How to work towards a job you can believe in.
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
I’ve been writing exclusively about The Minimalist Workweek for the last couple of days. If you haven’t read these articles already, I definitely suggest that you do. On Monday I listed 21 ways to live a more minimalist workweek, on Wednesday Dave Damron taught us how to organize our drawers.
Today I’ve written a short article which I hope will help you deal with a subject that many of us face every day…
How do you work towards a job or career that you can really believe in?
An incredible amount of people are forced to work jobs that are slowly killing their souls. Nothing is worse than waking up every morning dreading the 8 to 10 hours you have to spend working a job that you hate.
We exist in a time when starting your own business has never been easier. Twitter and Facebook have made connecting with people instantaneous and free.
Now is the time to make the change in our lives and be able to do a job that really excites us.
It’s time to stop waiting, and cash in on your innate talent.
How to seize this moment and pursue your dreams now.
- Just quit. If you hate your job, and you have some money in the bank, just quit. Trust me, you will find a way to survive. If you don’t, there is always food stamps. This is harder for people who have to support other people, and I acknowledge that. But, if you’re young and not in too much debt, just get out and start having an adventure.
- Work on your passion from 7pm-2am. Maybe you can’t quit right now, but there are more than enough hours in the day to work towards your goals. Turn off the television and start making your dream come true. It’s easy to get into the habit of coming home from work and just sitting on the couch. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap, if you really want to make meaningful changes in your life, you need to force yourself to do some hard work on your actual goals.
- Make one small meaningful step per day. Put aside an hour to make a tiny contribution to your new career goals. If you write one 1500 word blog post a day about the field you want to enter, by the end of a year you will have written 546,000 words. That’s a couple of books worth of writing. If you write about what you want to become every day for a year, there’s no way you can’t become an expert on the subject.
- Spend ten hours a week trying to automate income. There are many ways to automate income these days. Start selling a product online, and give people who help you sell it 50% commission. Write a blog every day and use sell someone else’s product via affiliate services. These are some of the ways that I automate my income, but there are many more. A good resource on income automation is Timothy Ferris’s The 4 Hour Workweek.
- Learn everything you can about your passion. When I first quit my job in July, I had no idea what I was doing. I flew to Portland, and started doing yoga every day, but I also started reading every day. Over the course of 2 weeks I read every important book on business and marketing in Powell’s. Think about how you can max-out the knowledge you have on a particular subject. There’s no reason why you can’t be an expert in the career you want to pursue, so read every book on it now. You’ll be surprised how many ideas and plans can result from simply reading.
- Go back to school. Education is priceless, it also can be a great transition point. Apply to grad school, or go to college for the first time. Yes, it might be challenging, yes you might get into a ton of debt. The price you pay will pay back boatloads with the ideas and people that you will meet in the field you wish to pursue.
- Practice makes perfect. Malcolm Gladwell noted in Outliers that you need at least 10,000 hours to become a master. What can do you do to get in your 10,000 hours of practice in on your passion? –I might have read the entire business and marketing section at Powell’s in two weeks, but I’ve been publishing on the internet since I was twelve years old. This is a HUGE advantage over people who have just started. How can you leverage your existing experience in your new career?
- Work for free. The modern economy (especially on the web) rewards people who give their work away for free. Think of ways that you can give to people. Are you an excellent writer? Consider writing a profile on one remarkable person a week, to help them get exposure. Do you want to build cars? Maybe you can help your friends and family maintain theirs for free. Do you want to be a chef? Have one person over for dinner every night for a year, by the end of that year you’ll have at least 300 clients for your restaurant. It’s so important to give as much as you can as you’re building skills and a reputation. When I was becoming a photographer I shot thousands of free photographs for people, this gave me the experience I needed to shoot good photos, and later people came back to me with paying gigs.
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Hopefully one of these ideas will help you achieve your dreams.
If you can think of more ways to follow your passion, I’d love if you could share them in the comments.
