How to Find Out & Do What You Love To Do!

For millions of people all over the world, it is difficult to "Find out what they love to do". Even if they have an inkling about what they love to do, they have no clue as to how to go about "Doing What You Love" as a career.

Brian Kim says in How to Find What You Love to Do:

What absolutely boils my blood is that we hear we should be doing what we love to do all the time, but there’s not any step by step advice out there on how to find what you love to do. The advice that is out there helps to a certain degree, but it’s just a bunch of pieces thrown together with no coherent logical structure or order.

Susan Basalla May also hits a nerve when she says in How To Do what You Love:

Unfortunately, this suggestion sounds irritatingly vague to someone in the throes of job hunting. What if you love being an academic and are being driven out of the profession by a weak job market? What if you have a number of different passions (dogs, French colonial history, and country music) that don't add up to any recognizable career? What if you just don't know what you want to do?

While describing How to Do What You Love, Paul Graham eloquently describes how the society conspires to take us away from "Doing what we love to". He concludes:

Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it's rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you'll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you're in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you're practically there.

Brian Kim opines that It’s not hard at all to to find what you love to do. His Do-It-Yourself model:

Step 1: You WILL find the answer. No doubt.
Step 2: Make a list of your skills and interests in two columns and WRITE THEM DOWN.
Step 3: Set aside some TRUE alone time with no distractions to focus and figure out what you love to do by asking yourself the right questions.

For example:

What would I love to do on a daily basis utilizing both my skills and interests that will add significant value to people?

Susan Basalla May also outlines various strategies to "for putting the do-what-you-love philosophy into practice":

1. Finding Work You Love Takes Time

Even if you think you've already identified the right new career for yourself, it may take several years to gain enough experience to reach the position you want.

Don't put too much pressure on yourself -- be patient. As long you're heading in the general direction of whatever interests you, you're making good progress.

2. Avoid the Easy Answers

Take time to look beyond your academic specialty and investigate new fields.

3. Start Your Job Search From the Inside Out

An exercise known as "Seven Stories" -- from Kate Wendleton's book, Through the Brick Wall: How to Job-Hunt in a Tight Market (Random House, 1993), can help you evaluate your interests and skills from a different perspective.

Here's how it works: Make a list of 20 accomplishments - from anytime in your life - that you enjoyed doing and did well. You can mix childhood memories with recent events, and big professional moments with trivial victories. It may take you a few days to come up with your list.

Then, pick out the seven stories that seem most powerful to you, the ones that seem most characteristic of who you are. Write a paragraph about each of them describing what you did, how you felt, and the skills you demonstrated. You'll notice some surprising similarities. As you consider various career paths, compare them against your list of stories to see if they would draw upon the skills that you most enjoy using.

4. Dive In

While thoughtful decision-making is important, the best way to discover what you want to do is to simply try something new.

She concludes:

The key is having faith and trusting that your path will become clear eventually.

Last word to a reader - Bronwyn, who while commenting on Brian Kim's article, says:

So when you look over your goals, and one seems right, but you’re still finding excuses to not do what you have to do, that’s not it. It might be a close relative, but it’s not the one. Keep looking and you’ll find the goal that makes you counter every objection with a solution, the one where you’d happily pay whatever it takes, cash and years on the barrelhead right now. The path that makes you quiver with eagerness like a hunting dog on the point, the one over there you’ve been ignoring because you’ll have to learn a difficult new skill like drawing, or face big mistakes and big fears, and you didn’t believe you could do those things? That’s the one.

Admit how much you really want to go down it, tell yourself you really can do it, and then your passion will take over and you will not let anything keep you from it.