Benjamin Todd

How can you find a job that fits?

Think like a scientist.

If it's hard to predict where you'll perform best ahead of time, and going with your gut intuition doesn't work, then we need to take an empirical approach.

One, make some best guesses, hypotheses, about which options seem best.

Two, identify your key uncertainties about those hypotheses.

And three, go and investigate those uncertainties.

And even when your investigation is complete and you start a job, that, too, is another experiment.

After you've tried the job for a couple of years, update your best guesses and repeat.

Finding the right career for you isn't something you'll figure out right away.

It's a step-by-step process of coming to better and better answers over time.

Here are some more tips on each stage.

Make a big list of options.

The cost of accidentally ruling out a great option too early is much greater than the cost of investigating it further, so it's important to start broad.

And since it's so hard to predict where you'll excel, that also means it's hard to rule out lots of paths.

This can also help you avoid one of the biggest decision-making biases, considering too few options.

We've met lots of people who stumbled into paths like PhDs, medicine, or law school because those options felt like the default at the time.

But if they'd considered more options, they could easily have found something that fit them better.

We also meet a lot of people who think they need to stick narrowly to their recent experience.

For example, they might think that because they studied biology, they should mainly look for jobs that involve biology.

But what major you studied rarely matters that much.