Introduction

Are you happy with what you are doing in life? A simple question that only

needs a yes or no answer. Are you happy? Do you drag yourself to work every day or do

you look forward to applying your skills and talents in an environment that energizes

you? Do you work to get paid or do you work to exercise your God given talents? (The

money is a reward for your hard work) Every day, are you honoring God, your family

and yourself by pouring your talents and skills onto society to help others and to improve

cultures, systems, and processes?

If you are upper thirty something or early forty something is your job what you

want to do from now until retirement? Can you honestly see yourself in your current job

at the age of retirement?

Do you dread Mondays?

Do you come home at night in a bad frame of mind?

What do you really enjoy doing? Are you passionate about your career? Or do

you only have a job?

How does the work you do affect your personality? Do you come home

energized or does the work sap your energy?

Do you hate taking orders? Do you like to be led or do you like to lead?

If you are twenty something, are you focused on your strengths and talents or are

you focused on making money?

Is your work an extension of your studies in college or are in you in a completely

different arena? Do you sometimes feels that you majored in the wrong subject or do you

know for sure that you spent four years preparing for your career?

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 Are you preparing to have children? If so, are you in a career that fulfills you and

makes you a better person.

Do you work to exercise your talents or do you work for money? Do you get paid

for what you know or do or do you get a set amount that only changes once per year?

What drives you crazy in life? What pleases you in life? How do these items

manifest themselves in your career? Positively and negatively?

What do you want your tombstone to say?

I will tell you how to decide on a career. But first, you must understand yourself.

You must know what you like to do and don’t like to do. You must be honest with

yourself about your strengths and weaknesses. If you can’t perform this introspection,

then the questions will be hard to answer.

If you can analyze yourself, sit down with a paper and pencil and follow the

process outlined below. I developed this process because I was in the same position you

are in right now. I was thirty nine with three children working in a job for a paycheck

that was not enough to provide for my family. My wife worked in a job that made her

unhappy. I was a hostage to my job. It governed me. I was bonded to the monthly

check. I knew my strengths and weaknesses but still remained in the daily grind called

the rat race.

In my mid thirties, I went back to school for a masters degree. I told myself that

my career must be in the right direction before my fortieth birthday. As I write, the

birthday is three months away.

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 A Career or a Job

There are countless reasons to not versus few reasons to pursue a goal.

Seemingly the reasons not to do something dwarf the reasons to act. Needing a

paycheck. Health insurance. Being able to pay bills. Sure we need to satisfy daily

necessities but what I have learned from experience and from reading and listening is that

your career must be what you want to do. It must bring out the best in you. You inner

being must escape your pores to guide your career. The work should be done with talents

provided by God. Therefore, we work to honor him. If you aren’t, then first, you are

ignoring God; secondly, you are penalizing yourself.

Why waste your talent? My father once told me that people will pay you for what

you know. I never listened to him but now know it to be true. Like an athlete that

practices his skills, you must be practicing your skills every day. If not, they sit dormant

and help no one.

Faith without works is dead. Do nothing and you will get nothing. Do

something, work hard and eventually something will happen. It make take time, but stay

the course and your effort will be rewarded.

I am a big proponent of the five why concept. If you have a problem, ask yourself

why five times. This line of questioning will get you to the root of your problem fast.

For example, if you are unhappy at home, ask yourself why. I have done so often and

the majority of times answered that my job was making me unhappy. Why is my job

making me unhappy? I often listed a multitude of reasons and most dealt with crappy

leadership at work and the environment that surrounded me. Over time, I knew that I

wanted to work on my own but was afraid to do so. I even started my own company with

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an aggressive partner only to succumb to the reasons why not to do it. He was frustrated

with me. We parted ways with him starting his own company which is now flourishing.

A career is the embodiment of what you do with your skills and talents, likes and

dislikes. Your career captures who you are. A coach. A teacher. An engineer. A job is

what you do within the career. At the micro level, it is the daily display of your skills and

talents. For the job to be correct, the career must be correct. The career doesn’t just

apply to the work you do. It applies to what you did to help society and others that

interacted with you. For example, for years, my job was to be an engineer in a

manufacturing plant. Every day, I went to work, sat at a desk, and did engineering stuff.

When I went home, I was just a father and husband. I was not an engineer. As I

matured, I developed a love of research and analysis. I went back to graduate school and

obtained a masters degree in statistics. I saw my career as being a statistician. I loved

analyzing data at work but also loved applying my talents in data analysis outside of

work. In short, my career was as a statistician. I knew that for my long term happiness,

what I did every day had to be in this career direction.

The Process for Deciding What to Do for a Career and a Job within a

Career

1. Make a list of the things you like to do. Write them in bullet format. Each line should

contain a verb and an object.

2. Make a list of the things you do not like to do in your personal life or the things that

you do not like about your current job.

3. Go through the “don’t like” list and where possible, convert to the “like to do” list.

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4. Go through the “like to do” list and mark the things that you love to do (passion=love)

and the things you like to do (a little less passion). You are trying to separate out what

your passion is. Be honest about your passion. Think hard at this step as it dictates what

is to follow.

5. Take the “love to do” things and simplify the list. Try to boil each thing into a verb

and an object.

6. Make two columns: verb and object. Write the verbs from step five and the

corresponding objects in the columns. The verbs indicate what you should be doing in

your career. The objects define the arenas to apply your skills.

7. Organize the verbs in a hierarchy. Does one verb precede another? How do the verbs

relate in the totality of what you love to do?

8. Now fill in the objects with the corresponding verbs. This is the blueprint for your

career. Study it. Become comfortable with it. Post it on your wall if you need a constant

reminder. If you were honest, then this is what you should be doing.

9. Now, write a career mission statement using the verbs and objects and their

relationship depicted in step seven. Don’t leave this step until you like what you have

written. Would you want this statement to be on your tombstone?

10. Form the mission statement; make a list of the criteria that your career must meet and

criteria that you like for it to meet. A Word of advise: Leave family issues out of the

must section. Why? If you pick the right career, then you will be a better spouse and

parent.

11. At this point, the career may become crystal clear. If so, congratulations. Skip to

the last step.

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12. If the way is not clear, then make a list of career opportunities that interest you or you

know about. Take your time. Think it through.

13. Construct a decision table with the opportunities across the top and the musts and

likes down the left column. You can do this in a spreadsheet (easiest) or on a piece of

paper.

14. First, go through the possibilities and rate them using the must criteria. It either

meets the criteria (yes) and doesn’t (no).

15. Assign a weight to each like criteria. Weight them on a scale of 0 to 100.

16. Rank the possibilities for each “like criteria” using scale 1 to 7 with 1 being the worst

and 7 being the best.

17. For each possibility, multiply the weight for each criterion by the score for each

possibility.

18. Calculate a total score for each possibility.

19. The possibility with the highest score is what you should focus on. Make sure that it

did not violate any of the must criteria.

20. At this point, I recommend taking a personality test to confirm what you have said

and concluded about yourself. There is no worse critic than thyself so this objective

analysis hopefully confirms what you know to be true.

21. Write down what you will do tomorrow as a result of the above process. Start

working immediately. Don’t wait.

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 An Example (My life)

Steps One and Two: List of things I like and don’t like to do

What I like What I don’t like

Analyzing data and reaching conclusions
Teaching things that I know a lot about
Following sports
Working alone
Reading the newspaper
Drinking coffee
Writing what’s in my head
Philosophical conversations
Creating structure
Writing meeting minutes
Creating timelines
Designing trials
Having a lot to do
Understanding why things vary over time
Staying at the macro level until the micro
level is needed
Listening to music (all kinds)
Working on something that I am passionate
about
To not be at my desk all day
Taking orders
Being a pawn in a system
Working for a check
Having a fixed income
Staying at a desk all day
My pay not tied to what I know or do
Performance reviews
Being jealous
Dreading Mondays
Doing things after work with co-workers
People that do things incorrectly when I
know the correct way
Doing the same thing every day
Being un-structured
Being a focal point
Working on things that I don’t know much
about
Being asked for answers on the spot
Going to the micro level before it is time
Associating with poor leaders
Working with dishonest people

Step Four: Refining the Like to Do List into Things I Love to do and
Like to do
Love to do Like to do
Analyzing data and reaching conclusions Working alone
Teaching things that I know a lot about Drinking coffee
Following sports Writing meeting minutes
Reading the newspaper Creating timelines
Writing what’s in my head Listening to music (all kinds)
Philosophical conversations Working on something that I am
passionate about
Creating structure To not be at my desk all day
Designing trials
Having a lot to do
Understanding why things vary over time
Staying at the macro level until the micro level
is needed

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 Steps Five and Six: Simplification of the Love to Do List
Verb Object
Analyze Data
Conclude Analysis
Teach What I know
Read Newspapers
Write What’s in my head
Talk Philosophy
Create Structure (macro/micro levels, sources of
variation)
Design Structure

Steps Seven and Eight: Hierarchy of Verbs and Objects

Read Design
-newspapers -experiments
-magazines -trials

Get ideas
from above

Create Structure
-develop models
-define macro/micro levels
-illustrate systems and processes
-define common and special variation

Analyze
-structure

Conclude
-analysis

Write
-conclusions
Teach
-what I know
-what I have written
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 Step Nine: Mission Statement for My Career
To honor myself, my God, and my family, my career must be focused on writing about
conclusions and teaching what I have written and what I know. My conclusions will
come from analyzing models, sources of variation, systems and processes, and
macro/micro levels. These objects of analysis will come from ideas generated from the
reading of newspapers and magazines and the carrying out of experiments designed by
me.
Step Ten: Musts and Likes for My Career
Musts for my Career Likes for my Career
Honor myself Stay in Charleston
Honor God Linda quit working third shift
Honor family Occasional travel
Research Pay based on performance
Write Quit dreading Mondays
Teach Not work in environment of fear
Analyze

Step Twelve: Opportunities that Interest Me

Quality Engineer for a company
Consultant
Self employed researcher
Keep current job
Teach in college
Quality Manager for a company
Self employed trainer
Self employed writer
Statistical Engineer for a company