Want an occupation where you can play-play all day? What interests you so much that you could translate it into a career and it wouldn’t even feel like work?

By Anna Murphy

The career quest can be straightforward, or, a series of mistakes, detours and hurdles. You would think that it would be fairly easy to follow your destiny where your academic results lead you. However, as many who have chosen their occupations this way will tell you, this is naïve. There are countless lawyers, architects and weary professionals in other occupations who can attest to this. What career practitioners have discovered is that happy people have jobs that make them happy — not cars, not houses, not money, but work. Their fulfillment comes from being able to employ their best skills to perform job functions in an industry that interests them.

Work must be able to satisfy not just your income requirements but also your interests, abilities, values, marketability and lifestyle. We call these job satisfiers. When people name their ideal job, what they really mean is that they want a job where they can do something that they would enjoy doing, tasks that feel more like fun than work. Do such jobs exist? No, but you can certainly create them.

Work is not about a wage
First, let’s look at what work means to you. Ask someone in their forties and they’ll tell you that the career they have is a far cry from what they had intended. They had studied diligently and gotten good jobs. Except, they weren’t jobs that make them happy. Many find themselves wondering where their dreams went. With bills to pay and a rapidly aging resume, they see no way out. That’s not going to be me, you say. That’s what they said too.

We have long believed that work is only for survival — paying bills and supporting the family. This is what our parents did and their parents before them, and probably why we feel that this is what being a responsible adult is all about. What we now know is that work has to fulfill our expectations in other areas as well. Work has to satisfy our interests, engage our abilities, be in line with our values, add to our marketability, and be a key part of our lifestyle — not just provide for it.

If a job was about a wage, we’d all be network marketers or lawyers or whatever it is that pays the most money. The fact is that work is not about a wage, it’s so much more. It’s a personal choice for every individual. Some people may be able to settle for a wage while others want everything in their job. The perfect job does not exist, like a cake sitting in a patisserie. People find jobs that are the best fit and then work to make it the perfect job, for example, by building in projects and tasks that enable them to use their favourite skills, re-train or go for courses to increase their income and marketability, upsize or downsize certain aspects of the job to better suit their aspirations. It can be said that career building is in fact the art of creating the perfect job.

How interesting?
How do you find the job that has the potential to be all that work should be in your life? The focus should be on answering this one question: how interesting is this to me? Never mind how much money it makes or how nice your office is. Over the months and years, all you’ll notice is how miserable or happy you feel sitting at your desk. Analyse your own interests and hobbies. What are they, and why do you find these subjects or activities interesting? It is important to know why you like something so that you can spot jobs entailing tasks that you can identify with and that appeal to you.

Next, consider the types of industries wherein your interests may be met and the types of jobs available here. What skills are required for these jobs? Focus on the skills that you have that can be realistically transferred to take on these jobs.

For example, you could be a football fan but not actually have the chops to become a footballer. Your interest may be more in the beauty of the game, the skill of the players and the competition. Perhaps you have been reading widely about football since you were a teenager, and hence become quite knowledgeable about international football. If, by happy coincidence, one of your skills is writing, you could consider writing for a sports or football magazine.

The world of sport, like any other industry, has numerous jobs that fulfill a variety of interests and skills, from playing professionally to cutting the grass on the pitch. A physiotherapist featured on television during the recent World Cup said that his love for football saved his life. After his playing career was cut short in its prime by an injury, he learned physiotherapy and has “played” on his favourite team ever since. Where can your interests take you?

How easy?
There is no guarantee that something that interests you will definitely translate into a career. You need to have the skills to perform in this new arena as well. While you may already have a cache of marketable skills, you should also look at new skills you may need to acquire that relates to your interest and your target job. This is only possible if your interest is strong enough to stimulate you to learn more. For example, you may love fashion, but it takes a lot more than knowing what’s on sale to become a fashion designer or merchant. It takes years of study and practice. Do you have the determination to pursue a career that truly serves your interest?

You have to identify a passion, an interest so strong that you learn and acquire skills as a natural extension of this interest. People who are driven by their passion tend to be naturally creative in achieving their goals, whether they are choreographing a dance, writing a computer program or strategising a new marketing plan.

You will notice that when you are passionate about your work, you will absorb any snippet of useful information that comes your way that you can use, regardless of what time it is or where you are — your life becomes part of your work and vice versa. This is as it should be. The job that makes you happy has to feel like fun, you have to want to do it and it has to become a part of your life. It shouldn’t be something you shut down together with your PC at the end of the day. How badly do you want the perfect job?

Start by looking inward. Don’t be pigeonholed by your degree or what you were formally trained to do. Leverage your interests and let these suggest alternative career paths to you. You will find that once you have identified your interests and skills, a whole world of work opens up for you, in industries you would never have considered before.

Regardless of how old you are or what your career looks like now, give yourself the chance to explore further, to fail or succeed, because the adventure of self-discovery alone will be worth the effort.