Find Your Dream Job: Insider Tips for Finding Work, Advancing your Career, and Loving Your Job Ep. 030: Find the Work You’re Meant to Do (Chris Guillebeau)
Do you know someone who has the perfect job and is getting well paid, too? It might seem that this happened by stroke of luck. In fact, it has nothing do with chance.
People with dream jobs have clear goals and plans to accomplish them. And when you find that job or career, it feels so right, it’s like you were born to do it.
But to get there you must first choose among what can seem like an overwhelming menu of career options.
This week on “Find Your Dream Job” we’re talking about how to find the work you were meant to do. I talk to Chris Guillebeau, author of the new book, “Born for This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do.”
In this 35-minute episode you will learn:
- How knowing your personality traits can help you find a job that plays to your natural strengths
- Why it helps people think as an entrepreneur
- Why making mistakes and taking risks is part of a successful career
- What “working conditions” are and how they help you find your career path
- How joy, money, and flow matter when figuring out your career goals
- Why asking “Did today matter” is an important tool for evaluating your career
This week’s guest:
Chris Guillebeau (@ChrisGuillebeau)EntrepreneurPortland, Ore.
Listener question of the week:
My ultimate career goal is to own my own business. I’m not ready to make the jump now, so I’ve been interviewing for positions at established firms. Should I share this goal with prospective employers? Will it make me look like I’m not dedicated to the job?
If you have a question you’d like us to answer on a future episode, please contact Jenna Forstrom, Mac’s List Community Manager at jenna@macslist.org.
Resources from this week’s show:
- Ep. 007: Getting Clear about What you Want from Work
- Free Myers Briggs Personality Test – 16Personalities
- Chris Guillebeau’s Book Tour “Born for This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do”
- Chris Guillebeau’s World Domination Summit
- Chris Guillebeau’s blog “The Art of Non-Conformity”
- Land Your Dream Job in Portland (and Beyond)
If you have a job-hunting or career development resource resource you’d like to share, please contact Ben Forstag, Mac’s List Managing Director at ben@macslist.org.
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Thank you for listening to Find Your Dream Job. If you like this show, please help us by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. We appreciate your support!
Opening and closing music for Find Your Dream Job provided by Freddy Trujillo, www.freddytrujillo.com.
Full TranscriptMac Prichard:
This is Find Your Dream Job. A podcast that helps you get hired, have the career you want, and make a difference in life. I’m Mac Prichard, your host, and publisher of Mac’s List. Do you know someone who has the perfect job and is getting well paid too? It might seem that this happened by a stroke of luck. In fact, it has nothing to do with chance. People with dream jobs have clear goals and plans to accomplish them. When you find that job or career, it feels so right it’s like you were born to do it. To get there, you must first choose among what can seem like an overwhelming menu of career options.
This week on Find Your Dream Job, we’re talking about how to find the work you were meant to do. Ben Forstag has a free online test that can help you get clearer about your goals and your strengths. Jenna Forstrom has a question from a listener who wants to start a business one day but wonders how candid she should be with employers about this. I talk to Christ Guillebeau, author of the new book Born For This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do. Our show is brought to you by our book, Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond. To learn more about the updated edition that we published on February 1st, go to macslist.org/book.
We’re excited to have Jenna Forstrom, our new Community Manager, join us here in the Mac’s List studio. Jenna, welcome aboard.
Jenna Forstrom:
Thanks. I’m excited to be here.
Mac Prichard:
Yeah, it’s terrific to have you not only on the podcast, but I know listeners who go to the website will be seeing on the blog and people here in Oregon will be seeing you at community events. I got to ask Jenna, because I know our listeners are curious, why did you want to work at Mac’s List?
Jenna Forstrom:
I started to want to work at Mac’s List a couple years ago when I was looking for a job and my friends recommended it as a resource. I’ve been using it for the last couple years doing freelance work and apply for jobs and it’s just a really great website and resource. I think that it’s amazing because of the people behind it that put in all the love and passion. When you and me were speaking about the opportunity, it just seemed like a natural place for me to show up and I want to help make it great too.
Mac Prichard:
It’s a pleasure to have you here. You bring to the job so many great skills and experiences but I think you really put your finger on it. It’s the fact that you’re part of the Mac’s List community that I think is a very special asset. Welcome to the studio and welcome to the show, and we look forward to working with you in the months ahead.
I also want to say thank you to the four career experts who filled in as our special co-host during the last two months. Those people are Aubrie DeClerk, Dawn Rasmussen, Jenny Voss, and Michelle Hynes. All four are nationally recognized experts and they are very busy people. I’m grateful to each of them for making the time to join us on one or more of the last seven episodes to answer questions from you, our listeners. If you haven’t done so, please check out the websites of these exceptional people. We’ll be sure to include links to their pages in the show notes.
Ben Forstag:
Hey Mac, Ben here.
Mac Prichard:
Hey Ben, how are you?
Ben Forstag:
I’m doing great. One of our most popular episodes on the podcast was Aubrie DeClerk on how listeners can get clear about what they want from work. You know Aubrie has been a frequent guest on the podcast and she was also a contributor to our book.
Mac Prichard:
Yes, she was. Her podcast actually is our second most popular episode. The topic, you may recall Ben, was how to get clear about what you want. This is a topic that comes up a lot when we talk to listeners. People who do dive into our book will find a couple of key topics that can help. There is information about how you can do the analytical work you need to do to be clear about goal setting. Tools like strength finders and what color’s your parachute. There are also, in the book, tips about how to get to know yourself and your strengths and your challenges. Tips about why you need to pay attention to your emotions and how to build a community. These are all things that can again help you get clear about what you want to do with your career.
Jenna, Ben, when in your careers have you two felt like you were doing something that you were born to do?
Ben Forstag:
I think like a lot of people, there are days or periods in any job I’ve had where I felt like this is perfect. I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m on top of this. I feel in control. The one experience where I felt like that was kind of always the case was way back in the beginning of my career when I worked as an outdoor education facilitator for a YMCA camp. I put so much energy in respecting the traditions of that summer camp. It just felt like a very special place to be and I was really invested in the job.
Mac Prichard:
I’ve had that experience a number of times. I’m actually having it right now running both Mac’s List and Prichard Communications. Throughout my career, I’ve really felt like I was doing my best work when the things that are expert. This week we’ll talk about joy, work, and flow all lined up. In other words, there were jobs I had where it was just a pleasure to go to work. I had the skills and the experiences that allowed me to thrive in that position and I just was experienced in what the psychologist called flow. That state of mind where you lose yourself in the task that you’re involved in. For me, in addition to the work I’m doing now, it’s happened on political campaigns, it happened when I was working for a human rights organization early in my career. It’s a very pleasant state to be in. How about you Jenna?
Jenna Forstrom:
When a job feels like it was a great fit and you were born for it, it’s when it plays to your strengths. For me, that comes into play because I feel like my strengths are being on the fly and being creative under pressure. When I volunteer at Night Strike and we have bumps in the road, we can’t find the keys to the trailer, that’s where it’s like I kind of step up and get animated and I’m like, okay we’re going to problem solve this. You guys go find the peanut butter and jelly and we’ll just focus on that while the leadership figures out the solution. How do we get keys or how do we break the lock to get into the trailer. Small problems that come up and hiccups is when I feel like that’s my strength. I think I learned that when I was a lifeguard when I was like 15. You’re managing a pool and something happens, you have to direct people to different locations to take care of an incident.
Mac Prichard:
Jenna, do you want to talk a little bit about Night Strike and your work there?
Jenna Forstrom:
Sure, on top of being a community manager here at Mac’s List, I volunteer every Thursday night with a program called Night Strike. Which is an urban humanitarian group here in Portland, for those of you who don’t know but hopefully you are interested in moving to Portland or you live here. We have a huge homeless crisis so we do immediate felt needs.
Mac Prichard:
Thanks for sharing that.
Jenna Forstrom:
Yeah.
Mac Prichard:
Let’s move onto Ben who every week brings us a resource that you all can use. Ben, I know you’ve been looking diligently around the internet for the last seven days. What have you found?
Ben Forstag:
In the past, we’ve talked about different ways to help people get clear about what they want. You mentioned Aubrie’s episode earlier, and I believe in that episode, my resource was the strengths finder test. Which is a book you can buy. One of the other well-known tests out there to help you find out what your natural strengths are or what your personality type is, is the Myers Briggs Personality Test, also called the Myers Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI. My resource this week is actually a free version of this test that you can do online and it’s available at www.16personalities.com and that’s 16 with one-six, not written out like a word. The name of this site actually comes from the MBTI itself, which speculates that there are 16 basic personality types out there.
The science behind the MBTI is actually pretty old. It originally comes from the work of Karl Jung who is a psychoanalyst back at the turn of the century. It stipulates basically that there are four general preferences that determine your personality type. Those are mind, how you interact with your environment. That’s whether you’re an introvert or extrovert. Energy, which is where you direct you mental energy. That basically is are you guided by intuition or observation. Nature, how you make decisions and cope with emotions. In layman’s terms that’s are you a thinking person or are you a feeling person? Then tactics, how you approach work, planning, and decision making. Are you a prospector or a judger? This test is about 30 different questions and it presents a bunch of questions and you answer across a continuum of strongly agree to strongly disagree about whether the question pertains to you.
It’s a lot of interesting questions. Questions that you might not ask yourself on a regular basis. I wrote down a few of the ones that I really like such as, for you is being right more important than being cooperative when it comes to teamwork? Or, do your dreams tend to focus on real world and its events? Or, as a parent would you rather see your child grow up kind or grow up smart? You have to pick one or the other here on a spectrum.
I took the test. It takes about twelve minutes. The result I got was that I am an INFP, which means I’m an introverted intuition feeling perceiving person. What the MBTI says is a mediator. I’ll be honest, this doesn’t feel like me. I don’t think that I’m introverted, or a super feeling person. What do you think, Mac?
Mac Prichard:
That sounds right to me. Ben, I know we’ve only worked together for seven months now but I see you, as somebody who smooth’s the waters.
Ben Forstag:
Okay, far be it from me to question an online personality test.
Mac Prichard:
Yeah.
Jenna Forstrom:
I took the test as well and got ENFP which is extroverted intuition feeling and then perceiving. I think that was a pretty good summary of me because I’m extremely outgoing.
Ben Forstag:
Yeah, I think the extroverted piece really speaks to you.
Jenna Forstrom:
I think it does great for our roles because we balance each other out.
Ben Forstag:
Yeah, and I think that brings up an interesting point here. There’s no normative stance on whether a personality type is good or bad. I think most people who look at these things would say for any organization, you need people who compliment one another. Right?
Jenna Forstrom:
Yeah.
Ben Forstag:
My introverted nature compliments your extroverted nature and vice versa. I think what this test really gets at is there are going to be certain types of roles or responsibilities or jobs that your personality type is going to fit into. You might do better at an organization that’s more hierarchical or one that has less organization around it. You want to find a job that fits that type of personality. The one real cool thing about this site is not only is it free but it produces a really comprehensive write up about each personality type and how that personality type might impact your life from relationships to parenthood to your career. It provides situations and strategies for specific roles that fit your personality type. Definitely worth taking a look at. Probably spend an hour doing this, or you can spend just twelve minutes and get the baseline information. Real good site, real great resource. The website is www.16personalities.com. That’s 1-6 personalities dot com.
Mac Prichard:
Thank you, Ben. If you have an idea for Ben, we’d love to hear from you. You can email him. His address is ben@macslist.org.
Now it’s time to hear from you, our listeners. Our community manager Jenna Forstrom joins us to answer one of your questions. Jenna, what do you hear from the community this week?
Jenna Forstrom:
This week our question is, “My ultimate career goal is to own my own business. I’m not ready to make that jump now so I’ve been interview positions at established firms. Should I share this goal with perspective employers or will this make me look like I’m not dedicated to the job?” I think that’s a great question. I think it also depends a lot on what kind of work you’re looking for. We know that the typical job length is four and half years for any person. Companies know when they hire people that they’re probably not going to stay forever. Also, they want to hire people that will last a little while. Like a year or two. If you’re looking to start a job within the next six months to a year and you just want a job to pay your bills, pay rent, maybe not share that information. I think if you’re looking to really gain a lot of information and grow into an organization, then maybe take that as a springboard platform, sharing that with hiring manager. Or maybe once you’ve gotten the role, find a mentor who’s maybe doing something on the side or something similar. I think that’s super acceptable.
Ben Forstag:
Most organizations I think when they make a hire know that they’re not hiring you for life and that you have bigger aspirations at some point. I think it’s fair to say, well like down the road in five years I was thinking maybe I’d like to start my own business, to an employer. I think that actually could speak well to you as a candidate, saying that you have an entrepreneurial attitude, that you can take calculated risks, that you want to take responsibility on for things. I think it’s all about timing. Are you looking to cover rent for the next year or are you going into this opportunity at hand with really an intent to see through your commitments and honor those commitments and your bigger picture of creating your own business is down the road some place?
Mac Prichard:
Good advice. Thank you Jenna and if you have a question for Jenna, you can email her. Her address is jenna@macslist.org. These segments are sponsored by the 2016 edition of Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond. We made our book even better. We added new content and now we’re offering it in the format you told us you wanted. For the first time ever, you can find our book in a paperback edition or download it on your Kindle, Nook, or iPad. Our goal is the same, whatever the format. To give you the tools and tips you need to get meaningful work that makes a difference. For more information visit macslist.org/book.
Now let’s turn to this week’s guest expert, Chris Guillebeau. Chris Guillebeau is the New York Times best selling author of the Happiness of Pursuit. The $100 start up in other books. During a lifetime of self-employment, he visited every country in the world. 193 in total before his 35th birthday. Every summer in Portland, Oregon he hosts the world domination summit, a gathering of creative remarkable people. Chris, thanks for joining us.
Chris Guillebeau:
Hey Mac. Thanks so much for having me.
Mac Prichard:
Yeah, it’s a real pleasure. Chris, you’ve written a book about start ups. You put together an annual event called the world domination summit. I’ve attended and people come out of that event inspired. Many of them to quit their jobs and work for themselves. Now you’ve written a book about job hunting and careers. Tell us about that. Why this topic?
Chris Guillebeau:
The goal of the book is essentially to help people think entrepreneurially, whether they want to be entrepreneurs or not. Obviously, from my background I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I was a terrible employee. My bias is to help people essentially forge their own destiny, forge their own path. Maybe I’ve learned a little bit along the way that a lot of people can find the work they were meant to do, their dream job in a company or an organization.
For example, I talked to a lot of people for this book like I do for all my books and one person in particular … I talked to a woman who 20 years ago became the first female fire fighter in Mississauga, Ontario. I told the story of all the challenges she had to overcome and she’s actually been in that job for more than 20 years now. She believes it’s the work she was meant to do. This is a good example of someone who if you want to be a fire fighter, which is a very noble profession. Saves lives. Does lots of good work. You can’t just be an entrepreneurial fire fighter. You have to go through the structure. You have to be a part of a team. I’m looking at people, helping people find the work they were meant to do, and whatever capacity that is. It may even change over time. It maybe you’re working for yourself. You’re working in a company. You’re doing a little bit of both. It’s all that.
Mac Prichard:
Now with reading the book, one of the points you made that struck me early on was that we’re all asked what we do for a living. You say the better question we should ask someone is what lead you to do what you do? Why do you think that’s the better question, Chris?
Chris Guillebeau:
I look at a lot of people who have been successful and they talk about this dream job concept, which I know you’ve done a lot of work with as well. They use phrases like I’ve won the career lottery. I love my job. I would go to work even if I didn’t get paid for it, but fortunately I do get paid for it. What I saw in tracing back their history is most successful people, and again success can be however you define it, but most successful people in careers actually haven’t followed a very linear path. They actually didn’t know necessarily when they were six years old this is what they want to do with their life. They’re going to go to college along this trajectory. Then their first job and their second job is all leading to something. They’ve actually gone down a bunch of different paths. They’ve usually even made some mistakes. They’ve made mistakes because they were willing to take risks and some things don’t work out so they go back and they turn around and eventually they find this thing.
The reason I look at the whole process is because it’s not as simple as just saying okay here’s what I want to do. I know what that is. Now I’m going to make that happen. I think there’s always a process of discovery. There’s always this process of exploration along the way.
Mac Prichard:
I think that’s an important point to make because so many people that I chat with and my colleagues as well about careers, they think that if they try something and it’s not quite what they expected that that was a failure or a dead end. The point you’re making is that, it’s an experience you can learn from and it helps you get closer to where you want to be.
Let’s talk about career success. In your book you say that we’re taught these conventions, you actually call them scripts, about what conventional career success looks like. These scripts are just plain wrong. What are these myths, Chris, and why should people ignore them?
Chris Guillebeau:
I looked at a lot of wisdom that’s traditionally accepted and handed down. You might have touched on something just a moment ago, when you said lots of people who are successful have actually turned back and been willing to do like a 180 and try something different. This is contrary to the traditional Western manifest destiny, never give up, perseverance is the most important quality. A lot of successful people actually are willing to give up. They’re willing to give up, not on their dreams, not on their life vision, but on any particular strategy or expression or job or attempt at starting a business.
I talked to this one guy for example who had started eight successful businesses in his life. I asked him … it said eight successful business in his bio, so I said, were there any other businesses? It turned out he had a ninth business, which was actually the very first one. The first one was apparently unsuccessful. He had tried it for three years and it just wasn’t working. If you had gone to that guy in the beginning of his entrepreneurial career and said never give up. Keep going. You must make this a success. That would have been the wrong advice for him. The best advice was to give up, turn around, and start over. All these other things came later.
I looked at that. I looked at a lot of different things and tried to test them in a real world model to say okay this is like the so-called wisdom of the ages, but does it actually work? How does that actually apply and what can we do to increase the odds in our favor?
Mac Prichard:
One of your points in the book is that there is one script that we should consider following. There’s more than one way to work. You don’t have to [niche 00:19:55] down or be a CEO or you only have one chance at a job for example. If you say no to this opportunity you’ll never have as good one again. Talk to us, Chris, about that script that you encourage people to follow. That there’s more than one way to work.
Chris Guillebeau:
I think we put so much pressure on people. Especially young people, but even people of all ages. We have so much pressure that you’re supposed to know what your life purpose is at age 20, or when you choose what to study, or when you go into your first job, or even later. It’s like you’re supposed to have this crystal ball. You have to make all these decisions with limited information.
One of the things I saw was when people think about work, when they think about making a change or a career, they always think in terms of profession. They think about being a web developer or a doctor or a designer or whatever it is. What I saw was actually just as important as the work itself was what I called working conditions. Working conditions are things like how you like to spend your time. How much you like to work with other people versus work on your own. How you’re incentivized. How you’re motivated. How you like to be rewarded. You can start to understand this about yourself. You can actually make decisions a lot better. You may not have all the information but we’ll help you as you go forward. There’s more than one path. There may be one thing that you’re born to do but I think there’s more than one way to get there.
Mac Prichard:
Three things that you identified that you say we all want in our work are joy, money, and flow. Tell us about each of those and why they matter in not only picking your next job but in finding that work overall in a career that we feel like we’re born to do.
Chris Guillebeau:
I saw that, regardless of what profession people went into and regardless of what working conditions were most optimal for them, most people are happiest when they can create this intersection or convergence between these three qualities that you just named. The first two are pretty self-explanatory. Joy essentially is happiness. It’s something that you take joy in doing. You like your work. I think that’s an important goal. Money also self-explanatory. I’m not talking to people about a hobby. I’m talking to them about their career and your career has to be financially viable. Your work has to be something that you love to do, or at least it should be, that’s the goal. It should be sustainable. It should be viable. Then the third quality was something that I had to learn a little bit more about myself and that’s this quality of flow, which I essentially think of as using your unique skills. Doing something that you’re really good at. It may be something that comes naturally to you but it’s actually really challenging for other people. It’s the kind of work where you can get lost in it. You can have hours go by and you don’t realize because you’re so emerged in this particular work.
When you find all three of these qualities … Of course it’s a journey. It’s a process. I think that is the goal. I think that is what we’re essentially working toward in finding the work that we were born to do. Of course, at different times in our life we have to make compromises. We might have to settle in some way. When I was 16, I delivered pizza. That was fine. It was a job. I don’t think it was the work I was born to do. It was something that I did at the time to accomplish a goal and we have to do that at different times in life. If we’re working towards something that if we are interested in self-development, if we do want to advance not just our career but our life, we’re going to make decisions with that model in mind of joy, money, and flow.
Mac Prichard:
Let’s talk about career development. You identify sub-skills that whatever occupation someone wants to pursue, we all need to have to get the work we want. What are those skills, Chris, and why do they matter?
Chris Guillebeau:
When people think about skills, most of the time they think about what I call hard skills. Hard skills are technical skills. They’re the skills that you learned in your specific training in your job or your degree. If you’re an engineer, it’s those engineering skills or those programming languages or whatever that is. What I saw was that in career advancement, whether you’re trying to get promoted, whether you’re trying to find your dream job, create your dream job in an organization, or go out on your own, what I call soft skills are actually just as important if not more important.
Soft skills are basically areas related to communication essentially. Communication. Being able to facilitate a conversation or a meeting well. Follow up and follow through. Being that person in the room or in the meeting where there’s lots of good ideas being discussed but sometimes you can discuss good ideas and nothing happens … If you become that person who makes things happen and everyone starts to look to you and everyone’s like oh Mac should do this because he’s going to follow up on it. That’s a very very valuable skill regardless of your profession. This is not something that’s really taught. You don’t really take a class on this in college. It’s something that’s very valuable and I think it’s something that anyone can learn to improve and it’ll help them regardless of their specific career.
Mac Prichard:
Our listeners and I imagine a lot of your readers struggle with getting clear about what they’re good at. What they offer an employer. How do you recommend people do that?
Chris Guillebeau:
Very good, it’s always a process. The example we just gave a moment ago. We were talking about you’re working in a group and sometimes the members of the group, sometimes other people around you are actually better at identifying your strength or your skills than you are yourself. If you’re ever in one of these situations where tasks are being divvied up and everyone looks to you and says oh so-and-so should do this task. It’s almost like the group is affirming this skill. They’re recognizing it for you. That’s one way.
Another way is simply just trial and error and experimentation. We put a lot of pressure on people to know at a young age, this is what I want to do. This is how I’m going to develop myself and advance myself. Very often the initial decisions that we make are incorrect because we don’t have all the information. Again, a key point is if it’s not working, try something else. Over time you are going to figure out, okay this is actually what I enjoy. You can ask yourself at the end of the day, looking back okay what did I do today that gave me energy? What did I do that drained my energy? Just focusing on that day-to-day. How can I do more of those things that I actually enjoy? The things that we enjoy tend to be the things that we’re also good at.
Mac Prichard:
Many people are reluctant to chase a dream job or career because of risk. What are your suggestions, Chris, about how people can manage career risk?
Chris Guillebeau:
Risk is a big thing. What do we mean by risk? I feel like risk is a topic like fear. People are like how do you overcome your fear? What sort of fear are we talking about? How does it affect our lives? What are the strategies that we can navigate to help us with that? I think maybe the first thing is a question of defining risk and saying if I’m thinking of making a career change, is this really risky? Maybe it’s actually more risky for me to remain in my current position because the current position isn’t good for me. Even if it’s good for me, I need to somehow create more opportunities for myself because in this day and age I have to create my own security.
I wrote about this concept of being a self-employed employee where essentially you’re working in a job but the way you view it is I’m leasing out my talents to this company or organization. I’m going to do a great job for them, of course. I’m also going to continue to develop myself. I’m going to improve myself. That will allow me to go somewhere else or to be more valuable in my current position. When I think of risk, that’s the very first thing I think of. Let’s count the cost. Let’s see what really is risky. Then maybe also as you make changes, your confidence tends to increase. I think this is true with any goal in life. It’s not just a career thing.
I had this project of going to every country in the world. I didn’t have that project when I hadn’t traveled anywhere. I went to maybe 30 different countries. I lived in Africa for a while and then I started thinking what could I do with this? Then I had a goal of going to 100 countries. As I got closer to that, I was like let’s raise the stakes. Let’s go to every country in the world. As you get better in making these kinds of decisions and taking what you might call risks, then I think you become much more comfortable in taking more of them and raising the stakes even further.
Mac Prichard:
We’re kind of the close the interview. Chris, what else would you like to add for the listeners?
Chris Guillebeau:
We talked about joy, money, flow. I just gave that example of at the end of the day maybe ask yourself where did I get energy? Where is my energy drained? This isn’t meant to be like a woo-woo thing. This is meant to be very practical. This is meant to give you data that you can then base decisions on in the future. Here’s a really simple thing that you can also do. At the end of the day, you get out a little notebook and you answer this question: did today matter? You know the answer to that question. If you think back, you’re going to be able to say okay I actually … Yeah, today was good. I made some progress toward a goal or an objective that I believe in. I invested in the relationships that I value. Whatever those matrix or those goals are. Or you’ll be able to say, actually today wasn’t that great because I got stuck in something. I got sucked in. I spent my whole day responding to things instead of creating things. I want to do a better job. The whole goal is essentially in life, let’s get closer to more and more days that matter. If we have days that aren’t mattering, that we look back and say that wasn’t good, what can we change? Small and big ways.
Mac Prichard:
Well, terrific. Tell us, Chris, what’s coming up next for you? Obviously, you have the book and I believe you’re starting … Tell us about the launch date and your book tour.
Chris Guillebeau:
I’m really excited about the tour. The book comes out April 5th. You may be listening to this later, in which case the book is out. I’m doing a 30 city tour across North America. People can find out about that at bornforthisbook.com. Of course, we’ve got world domination summit coming up in the summer but at the moment it’s all book all the time.
Mac Prichard:
Terrific. To learn more about Chris, visit his Twitter account and his blog as well as the website about his book. We’ll be sure to include links to all of those sites in the show notes. Chris, thanks for joining us.
Chris Guillebeau:
Awesome, thank you so much Mac.
Mac Prichard:
We’re back with Ben and Jenna. What do you two think? What were some of the most important points you heard Chris make?
Jenna Forstrom:
The biggest take away for me is that successful people don’t have linear paths. It’s just a good reminder for people who are thinking about changing their career or are unhappy in their current career and think they are locked into this path in this American dream and how really big successful people all over the world have done 180s in pivots and made really awesome successful life stories out of that. To think about that and meditate on it and make your own changes.
Ben Forstag:
As Chris pointed out, that runs so counter to this narrative that exists out there. Think of all the kids in college who, you have to go study X so that you can get out of college and get job Y and then you can progress up the ladder to point Z at the end. It really doesn’t work that way. I think about all the stress I put on myself or that all the young people put on themselves to figure out what they want at the age of 18 or at the age of 16 when you first meet with that college counselor who is trying to get you into the right school. It’s a little bit crazy because people’s careers don’t play out in that linear way.
The point I liked was near the end. That very simple question of did today matter? There are days with any job, even with this job Mac where some days I walk out of the office and I don’t feel good about things. The day didn’t matter and I wasn’t happy. It’s sometimes things that I had control over. Some things I didn’t. The goal is to get more aware of the things that you can control and try doing things that do make you feel like today mattered. Fortunately, I think at this job, most days do feel like that.
Mac Prichard:
Well, good.
Ben Forstag:
That’s good. I think that’s just like an easy check to ask yourself every day to make sure whether you’re on the right path or not.
Mac Prichard:
I agree with both of you. Something that stood out for me was acknowledging that you can learn from failure. For me, I think I’ve talked about this before. I’ve worked on … I’ve lost count of how many losing political campaigns over the years but from each of them I’d learned something and I got something from the experience. I benefited from it and so did my employers down the line.
Thank you both and thank you, our listeners. If you like what you hear on the show, you can help us by leaving a review and rating at iTunes. This helps others discover the show and helps us serve you all better. We’re also celebrating a big milestone this week. Over the weekend, we reached 50,000 downloads since we launched the show on October 17th. That’s more than 10,000 downloads a month. We continue to rank in the top 40 in the iTunes career chart. Thank you all, our listeners, and thank you for letting your friends and colleagues know about the show. We know we’ve grown largely by word of mouth.
I also want to share a review we’ve received on iTunes. It’s from Nathan Cole Howard who writes, “Find Your Dream Job is the go-to podcast for millennials in search of their first job or their next job. I’ve recommended it to entire departments at colleges in Oregon and to at least a dozen friends. Definitely subscribe if you’re on the look.” Thank you Nathan, and thanks to the scores of other listeners who’ve left a review. Take a moment and leave your own comments and rating. Just go to www.macslist.org/itunes. Thanks for listening and we’ll be back next Wednesday with more tools and tips you can use to find your dream job.
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