5 Ways To Figure Out If Your Career Path is Worth Sticking With

Posted by fxckfeelings on April 2, 2020

Figuring out what you want to do with your life—or at least choosing a career path at a relatively early age—can feel like a blessing. But, if like our reader from earlier, you get pretty far along that path before realizing you might have made a wrong turn at the start, you can quickly go from blessed to completely messed up. If you find yourself souring on the career you’ve spent years training for, here are five things you can do to figure out whether your career path is worth sticking with.

1) Don’t Ignore The Possibility That You’re Depressed

Depression, anxiety, and/or just being very, very tired can make you feel like whatever work you’re doing is useless and so are you. Even if your brain is usually reliable, the thoughts of a depressive mind are not, and taking those impulses seriously can lead you to make poor decisions that will just make you feel even worse. So give yourself time and talk things over with a friend, spouse, colleague or even therapist to see if your alienation from your field is substantial or just the result of an unfortunate mental distortion from a longlasting bad mood.

2) Partake In Your Own Personal Performance Review

Before getting fed up with everything about your field, talk over your performance with a trusted mentor or colleague. In particular, don’t take for granted abilities that you enjoy and do well just because they’re enjoyable or come easily to you; list them and think about what you can use them for, because whether you stay in this field or not, they will help guide you to wherever you belong. On the other hand, if you perform badly in some areas, ask yourself whether you’re likely to improve and whether your field requires you to do better. Then think hard about whether that improvement is something you’re capable of or are willing to put the work into.

3) Seek A Second Opinion

Beyond the cliché of the high school career test—the highly scientific survey that seems to tell most kids that they’ll end of in food service or jail—there are many, more accurate psychological tests that can profile your way of thinking style and suggest jobs that you might like or dislike. Very frequently your college or graduate school will offer you these tests for free (because your univeristy looks good if you find a good job) as well as counselling on the kind of jobs that you might prefer. At best, the test will confirm that you’re on the right track, and at worst it might say you should pursue a career in the sandwich arts but still help you to think hard about your priorities and skills.

4) Sample Shadowing

Short of actually doing a job, spending time with practicing professionals in the field is the best way to experience what your future may be like. An internship or certain other low-paying jobs can put you in their midst without requiring you to know much, and while you probably won’t get to do anything that puts your training to use (or that a monkey couldn’t do), you will get to observe what the job is like and whether you would actually enjoy doing what they’re doing. If you’re lucky, one of your superiors may treat you as a mentee and share their thoughts about the rewards and annoyances of what they actually do. Meanwhile, you can ask yourself whether they’re your kind of people, period.

5) Look for Loopholes

It’s not uncommon for someone to get a degree or go far in their field just to use their degree or experience to start a different, atypical career. For instance, some people with medical educations are more interested in doing government administration or medical marketing than in seeing patients while several comedy writers only entered the field after getting a law degree. Look through alumnae statements to find people whose careers have gone in odd directions and ask yourself whether you could use your current education in the same way. Above all, don’t feel like a failure because your efforts haven’t yet pointed you to a career that suits you; respect your determination to keep plugging away and working hard until you find something that you like.