Using Your Interests to Identify What You Want to Do
Identifying your interests is a great first step to figuring out what work you would actually enjoy doing. This does NOT mean you need to monetize your interests. But instead you can use them as insights into what qualities you may enjoy in work.
"You Should Sell That!"
In capitalism there is this constant pressure to be making money. And now anytime you do something that you are good at the is this push to sell it. You will be all to familiar with this if you are someone who likes to make things. The ultimate compliment people like to give is “You could sell that” or “Make me one!”. And while the idea of making money from something you enjoy doing seems like a win win situation. What is not so appealing is turning something you genuinely enjoy into a job.
When an Interest Becomes a Job
Once your interest becomes a job it becomes forced. Those burst of inspiration can go from an exciting feeling to a desperate necessity. Instead of looking forward to the activity you enjoy you start to force yourself to do it, even when you don’t want to. You will burn yourself and your interest out with the need to continuously produce.
What to Do Instead?
Unfortunately, we need money to afford the egregious cost of living. We spend so much time working that we want to be able to do something we enjoy. BUT we don’t want to do something that we love because this tends to ruin the things we love.
So, what do we do instead?
Let’s use those interests to identify work that we might enjoy doing.
For example, let’s say your interest is painting:
You can use this to pull out the qualities of that interest that can align with work that you would enjoy doing. For painting some of these qualities might be:
- Working with your hands
- Being results oriented
- Creativity
- Colour theory
- Designing
- Attention to detail
- Getting to create things
- Getting to experiment
- Testing new products
- Sharing something you have made
How to Figure Out These Qualities
Within each interest there are specific qualities that draw you to them. The next time you are doing something you love, reflect on what about it you are enjoying. What parts of it do you look forward to the most? When you think of your interest what excites you about it?
Ask yourself these questions to start identifying the qualities. And then use these qualities to find work that also has these attributes so that you will be looking forward to and enjoying the work that you are doing.
If you are struggling to figure out what you want to do
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