How to figure out what you want to do next - Part 1

A few years ago, when I graduated from my bachelors in Amsterdam, I felt lost.

My plan A didn't work out and there was no plan B.

It was a shock - being a student one day, having a regular schedule, goals to work towards and feeling as if I was on track, only to realize soon after that I had very few “real-world” skills after graduation.

It was a sobering experience.

I had no idea which direction I wanted to go in, let alone what were the next steps I should take.

I didn't have a systematic approach to figuring these things out either.

It felt like anything I would do would be a one-off effort - because, after all, figuring out what you want to do next cannot be done in one afternoon (unless a sudden 'aha' moment strikes you, which I wouldn't count on).

Long story short, through trial and error, I found:

a roadmap that guided me through the unknown and one which I was able to fall back upon when I got stuck
a set of building blocks that helped me gain more clarity on what I would like to do next
a great complement to my education, which focused on knowledge acquisition rather than building life skills
a deeper understanding of myself, which affects other areas of my life to this day.

The two books that helped me with these were A Job to Love by The School of Life and Designing Your Life by Bill Burnet and Dave Evans. Exercises I propose here are largely inspired by these books with modifications and additions from my own experience to make it as easy and practical as possible for you to follow.

With that said, I have divided the topic into two parts.

PART 1 is about defining what you need from the world - or in other words, understanding what drives you, what you enjoy and what you need.

PART 2 is about what the world can offer you - or, understanding which jobs can give you what you are looking for.

As The School of Life describes it:

'We need to start to understand ourselves in terms of the pleasure points to which we are more receptive and then sift through the labour market according to where given pleasures are likely to lie' - which is exactly what we're going to do.

Here, we are going to cover Part 1. Let's dive in.

What you need from the world

There are so many options available to us at any moment. It may feel like the possibilities are endless.

This is a liberating but also a scary concept.

How do you filter through what the external world has to offer? Which criteria do you use in filtering your options? And which criteria are must-have's versus nice-to-have's? Or maybe you just follow your hunch?

You sure can take the approach of experimentation: throw things against the wall and see what sticks. But this can be time-consuming and costly. And while I am a fan of testing things out and firmly believe that any experience can bring value, I also think we can effectively narrow down our options of what we decide to throw against the wall.

And to me, the best first step to do that is understanding yourself. It will help you build a solid baseline from which you're going to evaluate your options. It will help you define what are your needs, your goals, your inclinations, your values, preferred working style and so on.

To do that, it has served me well to approach these questions from 3 perspectives:

Past, which will tell us what we loved doing when money, time and skill were no concern
Present, which will tell us which activities in our current experience give us energy.
Future, which will tell us what our needs and dreams are in the long run.

With that being said, bear in mind that this is not about coming up with the answer. It is much more about defining a direction - which may, and will, change over time. So my suggestion to you would be to approach these exercises with curiosity and don't fixate on finding the one-and-only - which simply doesn't exist.

Ok, let's begin.

🧸 The past: what we enjoyed doing as children

There is a wealth of information about our, so to speak, natural inclinations, in our past experiences.

We simply need to take a look at them and reflect on what it is we loved doing back then. We can then extrapolate general statements that are one level higher that encapsulate this activity. In other words, we're going to categorise these activities and use these categories to inform our future choices.

For example, a love for drawing as a child could be categorised as our need for self expression or a love of beauty. Once we know that, we can try to re-introduce this into our lives either in its original form (drawing) or in a new way - for example, in a job where these categories are the bread and butter.

Ok, so here's what we're going to do:

1) First, think about and note down the things you loved doing as a child.

Think through the following categories:

activities you would do when no one told you to
what you liked and disliked about those activities
what toys you played with
how you felt at school
who you spent time with and why you liked or disliked it

If you're stuck and can't bring up any memories on the spot, you can let the thought simmer for a while and write things down as they come up during the following hours and days. Alternatively, check in with your family or childhood friends - ask them how they would describe you as a child and what were the things that you loved doing. Make sure to ask someone who has spent plenty of time with you and has a good idea of what these might be.

2) Next, we're going to look one level deeper.

This is important as the same activity can paint a very different picture of what we actually loved about it.

Let's take drawing as an example.

We could say that drawing could be made of the following elements:

choosing the colour scheme
being alone in peace and quiet if you drew in solitude or nature
being in a bustling space if you drew in cafes or streets
fascination with shapes and shades
if you were relying on your imagination, there is an element of, well, imagination and maybe freedom
if you preferred to draw what's in front of you, observation and precision were important
if you loved drawing houses, there is an element of structuring and planning
if you loved drawing people, there might be an element of curiosity about people's stories, characters and emotions
... and so on.

As you can see, if I draw because I love creating something out of nothing, it says something very different about me than if I draw because I take pleasure in replicating every single detail of what I see.

One has an inclination for freedom, imagination and maybe a touch of romanticism while the other values attention to detail and realism.

Do this for the activities you loved most. First try to describe them in general terms like I did above. Then, from the abundant list of descriptors, choose the ones that represent what you loved about this activity.

Give yourself time to go through this exercise. I also suggest setting up a quick capture tool, like Todoist, that would allow you to write down ideas as they occur to you throughout the day.

With this, let's move onto the next step.

👌 The present: the good time journal

We now have a good understanding of what we loved doing as kids. We know what the general pleasures are that sparked excitement years ago. Now is the time to verify if this still holds true and to 'catch ourselves in the act of having a good time' - as the authors of the book Designing your Life described it, where the following exercise comes from.

Your task over the next week will be to record your activities and how you feel about them.

Why?

Because it is difficult to understand what the patterns of what we like and dislike are and draw conclusions from them when we go about our days as usual.

This means that we have not articulated what are the things that energize us and vice versa, which implies we can't take conscious action on them and consider them in the design of our lives.

I know it can sound like a lot of work but it doesn't have to be.

To make it as frictionless as possible, I suggest using a tracking app. The one I use is Daylio because you can custom-add your daily activities and emotions. Over time, you receive stats on which elements occur frequently together, which will be useful when it comes time to analyse our entries.

For example, if you select your biochem class and feel engaged multiple times, Daylio will link the two together as a statistic, making it easier for us to analyse the outcomes further down the line.

So here's what I would do:

1) Set up your tracking app

First, set up the categories in your tracking: activities and emotions.

Starting with the activities category, note down the categories of activities you do throughout the week. For example, university class, gym, yoga, going out, writing, research etc - you can go as granular as you like by breaking each activity down further. For example, instead of university class, you can specify it as a biochemistry class- which would mean we have more data to play around with.

Do the same for the emotions category: what are the emotions you frequently experience?

If you're not sure what they are (like many of us), check out the emotions wheel. You don't need to enter all of the emotions from the wheel - choose the ones you experience most frequently.

2) Set up reminders

We have a few options here.

You can either create entries throughout your day as different emotions occur to you
You can create entries at the end of the day
Or you can do a hybrid of the two - which I recommend because it will allow us to capture all relevant info throughout the day and go through in depth questions for each activity and emotion when you have more time.

Depending on what you choose, set up reminders accordingly (either a couple of times throughout the day or at the end of your day or both).

3) Track

Now that we've set up the systems, let's track.

Below is an example of the hybrid approach but you can obviously tweak it to your liking.

Starting with the capture, we're going to have two prompts for creating an entry:

An emotion: Whenever you notice you feel something - either pleasant or unpleasant, open your app and add it together with an accompanying activity.
A new activity: This is the flipside of the one above: as you change activities throughout the day, notice how you feel when doing them.

4) Reflect

Next, when you have spare time, look closer at the entries you collected during the day and answer a couple of questions: Why did I feel this way? Was it triggered by the activity I was doing? A person? Context I was in? What was it about the activity that made me feel this way? Is this something to overcome or avoid?

5) Continue

Do this for at least a week - but obviously the longer, the more representative your data will be. I would choose a week that is quite typical and wouldn't go above tracking for two weeks.

6) Analyse

Once you're done, look at the stats section of the Daylio app - what do you notice? Are there some activities and topics that clearly drain you? Are there others that clearly give you a boost? What does it say about you?

Note that not all activities that drain you mean that you should avoid them. Some of them just need to get done. Others serve as indicators for areas that need improvement since our enjoyment is typically higher for things we are good at.

🚀 The future: your vision

I like this step a lot. It always lifts me up.

It is about defining your absolute dream life.

Where would you be?
With who?
How would you feel on a daily basis?
How much would you work per day?
How would your relationships look like?
How is your health?
Do you have pets?
What excites you?
What are you making?

Why would we go through an abstract exercise that seems just like daydreaming?

Because if we don't define our dreams, we risk working on goals that are not meaningful to us.

When you specify where you want to head to, you have a direction and a compass to guide the goals you commit to, the projects you pursue and your daily choices.

Whether the vision you create for yourself materializes through your decisions and your work - I don't know but I believe it can. And certainly having an aspirational North Star to move towards doesn't hurt.

In terms of the format - it really is up to you. You can make a vision board with pictures and images, draw it, write in bullet points, write an essay. You decide.

I made mine in Notion with both pictures and short descriptions underneath them to add depth to the images and quick references so that I know what the image was pointing towards.

Another example: Tim Feriss's podcast guest, Debbie Millman, calls her version 'The 10 year essay for a remarkable life'. She recommends imagining a day in your life in 10 years and write a letter about it with as many details as possible.

You can access the podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S_Ims5oX-s

So I encourage you to take the time to make your own version of the vision board. A quick Google search can help you with the details or head to the link above and listen to the inspiring story of Debbie Millman.

Make sure not to rush it - take a nice long weekend if you can and spend it daydreaming :)

That's it for Part 1.