taylor_31 writes:
Any recollections or advice on picking a career?
The best advice here already that I'd agree with is this:
brennakimi writes:
i think that depends on what interests you.
I think this should be stressed. I'd even say it
soley depends on what interests you.
Personally, I'm a lot like ikabod. My work, or my career, is simply "what I do during the day to make money" in order for me to take part in the non-money-making pastimes I love to do at night or on weekends. My job's purpose is to give me the money I need to have a place to stay, eat food, and do what I like to do (hang out with friends, enjoy a few recrational sports, etc...).
But, this only works for me. I personally don't care too much about having lots of money. I don't care too much about my job, or work. I don't care too much about my career. I don't want to be focused on my career, so that I can clearly focus on my personal life (family, friends... whatever).
If you do care about those things, and tried my approach, you'd become quickly dissatisfied.
So, my advice is to figure out what's important to you:
Do you want to be focused on making a lot of money?
Do you want to be focused on your career?
Do you want to be focused on your family?
Do you want to be focused on travelling?
Do you want to be focused on learning?
Figure out what you want, and gear your lifestyle choices along those lines.
It would be nice to be able to have all of these things, but some are just impossible.
For instance, it is impossible to be extremely focused on your career/job, and also be extremely focused on your family. If you're focused on your job you'll work lots of overtime, you'll want to bring your job home and you won't mind travelling for extended periods of time for the sake of the job. And if you're focused on your family, you'll never work overtime, never work weekends, and never travel for the job in order to spend as much time with the family as possible.
So, it all depends on what you find to be important. And only you can answer that question.