduated with a finance degree
- At 21 I began a career in IT (sysadmin) by turning my hobby into a job
- At 26 I began mixing my love of information security, and backgrounds in finance and law.
- At 31 I started my own company because my field was too niche to justify working for only one company
- At 52 I shitpost in Lemmy while trying to keep this country’s shit infrastructure from collapsing.
I found out that it’s more important to be flexible and be able to grab opportunities when they appear than to make the “right” decision.
There’s no right answer on how to live your life.
And besides that we live in times that are changing so rapidly that what you might be doing in the next 10 years donesnt even exists right now.
Just keep your brain sharp and your body healthy and you’ll be set.
Great answer, flexibility and adaptability is underrated.
You’re almost never gonna get a perfect opportunity. But you’ll get good ones that kind of match your skills now and then. And if your skill base is broad, then you’ll find good ones way more often. And if you’re happy to deal with the temporary discomfort of learning some specific skills quickly, then you can make use of many of them.
I think being capable of being deeply interested in many diverse things is a critical part of this.
