Advice on how to choose your career path

Update (2024-11-02): I recommend checking 80k Hours, an organization that offers advice on how to choose a career that has a positive impact on the world.

Throughout my life I’ve seen a lot of people struggling with the decision of which career path should they follow. In today’s youth, that’s a very common struggle and I want to offer a little help.

Although I consider career path one of the most important decision of your life, it’s important to not overthink it, or you’ll be overwhelmed by the amount of options available or other’s opinions.

Some time ago you wouldn’t have had this problem because it was your talents what determined what you were going to do your whole life. At that times if you were good at teaching you’ll work as a teacher.

In today’s society this has changed, now you’re given the power to choose what you want to study and how you want to be useful for the world.

With great power comes great responsibility, so let’s break down this decision. I’ll start by talking about talents and passions because they play a critical role in picking a career path.

Talents

Talents are the set of skills that you do great without even noticing and with no effort or previous practice. The special thing about talent is that most times it manifests when we’re young, and we don’t notice it.

Do you remember something you did better than your colleagues when you were 6 or 7? Maybe you run the fastest, or you were good with handcrafts, those are clear examples of talents.

If you don’t remember anything you were good at when you were younger, don’t worry because everyone is talented at something, you only have to find your thing.

One quick way to find what you’re good at is asking your family and friends. They know you from the outside and that makes it easier for them to notice activities in which you excel.

Let’s say you discovered your talents and some of them doesn’t appeal to you. Let’s imagine you’re very good at cooking, but you don’t like cooking. Although it may sound strange, that dislike is completely normal because talents are inborn and don’t have to be aligned with your personality and tastes.

But wait, you know what’s aligned with your personality? Your passions.

Passions

I would describe passions as activities we like doing, and we want to be better at. The difference with talents is that you don’t need to be good at them to have a nice time. You could be bad at cooking, but it is your passion for it what would motivate you to be better at it.

In the matter of passions, I have almost zero advice on how to find yours, so you’re on your own here. You could try asking friends and family, but I think the answer is within yourself, not outside.

Now that you’re aware of the distinction between your talents and passions, they could be either aligned or not.

If talents and passions are aligned, you should already have the decision clear. You must also remember that talent isn’t enough, and you have to hone your abilities every day to achieve greatness.

In the other hand, if talents and passions aren’t aligned, you have it more difficult. You have to choose between your passions and talents, no matter what you choose you must aim to be the best in that field.

I want to point that you mustn’t make this decision thinking about money, this is much more important than that, you’re deciding how do you want to be useful for the world.

Remember, it’s better that you build good walls or brew good coffee rather than lose trials as a bad lawyer or let people die as a bad doctor.

The world doesn’t care if you chose to be an engineer or a magician, it only wants you to pick something, stick to it and do your 100% every day. That’s the formula for being someone useful for your community and for the entire world.

Thanks for reading.