Why you should be doing instead of evaluating
Would you buy sunglasses online without trying them on? Maybe… if they were cheap and you didn’t have to worry about returning them if they sucked. Some companies remove the fear by offering digital ‘try on’ tools where you upload a photo. Warby Parker sends 5 pairs of glasses to your address so you can try on some styles and make an informed decision.
If you just heard of Pho, the delicious Vietnamese soup, would you simply Google it and agonize over whether you should try it or not? Would anyone trust your opinion on Pho until you’d tried it? Perhaps if you tried to extol the health benefits of it or described its ingredients and flavors (as you’d heard/ read about them). The answer is no. You know nothing of Pho until you’ve tried it. You have no credibility.
Why then, when making some of life’s toughest decisions such as whether to change jobs, start a business, move abroad or indeed even the question of whether to get married, do we pore over the decision like it’s a mathematical equation? We weigh endless pros and cons, ask random people’s opinions (people who have done none of what you’re proposing).
It’s asinine to say the least.
My proposal to you is to simply try stuff.
I read an article on Harvard Business Review discussing career changers, since at the time I was considering a career shift. Make that AGONIZING over about a million career options available to me. The author noted that in a study conducted of career changers who left their former careers with nothing lined up, they took an average of FOUR years to find their next calling.
The four years we’re, led to understand were not just working in another company but comprised a methodical period of trial and error.
The point being that big life decisions should be experimented with and experienced not read about and plugged into Excel documents. There are a million reasons to not do something, from financial, to ego, to fear but until you actually try them, sample them, experience them, you’ll never know if they suit you.
After a tumultuous 2 years of not having worked in my soul sucking corporate BS job… I can look back at a few stillborn startups, a lot of writing, sales consulting, freelance marketing, construction gigs and more things that I actually DID. Things I tried out with gusto. Each time thinking: this could be it!
Turns out it was writing for me all along. I have by no means reached the career level I had when I was a corporate schmoe, indeed I’m at the beginning of my journey. But the point is, I tried writing. I tried a bunch of other stuff. This fit me the best. Simple as that.
Only after trying vanilla and strawberry do you realize that of course chocolate was the one all along!
Go try some shit.
Don’t research it.
Do it.
