This week, as part of my weekly deliverables for Praxis, I was prompted to read: Wait But Why’s Guide To Picking A Career. After reading and sitting with some of the concepts from the essay, I have been asked to answer a few questions about some of my thoughts based on the material. You can watch this blog post as a video, or read my responses below:
Q.1. What is one insight from this week’s content on approaching your career that you strongly agree with?
Answer: I strongly agree with the call to examine your path as you are walking it. In Wait But Why’s essay, the author talks about the phenomenon of individuals looking back and reflecting at their life choices from their death bed. He then suggests that we should start this process of reflection now, instead. He argues that many people, even people who believe they are going in the direction they seek to go, are walking down a path that was set by society. This concept truly resonated with me, because this is exactly the realization that I had before leaving university. I realized that I wasn’t actually going where I wanted to go. That despite what everyone had told me, college was not the way to get the career that
Q.2. What is one insight from this week’s content that you disagree with or feel doesn’t apply to you?
Answer: The author of this essay presents the concept that the flip-side of every goal is a fear. Kind of the idea that every dream you have coincides with a fear that your dream will not happen, or even that whatever is the “opposite” of your dream will happen. I don’t agree with this concept at all. I think that it is extremely common for individuals to have goals that are totally separate from fears. For instance, it may be a goal for me to get married one day, but I do not have a fear of ending up alone. I know that either way I am not placing my hope or my mental well-being on the chance that I might.
Q.3. What’s one item on your top shelf of the priority shelf?
Answer: In this essay you are prompted to place your priorities, respectively, on one of three shelves. The top shelf is reserved for your top priorities, and the bottom is saved for the things that you want, that are not necessary for you to actively pursue. With that in mind, what is on my top shelf? Currently, my top shelf goal is to gain enough financial stability to enable me to invest in launching a physical version of the platform that I have created online. I plan to begin by hosting workshops, and that will be my next top shelf priority to follow my current one.
Q.4. What’s one item on the bottom shelf of your priority shelf?
Answer: To build my own home. One day after I have achieved some of my higher priority goals, I would like to design and build my own home. This goal rests on my bottom shelf because I will not have the means to make this investment until a later time. Yet, it is still something I want, and something that will one day be added to my top shelf.
Thank you for reading/watching this post! Have you thought about your career plan for the future? What are some of your top or bottom shelf priorities? Let me know in the comment!