I want to keep this one fairly simple.

It’s rare to see a young person know exactly what they want to do. They either have no idea or they have a few ideas they aren’t sure about.

These ideas aren’t properly tested leading to wasted time and energy.

I’ve approached this area with a framework. It’s worked for me and I’ve seen it work for others.

It looks roughly like this;

(1) Evaluate your 'best' options, (2) Write down your biggest assumptions, (3) Test the assumptions, (4) Create work where you're more curious, (5) Iterate

Treat it almost like you'd treat a product in testing.

Evaluate your 'best' options

'Best' here meaning the career pathways you are most likely to find purpose in.

Example. Rebecca is 19 coming to the end of a gap year. She developed an interest in self-development while on this break and feels that studying psychology could be the way for her to express this. Her parents have successful careers in finance and urge her to move in that direction. When she was young she loved drawing and creating content.

From this quick reflection, her top career options look as follows; psychology, finance, creative industry.

The thinking here is to evaluate your life up until this point and come up with a few areas you feel are worth exploring. What past work has given you energy? Where do you already have some experience? Where are your curiosities?

Biggest assumptions

In Rebeccas case, her assumptions here might look something like this;

(1) An interest in self-development practices mean that I will enjoy a career in psychology, (2) My parents enjoyed and excelled in finance so I will too, (3) I enjoyed creative activities when I was young so I will enjoy a career as a creative.

Basic example but you get the idea.

Test the assumptions

How can you test these assumptions? It’s likely not going to be diving straight into a 4 year degree. Nor is it likely to be locking yourself in a full-time finance gig.

Let's look at the interest in psychology. Who is best positioned to help Rebecca think through this?

A psychologist. Or at least a psychology student.

Rebecca jumps on a few calls with various psychologists she meets at events, LinkedIn, and through her close circle. After she developes a good understanding of what the role entails, she concludes that it’s nothing like what she thought it would be and dismisses it from her next steps.

It's crazy to me that most students can't even explain what the day to day of their work will look like after they graduate. A few coffees allowed her to have a decent understanding of this and prevented her from taking on 3 years student debt. Nice.

She does the same for finance and creative roles by lining up more calls with people in both industries. Conclusion is that she wants to explore both more deeply.

Create work where you're more curious

Rebecca hit some luck here with her parents already having a reputation in finance. She leverages this to land a few weeks of work experience at a local firm. While she’s there she asks as many questions as she can and shadows people at various levels of seniority.

After a few weeks something becomes apparent. She hates numbers, mundane schedules, and excel. Cool, maybe this isn’t the spot for her.

Next up is the creative industry. This one is a little tougher to test out since she doesn’t have many existing connections.

The key thing to realise here is that the job market is an iceberg. It's unlikely the perfect job for you to test whatever assumption you have just pops up. You often have to go deeper or create it.

Luckily for her, she’s been active on Twitter and LinkedIn posting about her learnings from the previous role in finance while showing some creative project work.

She taps into this new social network and meets a content creator she admires through a warm introduction. Although the content creator hasn’t publicly listed any roles, Rebecca has a coffee with them and explains how much of a fan she is.

She walks through her thinking and offers to work for the creator on a project she believes will help them monetise, emphasising how she is young and hungry to learn.

This leads to a few weeks work. She loves it and goes on to study design where she excels and becomes excited for her future. The way it should be.

Iterate

Rebecca is one of the lucky few who find some kind of purpose that early. It’s more likely you go through the above steps and still don’t know what you want to do. Rather you just have a few crossed off the list.

Solution? Iterate and optimise for breadth. Through doing this you are constantly expanding how well you know yourself and your surface area for luck to strike.

It’s a pretty fun process. You get to meet interesting people and build relationships. Play your youth card (leverage your age)and you’ll be surprised who you can meet.

The tldr is to be proactive in finding your purpose. You want to be in the position where you know you've tested things out before you commit to anything overly sticky.