Aaron Bergman

Disclaimer: I’ve never held a job for more than a year [1] or been paid more than $15 an hour. Take everything I say with a grain of salt. Many of my peers seem to make career plans like by asking things like 1. What am I interested in, or what do I like doing? and 2. How can I do something related to that? which might lead to some of the following: * A person who likes dancing tries to work in the arts industry. * A person who likes video games tries to get into game design. * A person who is interested in healthcare policy tries to study or design healthcare policy. The problem here, in terms of diminished performance, happiness, and satisfaction, is a conflation of the topic and the content. The topic is not the content! The topic In my schema, the topic is what the work is about. If you’re the manager of a pillow company, the topic is pillows. If you’re defending accused criminals in court, the topic is criminal law. A lot of folks, it seems to me, focus a lot on the topic when deciding which subjects to study or which jobs to apply for. Someone who is interested in physics might major in physics. Someone who loves to work out might try to become a personal trainer. I don’t think this makes much sense. Should people ignore what they’re interested in and like to do, then? Well, maybe. 80,000 Hours, perhaps the single best career planning resource out there, writes that > The bottom line > To find a dream job, look for: > > 1. Work you’re good at, > 2. Work that helps others, > 3. Supportive conditions: engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow; supportive colleagues; lack of major negatives like unfair pay; and work that fits your personal life. Ok, but the term “engaging work” is doing a lot of work here (no pun intended), and seems awfully synonymous with “work that you like.” So, how do you find work that you like doing? If there’s anything my utterly negligible work experiences has taught me, it’s that it usually makes more sense