Today you will learn about the third moment of revelation on your path to purpose: you have a choice. You will learn about the types of choices you have, why choice is important, and how to evaluate and make choices for careers that are meaningful and allow you to implement your solutions.
Summary
What does it mean to have a choice?
The Third Moment of Revelation: I have a choice in life to pursue the best fit for me and to make a difference.
Victor Frankel said that "man’s freedom is no freedom from conditions but rather freedom to take a stand on whatever conditions might confront him."
You have no choice whether global problems happen. They just happen. The choice you have is how you are going to react to those problems.
You can stand there and despair and hope that somebody else fixes it, or you can take responsibility and try and make the world a better place.
You have a choice in what ways you take action to solve problems, aiming for a balance of effectiveness and fulfillment.
When looking at choices, determine what is the right fit, the match between your individuality and your circumstances.
The true power of choice is the power to find and select opportunities to activate the greatest number of motives, self-interests, preferences, strengths, and everything else that's unique to us.
If you're free to search for choices that fit your individuality, you might discover opportunities that nobody else would've even noticed.
When you have the ability to make your own choices for how you will learn, work, and live, you're creating the life that's correct for you.
What do we look for when choosing a career?
In today's society we are required to be productive members, undertaking some type of work for the betterment of others. You get to choose that work, what you will produce or create.
When choosing that work, look for the following items:
Engaging Work: uses your strengths, but is also challenging your weaknesses to foster growth; you have the freedom to decide how to perform your work; tasks are clear; you have a variety of tasks; you get feedback about how you're doing.
Helping Others: this isn't the only route to a meaningful career, but it's widely accepted by researchers that it's one of the most powerful.
Work Your Good At: gives you a sense of achievement, an ingredient that's necessary for life satisfaction, and helps to negotiate for other components that may make your work more fulfilling, such as the ability to work on meaningful projects, undertake engaging tasks, or earn more pay for your family.
Supportive colleagues: don't only think about the tasks, but the people you'll be working with in order to fulfill those tasks.
Personal Fit: how does this career integrate with the rest of your life
Why are choices important?
Not every strategy or plan we choose to implement in life is going to work, nor will everything be fulfilling to you. You have to know your choices so you can pivot and choose better fitting strategies.
Fulfillment always requires decision making between choices.
Man is pushed by drives, but pulled by meaning. This implies that it is always up to him to decide whether or not he wishes to fulfill the latter.
You're not just following your passion, you're developing a purpose because you understand yourself and activating all of your interests. As you activate those interests, you make bold moves towards the choices that are gonna be the best fit for you.
Each time you make a meaningful choice based on your assessment of the fit between your interests and the opportunities available for you, you are forging your own purpose. You are dictating the meaning and direction of your life.
How to evaluate and choose a career to implement your solutions
Step One: Create a List of Options
Write a big list options including careers, opportunities or projects you could you start or join that would help you implement your solution
Answer questions like:
If you couldn't take any of the options on your first list, what would you do?
What would you do if money were no object?
What do your friends or peers advise?
Can you combine some of your options to make the best of both worlds?
And could you find any more opportunities through your connections?
Step Two: Evaluate Your List
Rank order your options. Get precise about the ones that are best for you.
Score options from one to five, based on how much impact you can make, how much this opportunity aligns with your personal fit, the level of job satisfaction you could receive from this opportunity and any other factors that are important to you.
Cut down to a short list, eliminate the options that are worse on all factors and the ones that are very poor on just one factor.
When you have these options, think about the key uncertainties that you have when making these choices:
What information could most easily change your ranking?
If you could get the answer to one question, which question would be most useful?
If you're stuck, imagine you had to decide your career in just one weekend. What would you do in that time to make the right choice?
Step Three: Investigate and Explore
Now that you have options, and questions about those options, you need to do a little research to answer any uncertainties.
Do a series of explorations for any choice based on how much time and effort each one would take, starting with the ones that can be done most quickly and with the least amount of effort and moving to the more complex explorations.
Make sure that you do the smaller levels of exploration before you do the larger ones.
Put reversible options first.
Take options that will let your experience multiple areas at once.
Take options that give you the free time and energy to explore other things outside of work.
Try doing things on the side of your main work.
Explore options that build flexible career capital which are skills, relationships, and network that you build as you take on different jobs and roles.
Step Four: Create a Career Plan
Use the ABZ method from 80,000 Hours to create a career plan.
Plan A is the top option you'd like to pursue.
Plan B is a nearby alternative that you can switch into if plan a doesn't quite go as intended.
Plan Z is your temporary fallback in case everything goes wrong.
A good idea is to review this plan at least once a year, because odds are you're not going get it right the first time.
Begin by creating a list of careers or opportunities or projects you could you start or join that would help you start implementing your solution you devised in the previous lesson
Use the steps above to create a career plan for yourself.
Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have masteredthe knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.
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