There are so many choices today that it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the vast array of career possibilities. Paradoxically the more choices people have, the more they paralyze themselves trying to find the right choice, and the less satisfied they are with their eventual decision.
Too often people approach career decisions with a mindset that doesn’t serve them. This is the mindset that says, “I should invest the up-front effort to make the correct career choice now. Maybe my career won’t be the same forever, but if I make the right choice, I can at least enjoy a great career for the next 10 years or so. If I make a bad decision, it could screw me up for a long time.”
The problem with this mindset is that it places too much of a barrier between decision and action, as if they’re two distinct phases in the career development process. In reality these phases are rarely distinct. Career decisions are ongoing, and you’re free to change directions at any moment.
Go outside
Yesterday Erin and the kids and I went to see Bee Movie. (This paragraph may contain a spoiler or two, so skip it if you don’t want to know the details of the film.) In the movie the main character, voiced by Jerry Seinfeld, has to choose a job for himself, one he’ll keep for the rest of his life. He’s overwhelmed by the decision, so he procrastinates. Eventually he goes on a ride-along with the “pollen jockeys” to fly outside the hive for the first time, which leads to a winding exploration of the outside world. This exposes him to new ideas, and he does what no bee has done before. At the end of the movie, his final career choice seems to be ”animal attorney,” but he also appears to have the freedom to continue flying with the pollen jockeys.
I thought Bee Movie’s cheesy humor needed some work, but I liked the message: If you don’t like the career choices in front of you, don’t decide. Go outside and explore, and let your intuition guide you.
What many people don’t realize, however, is that this exploration never ends. Exploring is an integral part of any fulfilling career, not merely something you do before making the choice. No career choice is final.
If you’re feeling stuck in your career choices, maybe none of them are right for you. Go outside your comfy hive. Do some of the things you’ve always wanted to try, even if they don’t seem relevant to your career. This exploration will serve you well.
Exploring vs. deciding
A career is just a hobby you’ve committed to exploring more deeply. You don’t need to make the perfect choice, since the enjoyment comes from the exploration, not the outcome. If you don’t enjoy the hobby, dump it and try something else. If you like the hobby, stick with it for a while.
When I started learning to program in BASIC at age 10, I wasn’t thinking about making a lifelong career choice. I didn’t care about job titles, salary, or benefits. I did it because I enjoyed it. By age 12 I was spending hours working through books like Dr. C. Wacko’s Guide to Designing and Programming Your Own Atari Computer Arcade Games (undoubtedly the most fun and original programming book I’ve ever read).
Further down the road, a career in game development became a natural extension of my hobby. As I made additional career decisions, I asked myself, “What would be fun and interesting to do next?” as opposed to “What permanent career choice should I make?” Even when I started working in game development, I never expected it to be permanent.
Joy outward
If you focus on exploring what you enjoy, even if it’s just as a hobby, you may discover the following progression:
- Enjoyment - If you do what you enjoy, you’ll tend to keep doing it. A fun hobby becomes a habit.
- Skill - If you do it long enough, you’ll get good at it. A long-term habit becomes a skill.
- Service - If you share your skill with others, you’ll provide value to them. A skill becomes a service.
- Income - If you provide enough value to enough people, you’ll be able to generate income from it. A service becomes a career.
This process works whether you’re self-employed or traditionally employed, and the steps may overlap as well.
Here are a couple specific examples of how this worked in my own life:
Example 1: Game programming
- Enjoyment - I spent years exploring computer programming as a hobby during my pre-teen and teen years. I kept it up for so long because it was fun.
- Skill - By putting in the time, going through dozens of books, and writing lots of small programs, I developed proficiency as a programmer. This took years, but again I did it because I enjoyed it.
- Service - During high school I started sharing programs I’d written to help students with their math homework. One even got published in the school newspaper. I invested hundreds of hours writing, refining, and sharing these programs. I never charged for them, but I provided value by using my skill to help others. The limitation was that I only shared my work within my own school.
- Income - During college I started working on my first commercial game for a local studio and finally started generating income from my hobby. After that I started my own games business and ran it for more than 10 years.
Notice that these phases overlapped quite a bit, but all four were present.
Example 2: Blogging
In this example the 4 steps of enjoyment, skill-building, service, and income are more jumbled, but once again all are still present.
- Skill - In school I never liked writing and tried to avoid it whenever possible. However, I had a very demanding high school English teacher who pushed me to improve my writing skills. He didn’t get me to enjoy writing, but I did learn a great deal from him. With a lot of hard work, I improved from a C+ on my first high school paper to eventually earn As in his classes. Writing college papers was a breeze compared to his assignments, which included writing an essay without using the letter E.
- Enjoyment - It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that I began to enjoy writing. When I started programming my first web pages in HTML in 1995, I would code the HTML and write the page content as I went along. My enjoyment of programming began to infect my writing.
- Service - In 1999 I became active in the Association of Shareware Professionals and began writing articles for their newsletter. I didn’t get paid, nor did I write those articles for PR purposes, but I received positive feedback on them. I added the articles to my web site, so non-ASP members could read them too, and then I wrote and posted a few more. During the early 2000s, those articles grew in popularity and spread outside the programming community. They were still completely free as well as ad-free. Finally in 2004 I launched StevePavlina.com as a place to share even more articles with a broader audience. For the first 5 months, the site didn’t generate any income, but I just kept writing for free. By this time I was really enjoying the creative act of writing as well as hearing feedback from people as they applied the ideas.
- Income - In February 2005, I put the first Adsense ads on StevePavlina.com. At the time I honestly thought it was a borderline lame idea, but I agreed to try it as an experiment after several readers suggested it. It made $53 the first month, enough that I could sense its long-term potential. By the end of the year, the income had grown by a factor of 20, and it kept going up from there as I optimized the site and added new income sources.
Notice that in this case, I took advantage of a skill I started developing earlier, but the enjoyment of writing still came before the income. At the time I started developing my writing skills, the career of blogging didn’t even exist.
From hobby to career
While you can experience these steps in any order, I think enjoyment is the best place to begin, since clarity there will help you with the other three parts. Rarely do I see people achieve happy and fulfilling careers by going after what they think will earn them the most money if it isn’t something they’d already enjoy doing for free.
What do you already enjoy doing for free? What do you pay money for the privilege of doing? For every money-draining hobby, someone is already making good money by using their skill to provide a valuable service.
For example, many people love playing computer games. Some found a way to turn their hobby into a public service by launching game review sites, game download sites, game discussion forums, and similar businesses. Now publishers send them all the games they could want for free. When they don’t want to write the reviews themselves, they recruit other gamers to write for them.
Sure it takes a bit of work to turn a hobby into a career, but if you’re doing it for free anyway, why not find it way to share your skill with others, provide a useful service, and get paid for it?
Discuss this post in the forums.
© 2007 by Steve Pavlina. If you find these ideas helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.
译文:
把爱好变为职业
探索职业选择
今时今日的选择是如此之多，人们很容易便会被从事各种职业的可能性淹没。荒谬的是，人们拥有的选择越多，越努力去寻找其中正确的，他们对自己最终的决定就会越不满。
人们经常会采用并不适合自己的思路来决定他们的职业选择。这种思路诸如：“我此刻应先努力做好正确的职业选择。也许不会一蹴而就，但如果我选对了，至少未来十年左右我可以好好享受我的职业。如果选错了，那可就要在痛苦中挣扎很久了。”
这种思路的问题在于，它在做决定和采取行动之间设置了太多障碍。好像它俩在职业发展过程中是两个独立的阶段似的。事实上，这两个阶段并非是各自独立的。职业决定是不断进行的，你在任何时候都可以改变方向。
走出去
昨天我和Erin以及孩子们一起去看电影《蜜蜂》。在电影中，由Jerry Seinfeld配音的主角要为自己找份持续终生的工作。他被做决定的压力压倒了，于是一直拖着。最后他跟一个“花粉工”一起，第一次飞出蜂房，探索了一番外面的世界。这让他找到了新灵感，并做了蜜蜂从未做过的事。在影片结尾，他最终的职业选择好像是当个“动物律师”，但他也可以继续自由地跟花粉工们一起飞进飞出。
我觉得《蜜蜂》中一些不怎么样的幽默可以再改进一下，但我喜欢个中传传递的信息：如果你不喜欢摆在眼前的职业选择，那就别做决定。走出去探索一下，让直觉引导你。
然而，许多人并未认识到的是，这种探索是永不停息的。对于任何圆满的职业生涯而言，探索是其中主要的组成部分，而不仅仅是你做决定之前才要做的一件事。没有什么职业选择是决定性的。
如果你觉得自己被困于职业选择当中，也许是因为这些选择都不适合你。走出舒适的蜂房吧，去做些你一直想尝试的事，即便它们似乎跟你的职业毫不搭界。这种探索会起很大的作用。
探索 VS. 决定
一种确定的职业，只是一种你决定更加深入地探索的爱好。你无须做出完美的选择，因为快感来自于探索的过程，而不是结果。如果你不再感兴趣，那就丢掉它，再去试试别的。如果你喜欢，那就接着干下去。
当我10岁开始学习BASIC语言时，并没有想过这是在做一生的职业选择。我不在乎工作的头衔、薪酬或福利。我只是因为喜欢才干。12岁时我每天花好几个小时看诸如《Dr. C. Wacko’s Guide to Designing and Programming Your Own Atari Computer Arcade Games 》（一本游戏编程方面的书——译者注）这样的书。（毫无疑问，这是我看过的最有趣且最独特的编程书。）
许久之后，从事在游戏开发方面的职业便自然而然地成了我爱好的扩展。当我在做其它的职业决定时，我自问：“接下来该做些什么有趣的事呢？”而不是“我该以什么来作为我的终生职业？”即便当我在游戏开发行业工作时，我也从未想过那是否一份终生的职业。
爱好第一
如果你致力于找出自己所喜欢的是什么，就算只是找个爱好，你也可能会发现下述过程：
1. 爱好——如果你做着自己喜欢的事，你就可能一直坚持下去。一个有趣的爱好就变 成了习惯。
2. 技能——如果你做的时间够长，便会十分擅长。一个长期的习惯就变成了技能。
3. 服务——如果你与他人分享你的技能，你就会为他们提供价值。一个技能就变成了服务。
4. 收入——如果你为足够的人提供足够的价值，你便可以从中获得收入。一种服务就变成了职业。
无论你是自己当老板，还是传统意义上的员工，这个过程都会存在。这些步骤也可能会重叠。
以下是这个过程在我的生活中起作用的一些具体例子：
例1：游戏编程
1. 爱好——我在20岁之前，因为爱好而花了许多年来研究游戏编程。我坚持了那么长时间，不过是因为很好玩。
2. 技能——如此投入时间、阅读大量书籍，并写了许多小程序之后，我把自己培养成了一个熟练的程序员。这用了许多年，但再次强调，我是因为喜欢才这么做的。
3. 服务——在高中时，我把自己写的程序拿来帮助同学们完成数学作业。有个程序甚至发表在了校报上。我花了几百个小时来编写、优化和分享这些程序。我从没有收过费，只是用我的技能提供价值来帮助他人。局限在于，我只把作品分享给了同校的同学。
4. 收入——大学时代我开始在本地的一个工作室编写我的第一个商业游戏，并最终从我的爱好中获得了收入。后来我开办了自己的游戏公司，并经营了十年有余。
注意，这些阶段有些重叠之处，但四个部分皆备。
例2：写博客
在这个例子中，爱好、技能培养、服务和收入这四步更加乱套，但它们依旧统统存在。
1. 技能——在校时，我根本不爱写作，甚至只要一有可能就逃避。然而，高中时有个非常严格的英语老师，一直逼着我提高写作能力。他并没有让我喜欢上写作，但我确实从他那儿学了不少东西。颇费一番努力后，我的成绩从第一篇高中作文的C＋，到最后在他的课程上得了许多的A。比起他的要求——比如写一篇通篇没有字母E的文章——撰写大学论文简直是小儿科。
2. 爱好——至少到20世纪90年代中期，我才开始喜欢上写作。当我1995年开始编写我的第一个网页时，我可以在编写HTML代码的同时写一页的文字内容。我对编程的热爱开始影响我的写作。
3. 服务——1999年，我开始在共享软件作者协会中活跃起来，并开始为他们的时事通讯撰文。我没有报酬，也并非为了宣传自己。但我为此收到了不错的反馈。我把这些文章加入了自己的网站，这样一来，非共享软件作者协会的成员也可以看到。后来我越写越多，发布得也越来越多。在进入两千年之后的前期，那些文章越来越受欢迎，并在编程业界内广为传播。那时这些文章仍是完全免费，并且没有广告的。最终，在2004年，我建立了StevePavlina.com 这个网站，作为一个给更广大的读者提供更多文章的平台。在头五个月里，这个网站并没有产生任何收入，但我一直坚持免费写作。在这段时间，我真正爱上了写作这种创造性的活动，也非常喜欢听到人们应用我的想法后带来的反馈。
4. 收入——2005年5月，我在StevePavlina.com 上放了第一个Adsense的广告。当时我其实在想，这不过是个蹩脚的做法，但在一些读者的建议之后，我同意权当做个试验。第一个月它带来了53美元的收入，这足以让我感到它长期的利润潜力。到了那年年底，收入增长了20倍，并且当我优化了网站，又增加了新的收入渠道后还在增长。
请注意，在这个案例中，我用上了早期开发的技能，但对于写作的热爱依然是收入的源头。当我开始培养自己的写作技能时，博客这种职业甚至还不存在呢。
从爱好到职业
不管是哪种顺序，当你体验到这些过程时，我想，爱好都是最好的开头，因为清楚自己的爱好更可以协助发展另外三个步骤。我几乎没有看到过什么人是因为追寻能赚大钱的手段而达成快乐而圆满的职业生涯的，除非他们之前就已经对之有着无条件的喜爱。
你现在已经有了什么无条件的爱好？你愿意为做什么事而付钱？对于每种耗费金钱的爱好，有人已经用他们因此学来的技能提供有价值的服务而赚了大钱。
比如，许多人喜欢玩电脑游戏。有些人便找到了把这爱好变为公共服务的生财之道：开办游戏评论网站、游戏下载网站、游戏论坛，以及类似的生意。现在，出版商给他们免费寄送一切他们想要的游戏。当他们不想亲自写评论时，还可以雇佣其它的玩家为他们写作。
当然，要把爱好变成职业，需要花上一些功夫。但假如你已经在无条件地做这件事，那为什么不把你的技能分享给他人，提供有用的服务，并以此获得收入呢？
更多信息，请访问我的博客：活色生香 Nicole俱佳日