leaf

This article does not provide career advice, but it can help you find the career you truly love throughout your life.

How can you find the career you truly love?

It takes about an hour to read this article, but please believe that this hour is worth it.

Happy reading.

Career is a topic I wanted to write about a long time ago. Society tells us many things, including what we should pursue in our careers and the various possibilities of careers. I find this to be a strange phenomenon because "society" knows very little about what we want.

On the topic of careers, "society" is like that uncle who, when you go home for the New Year, insists on sharing a bunch of nonsensical life experiences with you. You quickly lose interest in what the uncle is saying because, for the most part, it is meaningless, and the things he actually says are already outdated.

If society is that uncle, then conventional wisdom is just the uncle's nonsense. However, often on the topic of careers, after hearing this nonsense, we do not lose interest; instead, we listen intently to every word of the nonsense and then make significant career choices based on it. This is indeed a very strange phenomenon.

This article will not give you career advice.

This article can provide a thinking framework to help you make career choices, which considers "who you are," "what you want," and the rapidly changing career landscape in modern society. You may not have enough experience in making career choices, but you are certainly more qualified than "society" to decide what is best for you.

Whether you are just starting your career, unsure of what you want to do, or have been in the workplace for many years but are uncertain if you are on the right path.

I hope this article can help you reset your thinking and help you think more clearly.

Your Life So Far#

For most people, childhood is like a river, and we are like tadpoles in the river.

We have no way to choose the river. From the day we wake up, we are on the path chosen for us by our parents, society, and the larger environment. We are told the survival rules of the river, the correct swimming posture, and our goals.

Our job is not to think about the path but to achieve success according to the pre-defined definitions of success on the already chosen path.

For the vast majority of readers, this river leads to a pond called university. We may have some choice in which pond to go to, but these different ponds called universities are not that different.

In the pond, we have more space to move and more freedom. We start to think and look outside the pond—seeing what reality looks like, looking at the place where we will spend the rest of our lives.

These usually bring us complex emotions.

Then, 22 years after we wake up from the river, we are kicked out of the pond called university and told, "Go, create your own life."

This arrangement is obviously problematic. The most obvious point is that you are a person with no skills, who knows nothing, and lacks many other things.

Before you start solving your "loser" problem, there is another bigger problem—the pre-defined route has ended.

Students in school are like employees in a company directed by a CEO. But in the real world, no one will be the CEO of your life, and no one will be the CEO of your career path—this person can only be you.

You spent more than a decade, or even longer, becoming a good student, but you have no experience as a CEO of anything. Until now, you have only been dealing with very small problems—like "how to be a good student."

Graduating from university is like someone who has only played flight simulators in front of a computer, holding the cockpit key of a Boeing 747. The questions you need to answer become "Who am I?", "What are the important things in life for me?", "What career paths do I have? Which one should I choose? How do I create my own path?"

When you leave campus, your familiar life guide suddenly leaves, and you are left standing alone at a crossroads with countless forks, feeling lost.

But time waits for no one.

You will walk down a path, and this path is your life. At the end of life, when you look back, you will be able to see the entire road for the first time.

When scientists study people's reflections on their lives at the end of life, the research shows that many people are filled with deep regrets. Many of these regrets come from childhood; most of us did not have the opportunity to learn how to create our own paths when we were young. Most people still do not know how to create their own paths as adults, which is why they find the paths they have taken absurd when they look back at the end of their lives.

This article teaches how to create your own path. I hope readers can spend an hour looking at the path they are on and then see where this path leads, so they can be sure that this path is not so absurd.

Chefs and Cooks#

I have previously written about the difference between "first principles thinking" and "analogical thinking," which I colloquially refer to as "chefs" and "cooks."

“First principles thinking” (chef) is thinking like a scientist—taking out core facts and observations and drawing conclusions from their collisions. It's like a chef experimenting with various ingredients to create a dish. As long as they persist in doing this, the chef will eventually create new recipes.

“Analogical thinking” (cook) is looking at how things already are and then mimicking them. The process of imitation may add a little personal touch, just like a cook following a ready-made recipe.

A cook who follows a recipe completely and a chef who independently invents recipes are two extremes on the spectrum of thinking. In all moments of your life that require thought and decision-making, your thought process is always somewhere on this spectrum.

Your choice is simply whether you lean more towards being a chef or a cook, whether you create or imitate, whether you are original or go with the flow.

Being a chef requires a lot of time and effort. Because what you are doing is harder than reinventing the wheel; you are trying to be the first person to invent the wheel. Being a chef is like groping through a foggy forest with your eyes closed; you will face many failures.

Being a cook is much easier.

Most of the time, being a chef is a waste of time, and the opportunity cost is very high; after all, time is the most precious thing. I am currently wearing branded clothing and branded sneakers, which is a way for me to go with the flow in terms of dressing; I often see people on the street wearing the same brand as me.

Choosing to go with the flow in clothing is understandable because what I wear is not important to me; clothing is not my way of expressing my personal characteristics. So for me personally, in terms of fashion, I am willing to be lazy with cook thinking.

However, in other parts of life, there are some things that are very, very important, such as where to live, what kind of people to be friends with, whether to get married, who to marry, whether to have children, how to raise children, and how to set priorities in life.

Setting a career path is naturally one of those very, very important things, and the reasoning behind it is easy to understand:

Time#

For most people, working (including commuting, thinking about work after hours, etc.) will take up 50,000 to 150,000 hours of time.

A long-lived person has about 750,000 hours in their lifetime. When we subtract childhood (175,000 hours), basic life-sustaining activities like eating, sleeping, exercising, and chores (325,000 hours), the actual "meaningful adult time" you have is only 250,000 hours. So, a person's career will occupy 20% to 60% of a person's meaningful adult time.

Such an important matter, how can it be approached with cook thinking?

Quality of Life#

Your career has a significant impact on all your leisure time. For those without wealth accumulation, wealthy spouses, or large inheritances, a career is the means to make a living.

Other attributes of a career will determine where you live, the flexibility of your life, what you can do in your leisure time, and even who you will marry.

Influence#

A career will take up a lot of your time and is a means to support your leisure life. In addition, a career is also your primary means of exerting influence. Throughout a person's life, they will influence thousands of people in different ways, and those influenced by you will go on to influence others.

Although we do not have a time machine, if we did, we could randomly select an 80-year-old person, go back eighty years, discard that 80-year-old baby (now the old person), and then come back with the time machine. I guarantee that the world upon return will be vastly different.

All lives have an impact on the present and future world. And this influence is often within your control because it all depends on your values and the direction of your energy. No matter which career path you take, the world will be different because of it.

Identity#

As children, adults would ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. As adults, we introduce ourselves by telling others our profession. We do not say, "I practice law," but rather, "I am a lawyer."

This may not be the best way to view a career, but that is how society is. A career is often a person's primary identity.

So, choosing a career path is not a trivial matter like deciding what to wear today; it is a very, very important matter, one of those things that "must be dealt with using chef thinking at all costs."

Your Career Map#

Three Groups of People#

Next, let's talk about you. Although I am not clear about your specific situation, I guess you are in the blue area of the diagram below—meaning you are on a career path.

Whether you have not started yet or have been on the path for a while, you must have a "career planning map" in your mind.

We can divide people with a career planning map into three groups, and these three groups will exist at every stage of life.

The first group has a big question mark on their map.

These people are hesitant about their career paths. They have been told to pursue their heart's desires, but they are not particularly interested in anything. They have been told to do what they are good at, but they do not know what they are best at. They may have had clear ideas in the past, but they are no longer the same person; they are no longer sure who they are or where they want to go.

The second group has a clear arrow on their map. They believe the direction of this arrow is correct, but their legs are walking in another direction. They live in a common life dilemma—walking down a career path they know in their hearts is wrong.

The luckiest third group knows what direction they want to go and believes they are on the right path.

But even the third group will occasionally stop and ask themselves, "Who drew this arrow? Was it really me?"

This question often has no answer.

All three groups can benefit from self-reflection on their career paths.

Some readers may say, "You are just a person who writes articles online; can you really help me?"

Well, let me list my qualifications:

1. For the past twenty years, I have been analyzing my career path;

2. My path has had many twists and turns. At 7, I wanted to be a movie star; at 17, I wanted to be the President of the United States; at 22, I wanted to be a composer for movie soundtracks; at 24, I wanted to start a business; at 29, I wanted to write musicals; recently, I want to be a writer.

3. Most of my life has been spent wandering through my career path, but now I love my job. This may change, but in my decision-making process, I have seen the decisions that led to wrong outcomes and those that took me in the right direction, which has helped me understand where people are easily misled.

4. Besides my personal story, I have also closely listened to many stories from close friends. By deeply observing and repeatedly discussing my friends' career paths, I have gained a broader perspective on this topic. This has also helped me distinguish which issues are unique to me and which are universal.

5. Finally, this article will not tell you which careers are better, which are worse, which are more valuable, and which are not worth pursuing. Many academic studies can answer these questions, but this article will not. This is merely a framework for self-reflection on career paths, aimed at helping readers face themselves more honestly and effectively. This framework has been useful for me, and I believe it may also be useful for others. Now that we have clarified your career map and the possible arrows on it, please throw this map far away. We will revisit this map only at the end of the article.

Redrawing the Map#

Now we need to think deeply and redraw a map.

We will first create a Venn diagram.

The first step is to draw a "Wants" box, which should contain all the careers you desire:

The second step is to draw a "Reality" box. This should contain all possible careers or careers you have the potential to achieve. This depends on your potential in different fields and the general difficulty of achieving success in each field:

The overlapping area of the two boxes is your optimal career choice. This part of the career should be the arrow drawn on your career planning map, and we call this overlapping part the "options pool".

This method seems straightforward, but accurately filling in these two boxes is still quite difficult. To make this method effective, we need to get these two boxes as close to the truth as possible. To achieve this effect, we need to rigorously question our inner selves.

We will start with the "Wants" box.

The difficulty in filling the "Wants" box lies in the fact that you have many different desires. In other words, you have many different aspects of yourself, each aspect has its own wants and fears.

Since desires can conflict with each other, you cannot obtain everything you want. Obtaining one desired thing often means you cannot obtain another. Sometimes these two things may be completely contradictory.

The "Wants" box is a game of compromise with yourself.

The Octopus of Desire#

To fill the "Wants" box well, you need to seriously think about what you want to gain from your career. To help everyone do this, we need to borrow the help of the "Octopus of Desire."

Each of us has our own octopus of desire. Each person's octopus looks different, but the differences are not that significant. I bet that most people's desires and fears are similar.

First, it is important to clarify that desires fall into many broad categories, each living on different tentacles of the octopus. These tentacles often argue with each other.

Not yet finished. Each tentacle is composed of different desires, and these desires and fears often contain huge contradictions with each other.

Let's look at each tentacle one by one.

Personal Desire Tentacle#

The Personal Desire Tentacle (Personal) may be the hardest to summarize; everyone's personal desires are different. This tentacle reflects each person's personality and values, and it carries the most complex and challenging human need: a sense of fulfillment.

This tentacle not only carries your present self but also many past "selves."

The dreams of a 7-year-old,

The idealistic perceptions of a 12-year-old,

The little secrets of a 17-year-old,

The thoughts of your current self...

All scattered across the Personal Desire Tentacle. Each "self" wants a share. And if any one of these "selves" does not get what they want, it will fill you with disappointment and loss.

In addition, your fear of death may also appear on the Personal Desire Tentacle. For example, wanting to leave a mark on the world or achieve great things. The existence of the Personal Desire Tentacle is why so many billionaires do not want to indulge in a life of luxury and pleasure for the rest of their lives—this tentacle's needs are strong.

However, the Personal Desire Tentacle is also the most often overlooked one. In many cases, personal desires are the least favored because the fears carried by this tentacle are often not that urgent, and in the early stages of a career, other tentacles often dominate due to instinctive brute force.

This neglect often leaves significant regrets after the dust settles. Unfulfilled personal desires are often the true reason why many very successful yet unhappy people are unhappy—they achieved success, but not in the fields they truly wanted.

Social Desire Tentacle#

The Social Desire Tentacle (Social) is the most primitive and animalistic tentacle. The driving force of this tentacle comes from our biological evolution process, and the beings on this tentacle are very special.

We all have the desire for "social survival," and we are extremely concerned about what others think of us because of this desire. This means we want to be accepted, included, and liked. Similarly, we dislike awkwardness, negative evaluations, and blame.

Then there is your self-esteem. It is similar to "social survival," but the need is more intense. Your self-esteem not only wants to be accepted but also wants to be admired, desired, and pleased, and the greater the degree, the better.

Being disliked is hard to bear, but being ignored is even harder to bear. You want to be widely recognized and valued.

This tentacle also has other roles. For example, when you do not receive appropriate appreciation, your inner little judge becomes angry. In the little judge's mind, others should ideally recognize your intelligence and talent as correctly as you do. Moreover, the little judge holds grudges, so many people fantasize about making a comeback in front of those who do not believe in them.

Finally, there is a little dog living on this tentacle, whose greatest wish is to please its owner, and the most unacceptable thing is to disappoint the owner.

However, this little dog's owner is not you, but rather the person who has psychological control over you; you may spend your entire career trying to please this person (for example, a demanding parent).

Lifestyle Tentacle#

The Lifestyle Tentacle (Lifestyle) desires a peaceful life, like a happy and leisurely day, plenty of free time, rest and relaxation, and comfort.

It also cares about your life from a macro perspective; it hopes that you can do what you want with the people you like at the time you recognize, and that life should be filled with joyful moments and rich experiences, with little hardship or setbacks.

The problem is that if you place the desire for lifestyle at a very high priority, it is hard to satisfy the entire tentacle. Trying to satisfy that part of the desire for a leisurely life will make it impossible to strive for long-term wealth to support the desire for a luxurious lifestyle.

Satisfying the desire for a stable future means extinguishing another part of the desire for long-term freedom in life. The desire to live a life without pressure and the desire to climb Mount Everest like Wang Shi cannot coexist harmoniously.

Moral Desire Tentacle#

The Moral Desire Tentacle (Moral) believes that the other tentacles are all conscienceless bastards, only knowing self-indulgence. On this tentacle, you look around and see that the world is full of problems that need to be solved; you see billions of people unable to enjoy a good life because they were born in the wrong place, and you see the uncertain future of life on Earth facing utopia and dystopia—this uncertainty exists because of the presence of those selfish desires in everyone else.

While the other tentacles fantasize about what kind of life you would have if you had a billion dollars, the Moral Desire Tentacle fantasizes about what kind of impact you could have with a billion dollars.

Naturally, the other tentacles dislike the Moral Desire Tentacle. They cannot understand charity and public welfare—"Others are not me; why should I spend time and energy helping them?" They can only understand charity and public welfare that benefits themselves.

The Moral Desire Tentacle often conflicts with the Lifestyle Tentacle, while other tentacles can often cooperate with the Moral Desire Tentacle. If charitable actions can win respect and admiration from specific social groups, the Social Desire Tentacle is often willing to engage in charity; the Personal Desire Tentacle can also often find meaning and self-worth in charitable actions.

So, when you engage in charity or any selfless act, there are always several separate thoughts happening inside you. The desire to gain public recognition through giving lives on the Social Desire Tentacle, the desire to feel "I am a good person" lives on the Personal Desire Tentacle, and the genuine desire to see vulnerable groups achieve a better life lives on the Moral Desire Tentacle.

Similarly, not giving to others can also hurt several tentacles. Guilt and sadness can harm the Moral Desire Tentacle, being perceived as selfish and greedy can harm the Social Desire Tentacle, and a decrease in self-esteem can harm the Personal Desire Tentacle.

Practicality Tentacle#

The Practicality Tentacle (Practical) thinks that the other tentacles are okay, but it wants to remind you that rent is due tomorrow, and you actually do not have enough money in your bank account to pay it, and you are only 34 hours away from paying rent.

Yes, it knows you already deposited the check into the bank yesterday, and the amount will be credited tomorrow morning. But it also remembers the same tense moment of paying rent last month, when the other tentacles promised to save money to increase the bank account balance so that paying rent would not be so stressful every time.

The Practicality Tentacle also noticed that last Saturday, when you went to a bar with a bunch of people, the Social Desire Tentacle treated all friends to a drink because that way, friends would think you are classy and generous.

Meanwhile, the Lifestyle Tentacle chose to rent a great apartment, but the rent is still a burden for you this month.

Your Moral Desire Tentacle invested over ten thousand yuan six months ago to help a struggling friend run a snack delivery business, but it seems that this business has not had any updates recently.

And your Personal Desire Tentacle, while pushing you to do two internships at the same time, is earning less than the tips you made working as a server at a themed bar during college, which makes everyone very frustrated.

The bottom line of the Practicality Tentacle is that it wants you not to go hungry, to have clothes to keep warm, to afford medicine, and not to sleep on the streets. It does not care how these things are achieved; it cares that these things need to be realized. But the other tentacles always prevent the Practicality Tentacle from getting what it wants.

Whenever your income increases, your Lifestyle Tentacle raises its own desires and expectations, making the Practicality Tentacle constantly work hard to clean up after the Lifestyle Tentacle, ensuring that you can pay off your credit card every month.

Your Personal Desire Tentacle has various strange demands that occupy a lot of your time but do not earn much money. Although the Practicality Tentacle is very willing to lower its pride and let you rely on your parents, your Social Desire Tentacle cannot lower its pride because that would be "too embarrassing," and the Personal Desire Tentacle also feels "we are not that desperate."

So, your Octopus of Desire has many tentacles, and each tentacle conflicts with the others.

Each tentacle has its own unique desires, and these desires can even fight within their own tentacle. Moreover, sometimes within a single desire, you may conflict with yourself, as if you want to do what you want to do but do not know what you want to do.

Or, when you really want to be respected but find that your career choice earns the respect of some people while also receiving opposition from others, even some people's disdain.

And when you decide to satisfy your desire to help others, you will be torn between

(1) making some contributions that may not yield immediate results for the long-term survival of humanity,

(2) making some immediate impacts on your local community, constantly struggling between these two options.

Regardless of which option you choose, you will feel cold for your callousness.

The Octopus of Desire is indeed complex. No human can satisfy the entire Octopus of Desire. Human desires are a game of choices, sacrifices, and compromises.

Dissecting the Octopus of Desire#

Let’s revisit the "Wants" box. When we think about career goals, fears, and dreams, we are actually considering the net output of the Octopus of Desire, which is usually its longest tentacle.

Only by deeply digging into our subconscious can we see what is really happening.

Each of us has the ability to dig into our subconscious. The contents of the subconscious are like things in a basement—we are not incapable of seeing them; they are just in the basement, so we usually cannot see them.

We can check them at any time as long as we can

(1) always remember that the house has a basement,

(2) really spend time and effort going down to the basement to see, even if going down to the basement may not be a comfortable experience.

We are moving forward, but this is just the beginning. When you understand your Octopus of Desire, you have just begun. What you need to do is dig deeper into the subconscious, going to a place deeper than the basement. You can build an interrogation room here and bring each desire in one by one for questioning.

For each desire, you should ask: Why are you here? Why are you in this state now?

Desires, beliefs, values, and fears do not appear out of thin air. They either come from long-term observation and life experiences of the inner consciousness or from external imposition by others.

In other words, they are either invented by you with chef thinking or learned by you with cook thinking.

So in your interrogation room, what you need to do is peel back the skin of each desire and take a good look at whether it comes from within or from others.

The effect of peeling back the skin can be achieved through the "Why Game." Your initial why question should be "Why is this what I want?" You will get a reason.

Then you will continue to ask why this reason generates desire. Why does this reason carry such weight in your heart?

Your reasons will be dug deeper.

As long as you keep doing this, you will get one of the following three results:

1. You will trace the reason back to its origin, clarifying the complete thought chain of how you obtained this reason through independent thinking. You will find that this desire does not wear a mask.

(2) You will trace the reason back to the person who implanted this reason in you—like "My parents forced me to accept this viewpoint." Then you will realize that you never truly agreed with this viewpoint. The wisdom you have accumulated does not genuinely convince you of the core rationality of this belief.

In this case, it is actually a fraudulent desire pretending to be your true desire. You peel back the skin of this desire and reveal its true face.

(3) You may get lost in tracing the root of the reason, thinking, "I don't know why; I just feel it's right." This situation could be your true desire or another disguise of the imposter; you just cannot remember who implanted this idea in you.

Deep down in your heart, you have a certain intuition about the true belonging of this situation.

If it is situation (1), this is a real and solid feeling or value that comes from your chef thinking.

If it is situation (2) or (3), you will find that you have been played. Others have sneaked into your Octopus of Desire while you were not paying attention and tampered with it. For that part of the belief, it comes from cook thinking; you are just like a robot, repeating someone else's recipe.

If you are a wise person, this introspection will make you realize that your Octopus of Desire is basically self-created, and the desires on it closely follow your current situation.

However, most people, like the author, will discover many imposters or many situations (3).

When you peel back the mask of the imposters and find that some beliefs come from your parents:

After peeling back the masks of some other imposters, you will find that they come from conventional wisdom, or the community you live in, or the cultural norms of your age group, or your close circle of friends.

Sometimes, in this process of tracing back to the roots, you may find thoughts from classic literature, words spoken by your idols, or strong opinions frequently repeated by your professors.

You may even discover that some of your desires were written down by you as a child. That childhood dream deeply engraved in your subconscious is a desire that you will only acknowledge when you face yourself honestly.

The interrogation room will not be a very pleasant process, but this time is worth it.

You are not the child you once were, just as you are not your parents, nor your friends, nor your peers, society, or idols; you are also not the past decisions and the current environment.

You are "you at this moment," the only one, the unique version of yourself. You are the only one qualified to decide what you want and what you do not want.

To be clear, this does not mean that listening to the wise advice of parents, the thoughts of famous philosophers, the views of respected friends, or the beliefs of your younger self is wrong. Humble people can be influenced; external influences are an important and indispensable part of ourselves.

But here it is important to clarify:

Are you taking these external influences as information, carefully deciding to accept them after the inner real self has thought them through?

Or are these external influences directly invading your mind and occupying your heart?

Are you wanting the same things as others because you heard what they wanted, combined with your life experience, or did you hear what others wanted and think, "I know nothing; that person seems to know a lot, so if they want that thing, it must be right," thus engraving someone else's thoughts in your mind without questioning them?

The former is chef thinking; the latter is actually being a robot. Being a robot means you feel that others are more suitable than you to make decisions for yourself.

The good news is that everyone makes this mistake, and you can correct it. Just as your subconscious can be observed by you at any time, you can also change, update, and rewrite your subconscious.

This is your mind; you can do anything you want with it.

So, it is time to kick out the imposters. The imposters wearing masks need to be driven away, including your parents.

After driving them away, your Octopus of Desire may have shrunk significantly, and you may feel like you no longer recognize yourself. We might mistakenly think this is a wrong feeling, even a kind of existential crisis. But in fact, this feeling means you are ahead of most people.

From naive overconfidence to wise and realistic humility, the gap experienced is not comfortable.

However, like most people, being stuck at the edge of a cliff, avoiding pain, is not a good strategy.

Wisdom is unrelated to knowledge; wisdom is only related to understanding reality. Wisdom does not mean you need to walk far to the right on the X-axis in the above image; it means how close you are to the orange dashed line.

Gaining wisdom may be painful at first, but it is the only place that allows for growth. Ironically, those who remain at the edge of the cliff often mock those who bravely jump into the valley and continue to climb. Because those who stop at the cliff do not know how to understand themselves; they have not yet experienced that step.

Recognizing your true self is a very difficult and never-ending journey. But as long as you jump off the cliff, you have completed the initiation ceremony, and from then on, you can continue to improve.

As you climb along the orange dashed line, you will gradually enrich your Octopus of Desire with your true self's desires.

You may not clearly know what those missing desires are because they exist deeper in the subconscious. They are in the basement (subconscious) of the basement (interrogation room), which we call the "denial prison."

Denial Prison#

The denial prison in our hearts is a place that most people are unaware of, where suppressed and denied desires are stored.

The real self-desires we discover in the interrogation room are relatively easy to find because they stand directly in our subconscious.

Even your self-awareness knows of these desires' existence, as they often walk from the basement to the surface, jumping around in your thoughts. Our relationship with these desires is relatively healthy.

However, there are also some real desires that do not live on your Octopus of Desire. They should exist in their rightful place but are occupied by imposters. These lost desires are difficult to find because they live deep in the subconscious, in a place that is almost non-existent.

Those desires we have expelled are locked in the denial prison because facing them or recalling them can be very painful. Many times, these desires are locked away in the denial prison as soon as they are born. Our stubbornness often leads us to deny our own evolution.

Of course, sometimes these desires are locked in the denial prison by others.

Some of your real desires are locked in the denial prison by imposters wearing masks.

If your parents convince you that you actually want a prestigious job, then they are also convincing you that the inner desire to become a craftsman is not really you.

At some point in your childhood, your desire for craftsmanship was locked away in the eerie denial prison by your parents.

So, let us muster the courage to walk into this basement's basement's basement and see what we can discover.

You may encounter some not-so-pleasant monsters.

Do not worry about these monsters for now; let’s first look for desires related to careers.

You may discover a long-suppressed desire to be a teacher, a longing to become a celebrity, or a love for having long leisure time that was kicked into prison by your younger impulsive self.

Because the denial prison is indeed very dark, there may be some real desires you cannot discover. But please be patient with yourself, as you have already left space for them on your Octopus of Desire; they will eventually surface.

The Priority of Desires#

The investigation of your Octopus of Desire will also involve prioritizing desires. Equally important to the desires themselves is their priority. This hierarchy can be easily seen in our actual actions.

If you think a certain desire is important but are not really doing anything for it, then it may not be that important to you; some other things you put into practice may have a higher priority.

Also, remember that the ranking of desires is also the ranking of fears. The Octopus of Desire contains everything you want to gain and not gain in pursuing a career.

Each desire has a corresponding fear on the opposite end. Your desire to be admired is backed by the fear of embarrassment. Your desire for self-actualization is backed by the fear of mediocrity.

Your desire for self-esteem is backed by the fear of humiliation. If your actions do not align with your inner ranking of desires, it is usually because you have overlooked the role of your fears. The relentless pursuit of success may simply be an escape from a negative personal image or a rebellion against being envied or unappreciated.

If your actions point to desires you do not really care about, you may need to take a closer look at your fears.

When you consider both desires and fears, think about how your inner ranking looks. Then remember to ask that important question: "Who created this order? Was it really me?"

For example, we are often told to "follow your passion." This saying is actually society telling us to "put the desires related to passion at the forefront."

This is a very precise instruction; it may be right for you, but it may also not be. It requires you to evaluate independently.

To get the ranking right, I suggest redoing the ranking using chef thinking, based on your true self, referencing your evolutionary process, and then realizing what is most important to you at this moment.

This does not mean putting the loudest desires and fears at the top; doing so would let impulses control your life. The person who should be doing the ranking is you, the core consciousness reading this article, the observer who can objectively view the Octopus of Desire.

This will bring another compromise.

On one hand, you want to use the wisdom accumulated throughout your life to make value-based positive decisions;

On the other hand, it is about self-acceptance and self-compromise.

Sometimes, you may have some strong, undeniable desires, but you find it hard to feel proud of these desires. However, regardless, these desires are part of you, and when you choose to ignore them, they will constantly provoke you, making you feel very bad.

Creating your own desire ranking is a compromise between "what is important" and "what is you." It may be a good goal to give higher priority to more noble qualities; however, it is also okay to move some less noble qualities forward.

How to draw this line depends on yourself. Knowing when to accept your less noble qualities and when to reject them is also a form of wisdom.

Creating a good order requires a good system. You can do it in your preferred way; what I like is a bookshelf system:

The bookshelf divides all desires into five categories. The highest priority inner drives enter the "most special non-negotiable bowl" (most special bowl). The most special bowl contains your most important desires; you want these desires to be fulfilled no matter what, and if necessary, you can abandon all other desires.

This is why so many legendary figures in history think in a single-minded way; they have a very full most special bowl, which often leads them to willingly sacrifice relationships, life balance, and health, ultimately becoming legends.

The most special bowl is not large because it should not be used too often. In the end, it may only contain one or two desires. If too many things are put in the most special bowl, its magic will be lost. If too many things are in the bowl, it is as if it is empty.

The top shelf is for desires that can drive your career choices, and of course, this layer should not contain too many desires—ranking high priorities is as important as ranking low priorities. You are not only choosing the most important desires that will make you happy; you are also choosing those desires you want to deliberately avoid or oppose.

No matter how you rank them, some desires will inevitably be dissatisfied because they are ranked lower, and some fears will be constantly targeted. This is unavoidable.

That is why most of your desires should be placed on the middle shelf, bottom shelf, and trash can. The middle shelf is reserved for those desires you are willing to accept, which are not very noble. They should receive some of your attention; if you ignore them, they are likely to ruin your life.

The remaining most desires will be placed on the bottom shelf. Putting a real part of yourself on the bottom shelf is actually telling yourself, "I know you want these things, but there are some more important things that need attention right now. I promise that soon, if I gain more information or my thoughts change, I will upgrade you to a higher shelf."

The best mindset for viewing the bottom shelf is that the more things you can place on the bottom shelf, the easier it will be for the desires on the top shelf and the most special bowl to be fulfilled.

Similarly, the fewer desires placed on the top shelf, the higher the likelihood they will be fulfilled. Your time and energy are limited, so this is a zero-sum scenario. The most common mistake beginners make is placing too many desires in the most special bowl and top shelf while placing too few things on the bottom shelf.

The final position is the trash can, which is used to place the drives and fears you refuse to accept. Many inner conflicts come from the trash can, so controlling the trash can is an important part of virtue and inner strength.

But just like your other ranking decisions, your criteria for whether to throw something into the trash can should come from your own deep thinking, not from others' instructions.

In this difficult process of prioritizing, you also need to face the painful screams emitted by those desires ranked lower. But remember, you are the only wise person in this process who can do these things.

Desires and fears lack patience and do not have a big picture. Even those seemingly noble desires, like those on the Moral Desire Tentacle, cannot see the big picture like you can.

Many people who have created miracles and improved the world may have started their journeys out of selfish purposes like wealth or personal fulfillment. These selfish purposes may initially conflict with the Moral Desire Tentacle.

Remember, the Octopus of Desire is not the wise adult; you are the wise adult.

Finally, remember that you are not making a permanent decision. On the contrary, this is a draft drawn with a pencil. This is a proposition you can test and modify; the testing process is how you feel when you actually live according to the ranking of desires.

At this point, your "Wants" box is mostly organized, and now let’s look at your "Reality" box.

The "Wants" box focuses on what you find beautiful, while the "Reality" box focuses on what is possible.

When you carefully examine the "Wants" box, you will gradually find that what is in the "Wants" box may not be what you truly want, but rather what you think you want, what you have become accustomed to wanting.

The "Reality" box is the same; it does not show your reality but rather your description of reality, your perception of reality.

The purpose of self-reflection is to fill these two boxes as accurately as possible. We want to make the perceived desires as close to our inner self as possible. At the same time, we also want our assumptions about possibilities to be as close to objective possibilities as possible.

In examining the "Wants" box, we observe what lies beneath the surface of "want"—desires and fears. And when we peel back the surface of "possibility," we see beliefs.

Specifically regarding your career possibilities, we focus on two sets of beliefs: beliefs about the world and beliefs about self-potential.

For a career option to enter your "Reality" box, your potential must match the objective requirements for success in that career field.

As humans, we are not very good at objectively analyzing both sides of this comparative relationship. I am not sure how you think about the difficulty of career paths, but in my experience, people generally assume the following:

Traditional careers, such as medicine, law, education, and business, have predictable paths. As long as you are smart enough and work hard enough, you will reach a successful and stable goal.

There are also some less traditional careers, such as art, entrepreneurship, non-profit organizations, and politics, which are much harder to say. Success and stability are not guaranteed outcomes, and to achieve great success, you either need to be lucky enough to win the lottery or be born with very good genes and natural talent; another scenario is a combination of both types of good fortune.

These assumptions about luck are reasonable. If you lived half a century ago, your beliefs about careers and the effort needed to achieve success would need to undergo a rigorous examination process similar to your interrogation of desires. Moreover, I believe that behind most of these beliefs, you will find they are supported by conventional wisdom.

When you peel back the masks of these beliefs, you will find they are actually imposters created by your parents/friends/school career mentors. And if you continue to peel back the faces of these imposters, you will find that their faces are actually a second layer of masks; the true nature of these beliefs is a public notion, a common viewpoint, or a repeatedly cited statistic.

These conventional wisdoms have not been verified by you but are treated as truths by society.

Today's world is undergoing tremendous changes, making the conventional wisdom of half a century ago outdated. However, our thinking retains the tone of ancient society, so we still tend to use cook thinking and regard conventional wisdom as truth.

These issues also extend to how we view our potential. When you overestimate the impact of innate talent on people's career success, or sometimes confuse skill proficiency with talent, you will have a pessimistic estimate of your success rate in many paths.

Because we understand the developmental trajectories of traditional careers better, we are more inclined to pursue traditional careers.

When a first-year medical student sees a seasoned surgeon at work, they will tell themselves, "One day I will also become such a seasoned doctor; I just need to work hard for twenty years."

However, when a young artist, entrepreneur, or software engineer looks at seasoned professionals in their respective fields, they think, "Look how talented they are; I am so far behind them," and thus fall into despair.

Another common notion is that those who do well in non-traditional careers will have a "big breakthrough" opportunity, as if they won a scratch-off ticket. Many people are unwilling to pin their hopes on a scratch-off ticket when it comes to careers.

The above are just a few examples of a series of fantasies and misunderstandings about career success. Next, let’s think about how career success actually comes about:

Career Landscape#

To be honest, I do not understand this topic very well, and I think most people do not either; the world is changing too quickly.

But this is actually the key; if you can piece together a sufficiently accurate picture of the career landscape, you will have many advantages over most people, as most people will only use conventional wisdom as their guide.

First, you need to piece together a broad career landscape—what jobs a person can obtain in today's society.

My current job is "an author writing long articles of 8,000 to 40,000 words on various topics, and occasionally doing some drawing."

Under this conventional wisdom, is there a job suitable for me? Today's career landscape consists of thousands of options, some with decades of history, and some may have emerged due to a new technology that was born just three months ago. If you have a career you want to pursue but do not see it in the market, you can also create one yourself.

It is quite stressful, but also very exciting.

Each career option will have a career path. Career paths are like board games; on the bookshelf of conventional wisdom, there are only a few game instruction manuals. Even those board games with manuals only tell you the past rules of the game. Although the gameplay of this board game may have changed a lot, with many new skills, opportunities, and loopholes.

When you consider a career path in today's society and want to make an accurate assessment of it, understanding what advantages and disadvantages a person needs to have to succeed in this path requires you to understand the current rules of the game for that career.

For example, if you want to assess whether you are suitable to be a professional basketball player based on your understanding of your height and strength, what if the game of basketball is no longer played on a regular basketball court but on a field the size of a soccer field, with ten hoops, each the size of a car? In that case, the requirements for height and strength in this "basketball" game may not be as high as the requirements for speed.

This is good news for you because there may be dozens of high-quality career paths suitable for you in this world, but the people on each path may be competing according to outdated rules. Just understanding the new game rules of this career path and playing by the latest rules will put you ahead of those people.

Your Potential#

Next, we need to talk about your unique advantages. One of the common mistakes we make, besides using outdated rules to assess our strengths, is not being able to identify which strengths are truly suitable for the new rules.

When assessing your probability of success on a specific career path, the key question should be:

After enough time, can you improve to the point where you can achieve your own definition of success on this career path?

I like to view this "improving to succeed" journey as a distance problem. The starting point of the journey is your current state (Point A), and the endpoint is your own definition of success, marked by a star.

The distance of this journey depends on the position of Point A (where you are now) and the position of the star (your definition of success).

So, if you are a computer science graduate and your career goal is to become a mid-level engineer at Google, your distance might look like this:

If you have never worked in a computer-related job and your career goal is to be a top engineer at Google, the distance you need to cover is much greater:

If your goal is to build the next Google, then this journey is going to be much, much longer:

At this moment, conventional wisdom may pop into your mind and tell you that mastering a skill does not guarantee success; you may reach your star but still feel you are not successful enough.

This statement is basically wrong because it distorts the meaning of "star." The "star" is not the level of mastery of a specific skill, such as coding ability, acting, or business acumen; the star represents overall success in the game.

In traditional careers, this game is relatively straightforward. If you want to be a top surgeon, you need to be very skilled at performing surgeries, and then you can reach your star and achieve career success.

However, the games of non-traditional careers often involve more factors.

For example, obtaining the "becoming a movie star" star does not just mean your acting needs to be as good as Morgan Freeman's; it means achieving breakthroughs in the overall game of "movie star." Acting is just one part of it; you also need the courage to show up in front of resourceful people, the savvy to build your personal brand, a strong optimistic mindset, and long-term hard work and perseverance.

When you do well in all these aspects, your probability of becoming a top movie star will increase significantly—this is the true meaning of reaching for the stars.

Conventional wisdom does not understand how these non-traditional careers operate; it only teaches you a narrow perspective: talent and effort.

In the face of career paths with more complex game rules, conventional wisdom is at a loss and labels the remaining factors as "luck." For conventional wisdom, it mistakenly believes that becoming a movie star requires a bit of talent and a lot of luck.

So how can you calculate your chances of reaching a specific star? The formula is very simple—elementary school math.

Distance = Speed x Time

In our career discussion context, this formula can be rewritten as:

Progress = Pace x Persistence

Your prospects in any career pursuit depend on a) how quickly you can improve within the game's rules of that career, and b) how much time you are willing to invest in pursuing that star.

Let’s discuss these two factors.

Pace#

Why do some people progress quickly in the game of careers while others progress slowly? I believe there are three factors:

Degree of Chef Thinking#

As we mentioned earlier, chefs look at the world with fresh eyes and draw conclusions through their own observations and experiences. Cooks, on the other hand, reach conclusions through others' recipes.

In the context of careers, recipes are conventional wisdom.

Careers are complex games; everyone starts as a novice, while "chefs" continuously improve through a closed loop:

"Cooks," however, improve at a snail's pace because the recipes they reference change very little. More importantly, in this ever-evolving world of career games, "chefs" can adapt their strategies in real-time to keep up with changes.

"Cooks'" recipes, however, become increasingly outdated, and they remain unaware of it. This is why I believe that, at least for non-traditional careers, the degree of your chef thinking is the most important determining factor for your pace of improvement.

Professional Spirit#

This is quite obvious. Those who work 60 hours a week and 50 weeks a year will grow about four times faster on their career paths than those who work 20 hours a week and only 40 weeks a year.

Those who choose a balanced lifestyle will progress slightly slower than workaholics. Those who like to slack off or procrastinate will progress slower than those who work diligently.

Those who are always slacking off, goofing off, or playing on their phones while working will be less efficient than those who are deeply focused.

Talent#

Of course, talent has an impact. Smart and talented people will progress faster than those who are not as smart. But intelligence and talent are only part of the equation. Cleverness and wit are also useful, and these two traits are not necessarily directly linked to IQ.

Depending on the career, social skills may also be very important. In many professions, likable people have a significant advantage over those who are not likable, and those who enjoy socializing will naturally spend more time building relationships.

There are also other factors, such as existing networks, available resources, and existing skills, which will have an impact. However, these are not the determining factors for "pace"; they are the determining factors for the starting point (Point A).

Persistence#

When I mention persistence, I mean long-term persistence, not just showing up for work every day.

Persistence is simpler than pace; the longer you spend pursuing a star, the closer you will get to it. A car going 30 mph for ten minutes will cover less distance than a car going 10 mph for two hours.

This is why persistence is very important. A person who is only willing to invest three years in their dream career and then return to a fallback job is essentially giving up the chance to truly obtain that dream career.

No matter how talented you are, if you decide to give up after two or three years of effort without a breakthrough, you are unlikely to succeed.

A few years is not enough to complete the long journey required to reach the brightest star, regardless of how large your pace is.

Your True Strengths and Weaknesses#

After discussing the formula of pace and persistence, let’s look at the concept of strengths and weaknesses.

I am not saying that "strengths and weaknesses" is a bad concept; I am just saying our understanding of this concept is wrong. When we list our strengths, we usually list the areas where we already have skills.

However, strengths should not be our skills but rather the traits that determine our pace and persistence.

Creativity, or the lack thereof, is an important factor in this discussion. For example, agility and humility (important characteristics of chef thinking) are clear strengths, while stubbornness and intellectual laziness (hallmarks of cook thinking) are significant weaknesses.

The subtle elements of professional spirit, such as being able to focus deeply or being prone to procrastination, should also be important parts of this discussion.

Of course, we should also include talents beyond intelligence, such as wit and likability.

Regarding traits related to persistence, resilience, determination, and patience should all be considered strengths. A mindset that desires to gain quick fame is a clear danger signal.

More importantly, all these traits should not be discussed based on their current state but rather based on the potential you have for each trait.

If I give a basketball to Michael Jordan, who has never seen a basketball before, he will certainly play poorly. But saying that basketball is Jordan's "weakness" is a very wrong judgment. You should look at his progress after a few weeks of playing basketball and analyze his improvement curve.

This approach is effective for learning specific skills and also applies to most traits related to pace and persistence.

Filling the "Reality" Box#

Your "Reality" box should contain a long list of all the careers that a highly improved version of you could achieve (as you define success).

This will be a very long list; you can only exclude those careers that are far beyond reach even with the greatest pace and the longest persistence (for me, that would be becoming an Olympic-level figure skater).

Even if such a list is not very practical, if you set aside other distractions and think about it, if you could fully develop yourself wholeheartedly, you would actually have so many choices; isn't that an amazing thing?

However, for efficiency's sake, let’s only consider those options that will ultimately fall into your "options pool" (the overlapping part of your "Wants" box and "Reality" box). To achieve this, we need to evaluate the following factors:

1. Overall landscape. Assess the existing career landscape in the world, including those that already exist and those that can be created.

2. Specific games. For any career that seems somewhat interesting, think about the current rules of the game for that career—the participants, how others have recently achieved success, the latest rules, the latest loopholes being exploited, etc.

3. Starting point. For those interesting paths, evaluate your starting point based on your existing skills, resources, and relevant connections.

4. Success point. Think about where the stars are located on each path. Ask yourself what the minimum level of success you need to achieve in this career path is.

5. Your pace. Make a preliminary estimate of your pace of improvement in different career games. This estimate should depend on your strengths and the room for improvement in those strengths (i.e., your acceleration).

6. Your level of persistence. Evaluate how much time you are willing to invest in each path.

The rest is math. You draw each career path you choose as a line, marking the starting point A and the endpoint star on it. This way, you will get a series of distances.

Then calculate the pace and persistence you can apply to each segment of distance. If the product of pace and persistence exceeds the length of each segment, then the career represented by that line can enter your "Reality" box. Of course, these calculations are unlikely to yield precise values, but obtaining a formula with approximate values is still very beneficial.

A process of filling the "Reality" box generated through chef thinking will make overly optimistic people more grounded. At the same time, for most people, this process will make them realize that they have more choices than they originally thought, empowering them to choose the direction ahead.

A good process of filling the "Reality" box will certainly lead to a self-reflection on the "Wants" box as well. Reconstructing career paths in your mind will definitely change your views on different desires.

A job that requires thousands of hours of networking or decades of grinding may no longer seem as attractive as it once did. Another job that does not actually require as much luck as it seems may appear more approachable after this.

There are also some career paths that you did not really consider before and did not know you deeply desired. But after this self-reflection, your thoughts have changed.

Our deep analysis of "Wants" and "Reality" ends here. After this deep thinking process, we can return to the initial Venn diagram.

I believe at this point you have seen some changes; you now have a new "options" pool filled with career options that can satisfy your highest priority desires and are achievable. At this moment, you have these choices in front of you; we should look up and see the future.

Do you remember your initial career plan? The one with arrows or question marks drawn on it.

If it was an arrow, take another look at your "options" pool. After so much self-reflection, should the option represented by that arrow still remain in your "options" pool?

If so, congratulations; you are ahead of most people.

If not, this is both bad news and good news. Remember, transforming from a wrong arrow to a question mark is itself an important progress.

In fact, a new question mark represents that you have completed the leap of faith at the cliff.

This leap not only helps you begin to understand yourself but also helps you start to understand the world; it is an important step in the right direction. Cross out your original wrong arrow and join the question mark party.

Join the Question Mark Party#

Now the question mark party faces a problem—you need to choose a new arrow from the "options" pool.

This is a difficult choice, but you can simplify it a bit.

We originally thought of careers as 40-year-long pipes. Once you enter one of these pipes, your path is fixed. You work in that career for 40 years and then leave that pipe to start retirement life.

In fact, careers may never have been 40-year-long pipes; they just look that way. Even if we take a step back, those traditional careers used to resemble pipes in the past.

Today's careers, especially non-traditional careers, do not resemble pipes at all. However, outdated conventional wisdom misleads us into still viewing career paths this way, making the already difficult task of choosing a career path even harder.

When you view a career as a pipe, making the right choice feels like participating in a high-stakes gamble, instantly exploding the degree of choice paralysis. For perfectionists, this is an excruciating experience.

When you see a career as a pipe, you lose the courage to change careers, even if your soul truly wishes to make such a change. It makes changing careers seem full of risks and awkwardness, making those who change careers appear like failures.

This also makes those versatile and resourceful seasoned professionals feel too old to make such a bold decision to change careers.

Conventional wisdom still tells us that careers are pipes.

Conventional wisdom makes us desire things we do not truly want, deny what we genuinely desire, fear things that are not dangerous, and develop misconceptions about the world and our potential.

Conventional wisdom tells us that careers are pipes, making us suffer unnecessary panic.

The current career landscape is not a series of pipes but a vast, incredibly complex, and rapidly changing scientific laboratory. People today work in this laboratory, being complex and rapidly changing scientists.

Today's careers are not pipes or boxes or identity labels; they are a series of exciting scientific experiments.

Steve Jobs compared life to "connecting the dots." He pointed out that when we look back at the past, it is easy to see how those dots connect and create the present us; however, connecting the dots of the future is almost impossible.

If you look at the autobiographies of great people, you will find that their paths look more like a series of connected dots rather than a straight, predictable pipe. If you look at yourself or your friends, you will also see a similar trend.

Statistically speaking, the median duration a young person stays in a job is only 3 years. Even for older individuals, the average is only 10.4 years, which is not excessively high.

Viewing your career development as a series of dots is not a psychological trick to help you make decisions; it is an accurate reflection of reality. Seeing a career as a pipe is not only meaningless but also an illusion.

Similarly, you can only focus on the next dot on the path because that is the only dot you can see. You do not need to worry about the dots far behind because you cannot do that, nor are you qualified to do so.

When that distant dot comes into view, you will understand many things that your current self does not understand at all. You will be a brand new you, and your Octopus of Desire will change along with you.

You will understand various career landscapes better, understand the game rules of specific careers better, and become a better player. By that time, the career landscape and game rules will also have undergone many changes.

A website called 80,000 Hours has collected a lot of data to prove all of this. This data tells us that people change, and the world changes; only with the passage of time will you know what you are good at. Psychologist Dan Gilbert also wisely told us that we cannot predict what will make us happy in the future.

Pretending to see far-off dots is laughable. Leave those future dots to your wiser future self to worry about; what we need to do now is focus on the next dot.

If we think of ourselves as scientists and society as a scientific laboratory, we should treat the current Venn diagram composed of "Wants" and "Reality" as an early and rough hypothesis. The next dot is your experiment to test this hypothesis.

Testing hypotheses is a very instinctive thing in the dating market. If your friend is racking their brains over what kind of person they want to marry but never goes out on a date, you would definitely tell them:

"You can't just stay at home; you need to go out on dates to find out what you really want."

If this friend goes on a date once and then keeps analyzing whether this date is their soulmate, you would definitely remind them again:

"Just going on one date is not enough to know the outcome; you need to date this person a few more times to gather enough information to make that decision."

As bystanders, we would think this friend is too foolish, not knowing how to find a happy relationship. So when choosing a career, we should not make the same mistake as this friend. The next dot to face is not a big deal; it is just like your first date with someone.

This is a good thing because such thinking makes drawing an arrow to the next dot less daunting; you are merely drawing an arrow to the next dot. The real reason for choice paralysis is that you can see the career options available in today's society while mistakenly viewing those careers as 40-year-long pipes; the combination of these two is deadly.

Reconstructing your next major career decision as a choice with much lower stakes will make many options seem more interesting rather than filled with pressure.

All of the above is not difficult to say; the following is the truly difficult part.

Start Taking Action#

You have done a lot of self-reflection and weighed, compared, predicted, and considered a lot. You have chosen a point and drawn an arrow. Next, you really need to start taking action.

We are actually particularly bad at taking action. We are always anxious and afraid of being greasy. Taking a real bold action can be very tedious. If there is a procrastinating self hidden in your heart, it will show up at this moment.

The Octopus of Desire can help you. As we discussed earlier, your actions at any moment are determined by your octopus. If you are ready to take this step but have not really taken it, it is because the part of the octopus that does not want to take this step ranks higher in your subconscious than the part that wants to take this step.

Your consciousness may have tried to place those