How to choose a career that won’t make you hate yourself in the future?

This subject hardly needs any introduction. If you can relate to the headline (even a little), you know the struggle is real. You must have seen sad, melancholy faces returning every day from their 9-5 jobs with either a frown on their face or beer in their belly. Those who return with a smile are just happy that they have left the prison, even if momentarily so. 

If you wish to build yourself anything but a prison at work, read this guide on how to choose a career that won’t make you hate yourself.

1. Choose a career that you like.

If you don’t enjoy what you do, you will soon run out of all motivation to work. Write down and make a list of things you like doing, things that do not drain the life out of you. But remember, trying to do those things is as important as writing them down. Sometimes, people misinterpret something they are good at as something they like to do. Or sometimes, they misinterpret something they like to do occasionally as something they like to do always. So, make sure you give your list items a trial run before you decide to go all-in on them.

2. Choose a career that can sustain a decent lifestyle.

If you choose to do something that you really enjoy but doesn’t pay your bills, you will soon run out of, well, money. And that is never good. Poverty is only romanticized by the foolish. Remember that a decent lifestyle is your basic need. If you can’t use your work to earn money, you will have to find out an alternate way to earn income with the limited amount of time and energy you have.

3. Choose a career that won’t vanish after a few years.

Just like foragers didn’t foresee the agricultural wave, a lot of people don’t foresee the digital wave and end up choosing careers that get eaten up by machines and technology. Remember to do enough research (a few hours on the internet will suffice) to make sure you eliminate any options from your list that seem uncertain to survive the machine age. For this reason, students love cybersecurity as a career. While modern technologies like AI automate previously manual jobs, they still need cybersecurity professionals to secure them. And you know what that means: more cybersecurity jobs than ever before.

4. Choose a career that lets you breathe.

In the world that you live in, rest is as important as the hustle itself. Gone is the culture of ‘grinding yourself’. Burnout and mental breakdown is not a pretty experience. So many people, no matter in which industry, give in to the workaholic culture and see ‘rest’ as taking a step backwards. It is time you learn that taking a healthy break from your work does not only give you a mental and physical vacation but also recharges your ‘hustling energy’. If your list has a job that will hardly allow you any rest, you know what to do (unless that job doesn’t feel like work at all, in which case you should go for it).

5. Choose a career that gives your life meaning.

This means that you shouldn’t choose a career that makes you feel worthless at your work. Finding value in your work is a vital psychological need, the lack of which can easily sap out all your enthusiasm and meaning from life. A lot of people feel that they are not contributing anything significant to the world through their jobs and end up hating not just the job but themselves as well. If you don’t feel that your work makes a difference in even one being’s life, it is time to let it go. Medical work, social work, police work and national services are some of the most satisfying and fulfilling jobs observed. Interestingly, cyber crime investigators (professionals who are trained in the CHFI course) also show similar levels of job fulfillment as real life detectives.

6. Choose a career that can survive on a computer.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught the world anything, it is this: Online is where the world lives. If your career totally depends on physical existence and cannot be shifted online (even in part), then you might, unfortunately, have to join the likes of bankrupt businesses of 2020. Once more, IT careers win the crown here. A career in cybersecurity, for example, can not only be pursued online, but also can be learnt online. This year has seen a significant rise in students enrolling in virtual classrooms and taking up courses, like CEH online training as a highly valuable career investment.

That sums up most of the factors that you need to keep in mind while choosing a career. Now, go ahead and make a list with desirable options that check all the above boxes so that you can get cracking on your fulfilling professional journey as soon as possible.