What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

It's a question we start asking kids when they're five years old.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

It's also a surprisingly hard question to answer.

Some people seem to know early. They want to be a doctor, teacher, architect, or entrepreneur. They find their path and go.

But I don't think that's most people.

Most young people are asked to make some pretty important decisions about work before they really know themselves - or the working world.

So they use the information they have.

What do my parents do?

What do they think I should do?

What can I do with my major?

Where are the jobs?

What pays well?

What's growing?

Those aren't bad questions.

They're just incomplete.

The question I think we should be asking more often is:

What kind of work actually fits this person?

What are they naturally good at?

What gives them energy?

What are they curious about?

What kinds of problems do they like solving?

What environments bring out their best?

Where might they have an unusual advantage?

Those questions are harder.

Colleges can help students build résumés, prepare for interviews, find internships, and search for jobs. Personality and strengths assessments can provide useful clues.

But none of those necessarily tell someone where they might shine.

And there's a bigger problem.

How is a 20-year-old supposed to know where they fit in the working world when they've barely experienced the working world?

They may not even know certain kinds of work exist.

They haven't had enough experiences to recognize patterns in themselves. They may not know yet what energizes them, what drains them, or what comes unusually naturally.

That's why I think figuring out work should involve more discovery and less pressure to have the answer.

Try things.

Talk to people doing interesting work.

Take the internship.

Work on a project.

Start something small.

Pay attention to what comes naturally.

Notice what you're drawn toward.

And find people who can help you see things in yourself that are hard to see on your own.

The goal isn't necessarily to discover the one perfect career.

It's to understand yourself well enough to make a better next choice.

Maybe that's the problem with the question we've been asking all along.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

It assumes there's one answer we're supposed to figure out.

Maybe a better question is:

What kind of work fits who you are - and who you're becoming?