Benjamin Todd

Five, given your findings in the previous steps, look for a relevant project that might take one to four weeks of work, like applying to jobs, volunteering in a related role, or doing a side project in the area, to see what it's like and how you perform.

And six, only then consider taking a two to 24-month commitment, like a work placement, internship, or graduate study.

Being offered a trial position with an organization for a couple of months can be ideal because both you and the organization want to quickly assess your fit.

If you're choosing which restaurant to eat at, the stakes aren't high enough to warrant much research.

But a career decision will influence decades of your life, so it could easily be worth weeks or months of work to make sure you get it right.

Try something and iterate.

You'll never be certain about which option is best, and even worse, you may never even feel confident in your best guess.

So when should you stop your research and try something?

Here's a simple answer.

When your best guess stops changing.

If you keep investigating but your answers aren't changing, then the chances are you've hit diminishing returns and you should just try something.

Of course, some decisions are harder to reverse or higher stakes than others.

For example, going to medical school.

So all else equal, the bigger the decision, the more time you should spend investigating and the more stable you want your answers to be.

Once you take the plunge and start a job, it helps to remember that even this is just an experiment.

In most cases, if you try something for a couple of years and it doesn't work out, you can try something else.

With each step you take, you'll learn more about what fits you best.

Advanced.

What are the best ways to predict career fit, according to the research?

Our key advice on predicting fit is to define your key uncertainties and go investigate them in whatever way seems most helpful.