How to figure out what to do with your life

Summary

This video encourages viewers to rethink traditional career aspirations by focusing on intrinsic job qualities that lead to satisfaction. The speaker shares personal experiences and introduces self-determination theory, highlighting autonomy, competence, and relatedness as key. They also offer a list of seven specific job traits to consider, such as creative autonomy and work-life balance, advocating for pursuing interests and gaining diverse experiences to find fulfilling work.

Takeaways

• 🧐 The video challenges the traditional career advice of focusing on specific job roles or companies and suggests that the nature of work itself is more important for satisfaction.
• 🤔 The speaker reflects on their diverse experiences and finds that the satisfaction derived from them is not tied to the job title but the work's inherent qualities.
• 🔑 Self-determination theory, introduced by Edward Deci, identifies three main qualities that make work satisfying: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• 🏗️ The speaker emphasizes the importance of building new things rather than maintaining existing ones for personal fulfillment.
• 📚 A love for learning and the opportunity to acquire new skills and knowledge is crucial for the speaker's job satisfaction.
• 🎨 The level of creative autonomy in one's work is highlighted as a significant factor in determining job satisfaction.
• 🤝 The nature and amount of interaction with others at work, including the type of relationships formed, play a vital role in job enjoyment.
• 👩‍💼 The speaker prefers a hands-on role without the responsibility of managing others, valuing the freedom to focus on creative tasks.
• 🌟 The desire for being in the spotlight and receiving recognition for one's work is a legitimate and important aspect of job satisfaction for some individuals.
• 🏡 Work-life balance is essential, and the speaker encourages considering personal life priorities when choosing a career path.
• 🔑 The speaker advises pursuing interests and being observant of what qualities in work resonate with an individual to find satisfying employment.
• 🛠️ Skillshare is presented as a resource for gaining practical skills and experiences that can help individuals explore different career paths.

Q & A

What is the common question asked to children about their future aspirations?

The common question asked to children about their future aspirations is 'What do you wanna be when you grow up?'

What does the speaker believe might be incomplete about the typical answers to the question of future aspirations?

The speaker believes that typical answers related to specific job roles or companies might be incomplete, as they may not fully address what makes work truly satisfying.

What is the speaker's view on the importance of the nature of work for job satisfaction?

The speaker believes that job satisfaction is not about the specific job role or company, but rather the traits and qualities of the work itself.

What are the three main qualities that self-determination theory posits make work satisfying?

According to self-determination theory, the three main qualities that make work satisfying are autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

What does the speaker suggest doing to find work that one loves doing?

The speaker suggests finding work that has high levels of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, as well as observing personal interests and the seven specific qualities he lists.

What is the first quality on the speaker's list of seven that he looks for in his work?

The first quality on the speaker's list is whether the work involves building new things from scratch or maintaining existing ones.

How does the speaker describe the importance of learning in his work?

The speaker describes learning as crucial to his work satisfaction, stating that he loves to learn and gets checked out if work does not offer opportunities to learn something new.

What does the speaker mean by 'creative autonomy' and why is it important to him?

Creative autonomy refers to the level of decision-making power one has in their work. It is important to the speaker because it allows him to have complete control over the content he creates, which he finds fulfilling.

How does the speaker differentiate between the types of interactions he prefers in his work and those of in-person tutoring?

The speaker prefers the solitude of creating content for the internet, where he can build something that is his and share it with the world, as opposed to in-person tutoring, which involves a different level and type of interaction.

What is the speaker's view on the importance of managing others in relation to his own work satisfaction?

The speaker does not like managing other people and prefers to focus on his own work, which is why he delegates management tasks in his company.

How does the speaker approach the desire for the spotlight and its potential negative connotations?

The speaker acknowledges his enjoyment of the spotlight but emphasizes that it is not problematic as long as he keeps his ego in check and makes efforts to acknowledge the work of others.

What advice does the speaker give to someone trying to figure out what to do with their life?

The speaker advises pursuing interests and working hard at them, gaining as much experience as possible, and being observant of the work's qualities and how they resonate personally.

What is Skillshare and how can it help someone gain new skills or experience?

Skillshare is an online learning platform with thousands of classes on various topics that can teach practical skills, helping individuals gain the necessary experience and knowledge in areas of interest.

Outlines

00:00

🤔 The Evolving Concept of Career Satisfaction

This paragraph explores the common childhood question about future careers and challenges the traditional focus on specific job roles or companies. The speaker reflects on their diverse experiences over the past decade, suggesting that job satisfaction may not stem from the job itself but from the intrinsic qualities of the work. The speaker introduces self-determination theory, highlighting autonomy, competence, and relatedness as key factors for a satisfying career, and proposes a list of seven personal qualities to consider when seeking fulfilling work.

05:01

🛠 The Seven Qualities of Fulfilling Work

The speaker delves into seven specific qualities that contribute to a satisfying work experience, based on their personal journey and introspection. These include the preference for building versus maintaining, the desire to learn new skills, the level of creative autonomy, the amount and type of interaction with others, the level of authority over others, the desire for being in the spotlight, and the importance of work-life balance. Each quality is discussed in the context of the speaker's own career and how it has shaped their understanding of what makes work fulfilling.

10:02

🚀 Pursuing Interests and Gaining Experience

In the concluding paragraph, the speaker advises on how to approach one's career path by emphasizing the importance of pursuing current interests and gaining a wide range of experiences. They suggest being observant and reflective about the work qualities that resonate with the individual. The speaker also addresses the common challenge of gaining experience without prior experience, recommending volunteering, personal projects, and self-directed learning through platforms like Skillshare. The paragraph ends with a promotional offer for Skillshare and a reminder of the importance of exploring different avenues to find work that aligns with one's values and interests.

Keywords

💡Career

Career refers to the professional path or occupation that an individual chooses to pursue for a significant part of their life. In the video, the concept of career is discussed in the context of job satisfaction and the evolving nature of work over time. The script mentions various job roles such as firefighter, engineer, and CEO, illustrating the traditional view of career choices.

💡Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction is a positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or career. The video emphasizes the importance of job satisfaction and suggests that it is not solely determined by the specific job role or company but by the intrinsic qualities of the work itself.

💡Traits and Qualities of Work

Traits and qualities of work refer to the inherent characteristics of a job that contribute to an individual's sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. The video suggests that these traits, rather than the job title or company, are what truly matter in determining job satisfaction.

💡Self-Determination Theory

Self-Determination Theory is a psychological framework proposed by Edward Deci, which posits that three main qualities—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—make work satisfying. The video references this theory to explain the underlying factors that contribute to job satisfaction.

💡Autonomy

Autonomy in the context of the video refers to the degree of control an individual has over their time and actions in their work. It is one of the three key factors identified by the Self-Determination Theory that contributes to job satisfaction.

💡Competence

Competence, as discussed in the video, is the feeling of being skilled in one's work and the sense that the work performed is meaningful and non-trivial. It is another key factor from the Self-Determination Theory that influences job satisfaction.

💡Relatedness

Relatedness is the third component of the Self-Determination Theory, which involves an individual's connections to other people and their sense of being an integral part of a group. The video uses this concept to discuss the importance of social connections in the workplace.

💡Personal Projects

Personal projects refer to individual endeavors outside of formal employment that allow a person to gain experience and develop skills. The video encourages viewers to undertake personal projects as a means to gain experience and explore interests without the need for external permission.

💡Skillshare

Skillshare is an online learning platform mentioned in the video as a resource for gaining practical skills in various areas. It is presented as an accessible option for individuals to learn and build skills that can contribute to their personal and professional development.

💡Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is the equilibrium between an individual's work responsibilities and personal life. The video touches on this concept, discussing the importance of prioritizing personal relationships and time off from work to ensure overall satisfaction and well-being.

💡Spotlight

Spotlight in the video refers to the desire for recognition and attention for one's work or achievements. It is presented as a personal preference that can influence job satisfaction, with the video discussing the societal perceptions and personal feelings associated with seeking the spotlight.

Highlights

The video discusses the inadequacy of traditional career aspirations and suggests exploring deeper questions for career satisfaction.

The speaker reflects on a decade of diverse projects and the satisfaction derived from them, emphasizing the importance of pursuing varied interests.

The concept of self-determination theory by Edward Deci is introduced, highlighting autonomy, competence, and relatedness as key to job satisfaction.

The speaker proposes seven specific qualities to look for in work that can lead to personal satisfaction, offering a nuanced approach to career choice.

Building vs. maintaining: The preference for creating new things rather than maintaining existing ones is identified as a crucial work quality.

The importance of continuous learning and the role it plays in maintaining engagement and satisfaction in work is discussed.

Creative autonomy is highlighted as a significant factor, influencing the level of control one has over their work decisions.

Interaction with others is explored in terms of quantity and type of relationships, affecting job satisfaction.

The speaker shares personal experiences with managing others and the preference for focusing on individual creative work.

The desire for the spotlight and its implications on work choice is examined, including societal views and personal feelings.

Work-life balance is defined as a critical aspect of career decision-making, with considerations for personal life priorities.

The speaker advises on pursuing interests and being observant of work qualities during the accumulation of experience.

Skillshare is recommended as a platform for gaining practical skills and experience in various fields.

A free trial offer for Skillshare is presented, encouraging viewers to take advantage of the opportunity to learn new skills.

The video concludes with a reminder of the importance of aligning work with personal values and interests for true satisfaction.

Transcripts

- This video is sponsored by Skillshare.

There's a 10 word phrase

that almost all of us get asked when we're kids,

what do you wanna be when you grow up?

And for most of us, the answer to that question

usually has to do with specific job roles,

firefighter, engineer, CEO,

or sometimes it is a specific company we wanna work for,

Tesla, Apple, Nintendo, whatever company it may be.

And I'm not here today to say the answers

to those questions are wrong

or that the question itself is wrong.

But when it comes to the challenge of figuring out

what to do with your career,

what to do with your life

and what makes work truly satisfying,

these types of answers might be incomplete.

And there might be better questions to ask.

I am almost 30 years old at this point.

And I was reflecting the other day on the 10 years

that I've spent running my business,

my website, College Info Geek,

my podcast, The Inforium and this YouTube channel.

And I was reflecting on the fact that over those 10 years,

I've been a part of tons of different

and very disparate projects

all of which I've gotten a lot of satisfaction from.

These include things like learning PHP

and making tweaks to my website's WordPress theme,

to learning about cinematic lighting setups,

and camera sliders, and focus pulling,

and basically setting up intense camera setups,

being a camera operator

to being on stage giving presentations

and being in front of the camera, making videos

to improving the physical networking setup in my home

to even going through the US tax code

and writing Excel formulas so that my budget spreadsheet

would calculate my taxes correctly.

These all seem incredibly different.

And if I had taken my experiences with just one of them

and gone to a high school career counselor

and asked them what I should do with my life,

they would give me a ton of different answers.

They would say, I should become a web developer

or maybe a network technician or an actor or a news anchor,

or a camera operator in Hollywood or an accountant.

And of course, all these jobs are incredibly different

and what's more important,

they each have their own unique path of education

and experience required in order to get to them.

So if I were to go back in time,

how would I know what to tell 18 year old Thomas to pursue

since I've done all these things

and gotten a lot of satisfaction out of all of them?

Well, in truth, it really doesn't matter,

but I would tell 18 year old Thomas

is pursue what interests you now,

because I've come to believe

that what makes work satisfying

isn't the specific job role that we have.

It isn't the specific company that we work for.

It's the traits and qualities of the work itself.

And this is obviously, if you think about time,

a lot of the jobs we do today,

haven't been around very long.

YouTuber has only been a job for let's say 10 years.

YouTube has been around for more like 14 or 16,

but how long have professional YouTube has been around,

react developer, well, that's been around

as long as the react programming language has been around,

I guess the JavaScript framework.

All these jobs didn't exist 50 years ago,

75 years ago, a hundred years ago,

and people who were in their prime careers back then,

weren't sitting around just wishing

that these fulfilling jobs would come out of the heavens

so they would stop feeling unfulfilled in their work.

They had work that fulfilled them as well.

The motivational psychologists, Edward Deci,

did a lot of this kind of research

on motivation and job satisfaction and came up

with a framework called self-determination theory,

which I first learned about

in Cal Newport's book, "Deep Work".

And this theory posits that there are three main qualities

that make work satisfying;

autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Autonomy is essentially your level of control

over your time and your actions.

Competence is the feeling that you are skilled in your work

and that it's non-trivial work,

it's a skill that's worth having.

And finally, relatedness

has to do with your connections to other people.

Do you feel loved by them?

Do you feel respected by them?

Do you feel like you're an integral part of your group,

both with your coworkers at work,

but also with your personal relationships.

So according to the self-determination theory,

to find work that you love doing,

to find your passion as it were,

involves simply finding work

that has these three qualities in spades.

And I think that is good advice,

but I think there are also some more specific qualities

that you should be on the lookout for.

And I've actually got a list of seven of them

that I wanna share,

which I have been keeping in a list

ever since my original internship in college

kind of shattered my original high school career goals.

So let me explain that for a second.

When I was in high school,

I wanted to be a systems administrator.

I was gonna go to college,

I was gonna get an IT degree,

and that was going to be the guy in the chair

with 15 monitors, kind of like Tank from The Matrix.

That was my dream.

But then, after my sophomore year in college,

I got a job at a fortune 500 finance company

in the IT department.

And I remember thinking to myself,

during that internship,

that those three months felt like a prison sentence.

I could not wait to get out of that job.

Now, this had nothing to do with the people

that I worked with, my coworkers, my boss, my mentors,

they were all great,

but the nature of the work made me feel trapped

and I really, really didn't enjoy it.

And as I started to journal and kind of record my feelings,

I started to realize some of the reasons why.

And it came up with this list of seven qualities

that I now look for in the work that I do.

So the first one is this,

are you building, or are you maintaining?

Do you do work where you're building new things from scratch

or are you maintaining things

that maybe you built in the past

or that somebody else built?

Personally, I need to build new things.

I need to be creating.

If I'm maintaining stuff for too long,

I get really, really bored and really, really checked out.

And this actually illuminates

some of those past seemingly disparate experiences

that we talked about near the beginning of this video,

because whether it's learning a bunch of Excel formulas

and building cool spreadsheets

or building these cinematic lighting setups,

or making videos from scratch,

all of these types of work involve building new things.

And they also often involve learning new things,

which is my second list item.

Are you doing work

that lets you comfortably use your existing skill set

most of the time

or does each new project force you to learn something new?

Personally, I love to learn.

I'm always looking to get better at some new technique

or add some new tool to my tool belt.

And if I'm doing work, I don't have that opportunity

again, I get pretty checked out.

Third, how much creative autonomy do you have?

This kind of goes back to that autonomy concept

from self-determination theory.

How many of the decisions

in your work do you get to make?

Back when I was in high school and early on in college,

I was a freelance web developer

and I found that work creatively fulfilling in some ways,

but kind of stifling on the whole

because I was really just doing what clients told me to do.

And I didn't have a whole lot of creativity,

at least for what I wanted to do.

Whereas contrast that to my career as a YouTuber,

I do have some constraints,

there's the algorithm,

there's the fact that I know a lot of sixth graders

in classrooms watch my videos,

there are sponsors to think about,

but for the most part,

I have complete control over the content that I wanna make

and that's very fulfilling.

So think about that.

How much creative autonomy do you want to have?

Fourth, we've got interaction with others.

There are two different aspects to this.

First is the raw amount of interaction,

is your work largely solitary

or do you have a lot of interaction with other people?

And secondly, there is the type of relationships,

the types of interactions.

Are you interacting with the public at large?

Like somebody working in a retail store.

Are you interacting with a small

but dedicated group of clients

who really wanna be there like a tutor or a music teacher?

Are you interacting with coworkers or superiors?

These are all different types of relationships

and different people are gonna gravitate to different ones.

This in particular has been

a very important observation for me,

because if you see what I do on the internet,

a lot of people would point to that and say,

oh, you like to teach,

you should be a teacher or a tutor,

but I actually have experiences with that type of work

and personally, it's not for me.

Back when I was in high school,

I took a tutoring job at a local community college

and I really didn't like it that much.

Whereas I really do like making videos

and blog posts and podcasts for YouTube and the internet

because I get to work in solitude,

I get to build something that is mine

and then share it with the world

and hopefully they find it helpful.

That is very different than in-person tutoring

because the level of interaction

and the type of interactions

are completely different themselves.

And speaking of interactions,

number five is your level of authority over other people.

Do you want to manage other people

or do you want to just sit down and do your work

and not have to bother with that?

Personally, I don't like managing other people.

I like doing my own kind of work,

which is why I have taken steps to delegate

a lot of the management in my company to somebody else

so I can focus on creation.

Next we have the spotlight.

Do you wanna be in it or don't you wanna be in it?

Do you wanna be the person who gets all the attention

and the glory for something,

or do you want to be behind the scenes?

And related to this,

do you want credit when you do something

or do you not care so much?

Now, we have a weird society

where saying that you want the spotlight

seems to be looked down upon,

even though we tend to reward people who seek the spotlight.

So I've done a lot of thinking on this

because obviously I'm somebody

who kind of likes the spotlight

otherwise I wouldn't do the work that I do.

And there are feelings of guilt here,

but I've kind of come to this conclusion.

It is not really useful to beat myself up,

to engage in this sort of mental self-flagellation

over my enjoyment of the spotlight,

because there is good that comes of it.

As long as I keep my ego in check,

as long as number one,

I realized that my self worth

is not defined by how much applause I get from other people

and just as importantly,

as long as I take a time to raise other people up as well,

to acknowledge the work of others,

I think if I'm making deliberate attempts

to do both of those things,

then my enjoyment of the spotlight isn't problematic,

but it is something you should think about.

Lastly, have your work-life balance.

In other words, how much you prioritize your personal life

over your work one?

How much time do you have for your relationships

with your friends and your family?

Where do you live and how long

is the commute between where you live and your work?

Do you get to travel for work

or do you have to travel for work?

Some people wanna go see the world.

Some people want to just kind of have a home base.

And does your work offer you a hard cutoff time

at the end of each work day?

Do you get to sort of shut off your work brain

and go think about other things

or are you expected to sort of always be available,

always be on call.

So with these seven traits of work in mind,

we now come back to the original question.

How do you know what to do with your life?

Well, if I somehow got time travel powers

and I can go back and talk to 18 year old Thomas,

this is what I would tell him.

Number one, simply pursue your interests

and work hard at doing that

because none of us can pick what our passion is

out of a hat.

And none of us really understands what traits and qualities

of work really resonate with us until we get experience.

So go out and get as much experience as possible.

And secondly, while getting that experience be observant,

maybe even keep a journal

and think about these qualities

and any other that come to mind

and how the current work that you're doing relates to them.

And if you can do that

while continuing to build your skills

and hone your current ones

and continuing to build new relationships over time,

then wherever you find yourself working in the future,

whatever job role you find yourself in,

there's a great chance that the work you're doing

is gonna be something that satisfies you.

Now when it comes to going and getting that experience,

one common objection that a lot of people have is that,

well, nobody will give me the opportunity

to get experience in the first place.

Everyone who is hiring

wants somebody who has five years of experience or more

so it's this chicken and the egg problem.

And with certain industries, that is a problem.

But with many of the jobs available today,

especially jobs that you can do from your computer,

nobody has to give you permission to get experience.

First and foremost, you can go volunteer for organizations

that need this kind of help, offer to do work for free.

But secondly, you can always do personal projects,

side projects, just learn on your own.

If you're looking for a place to gain the skills necessary

to get started there, Skillshare is a great option.

Skillshare is an online learning library

with thousands of different classes

that can teach you practical skills

and a ton of different topic areas,

from music production and audio engineering,

to video, editing, to graphic design and animation,

whatever skill you want to build,

there is almost certainly a class for you.

If you wanna build those crazy Excel formula skills

that let me build my huge budget spreadsheet.

Well, Al Chen's foundational class and Excel skills

is something you might wanna take.

If you wanna learn how to mix your own music

or edit podcasts for people,

Young Guru's class in mixing music

is something you might wanna get into for that.

And if you would like to give Skillshare

a test drive before you buy,

you can be one of the first 1000 people

to click the link in the description down below

to get yourself a free trial.

Even after that,

Skillshare is still a very affordable platform

with their subscriptions costing less than 10 bucks a month

on an annual basis.

So once again, click that link down below,

be one of the first thousand people to sign up

to get you that free trial

and start learning something new today.

As always, thank you so much for watching.

Hopefully found this video helpful in some way,

if you did hit that like button

to show the YouTube algorithm what's up.

And if you're looking for

a more of a discussion on work-life balance,

I made a whole video about that,

that you can check out right there.

Or if you're in the mood for something a lengthier,

our link to our recent podcast episode

on the concept of anti unhappiness,

which relates a lot to our work satisfaction.

Beyond that, you can subscribe

at wherever the subscribe button is on screen.

I'm not sure where I put it.

So click that if you want to.

Otherwise don't cause I'm not your dad,

but I will see you in the next video.