How to Choose A Career You Won’t Regret

Steven is in his final year of University and he's about to graduate from the University of Toronto with a double major in computer science and econ and a minor in Buddhism psychology and mental health but he still has no idea what he wants to be when he grows up and supposedly he's already grown up and he's been like this his entire life really indecisive especially about what he wants to be when he was seven he wanted to be a dog trainer when he was 13 he wanted to be a firefighter when he was 17 he wanted to be a software engineer and how did he end up with a double major in computer science econ and a minor in Buddhism psychology and mental health well it's because he couldn't figure out what he wanted to study so he flip-flopped around different Majors different minors until his third year university when he realized that he really needed to graduate since he already took a couple courses computer science and a couple courses in econ he felt like having a computer science and econ degree would be helpful in getting a good career and a very interesting minor well it's because he just took a lot of psychology philosophy and different types of courses and somehow without realizing completed a minor in Buddhism psychology and mental health but in any case he's about to graduate now and allegedly he's supposed to have settled down now chosen a career and ready to get his first drop but he just can't choose because he's interested in everything and TBH not particularly good or talented at anything okay so what's he supposed to do by the way just so you know Buddhism psychology and mental health is in fact a natural minor in the University of Toronto I went to that school the Renaissance Man a model of Versatility well are you the renaissance man he is a renaissance man did you know that the idea of a single career hasn't always been a thing the Renaissance was a prolific period of European culture artistic political and economic rebirth falling to Middle Ages people during that time are encouraged to learn about lots of different things and they were actually praised for being multi-disciplinary Leonardo da Vinci for example was considered the ideal Renaissance Man largely because of how interdisciplinary he was he would had incredible talent in art painting masterpieces like the Last Supper the Vitruvian man and of course the Mona Lisa but he was also an inventor and made significant contributions in engineering and math he designed workable precursors to a diving a robot and a tank and this was centuries before it could become a reality he was also a scientist that designed the first self-propelled machine and described the processes governing friction people like Da Vinci someone that embodies the trait of having so many different passions lots of different interests spanning multiple disciplines is what we call now a Renaissance soul yes in your face high school guidance counselor so your high school counselor sold you a big myth you were supposed to choose a career at 17 18 and do that career for the rest of your life somehow ignoring first of all how are you supposed to know what you even like or don't like assuming that like most high school students you've had essentially zero exposure to the workforce and most careers for example I literally thought that the medical field comprised of three different careers which is being a doctor a nurse or a pharmacist oh and also because I grew up in China you can also be a traditional Chinese doctor but yeah that was about it and somehow we're also supposed to ignore the fact that a large number of jobs didn't even exist 10 years ago for example social media manager influencer Cloud engineer app engineer prompt engineer a study from the world economic Forum states that 65 percent of children entering grade school today will end up working jobs that don't even exist yet the same study also says nearly 25 of jobs are set to be disrupted in the next five years primarily from Key technological changes like AI being a key world as well as phenomenal like climate change and final point we're supposed to ignore when we're trying to figure out what you're supposed to do when you're 16 or 17 years old is the fact that not only our surroundings our world our futures are rapidly changing we as human beings are also changing and that's a really good thing like do you really want to be the same person you were 10 years ago the biggest myth is that careers are supposed to be static they're not people just change okay but how did this all come about somewhere between the Renaissance and modern day we became someone of this myth that careers are static and we're somehow supposed to choose our career when we're fresh out of high school well I was really interested in answering those questions and to do so I consulted Chachi BT I did education and career development became such that high school counselors tell us we are supposed to choose a single career and stick with it pretty rest of our lives okay so this is what Chachi Beauty has for us Industrial Revolution and economic specialization so basically for little Jimmy to be a better Cog in the machine it is better for him to become a predetermined specific kaido to make the machine run better next up is education system Evolution so to make little Jimmy into a better Cog in the machine the education system starts to cater towards making him into a cog the modern education system was designed to produce compliant workers pseudo for the routines and demands of factory work so the next reason is actually a very interesting one the rice professionalism I'm gonna save that for a little bit later in the video but before then I want to talk about these last three points Economic Security cultural values and information asymmetry Economic Security was an idea that came about in the 20th century in which job stability became associated with personal stability for example if our little Jimmy was part of the baby boomer generation she would have been incentivized to stay with the same company for his entire life obviously very different now and when it comes to cultural values and information asymmetry it really just refers to the fact that most of our cultures still have like this idea uh that being like stable predictable and sticking with one career is considered good and information asymmetry is because you might just not have the ability to know that so many careers are out there where your counselor didn't know at least okay so I do want to return to that earlier point that I skipped which is the rise of professionalism this refers to the fact that the complexity and the breadth of knowledge in any given field has increased a lot for example if you want to become a neurosurgeon that could be up to 12 to 15 years of post-secondary school education as opposed to previously where it was like become an apprentice and then poke the brain also and hopefully it works this is a very interesting point and a very valid point so I want to acknowledge the fact that it isn't as simple as us just saying oh like we shouldn't just choose a single career like the way that our education system asks for and just do random things it is absolutely true that since the Renaissance most jobs have become a far more specialized so how do we reconcile all of this what is the best approach to choose a career in our Modern Age that's it I cannot make this decision it is too difficult introducing the t-shaped person the vertical bar represents a deep specialization in a specific area let me actually explain using Steve Jobs as an example so for Steve Jobs his vertical line was in design he spent a lot of time delving into calligraphy into typography into the Arts and his horizontal line which represents a breath of knowledge across different disciplines including technology and business and marketing fun fact Steve Jobs never coded that was never his vertical even though he was a CEO of a tech company but it was precisely because he had that strong vertical in design and the Arts he was able to bring that into other disciplines including technology and was able to absolutely disrupt the current status quo where you have like cool functionality but the designs of things was not user friendly and it was frankly hideous so by being a t-shaped person having that deep design knowledge and then integrating things in technology in business and marketing he was able to come up with products like the I iPhone which was absolutely revolutionary you see becoming a t-shaped person is a way to reconcile the fact that you do need to specialize in something but you're also able to have many different interests actually becomes an advantage so now let's actually Circle back to our friend Stephen who's about to graduate super stressed out doesn't know he's supposed to do with his life so now we're able to offer him a solution and a path forward to become a t-shaped person but the question is how do you become a t-shaped person exactly so the first thing I would tell Stephen is to don't stress so much about trying to fit the mold into a single career this is a myth that has been peddled for many years and is largely a relic of the past choose a vertical and build up your vertical first for you it's probably going to be econ or computer science because it's something that you already have a major in get a job in one of these fields where both of these fields and start building career Capital is defined as a set of skills knowledge reputation and relationships that you build over time in your professional career and these are assets that will help you advance your career it gives you value to society because you have specialized skills that will open up opportunities for you like for example you suddenly might decide that you want to be a software engineer right but you don't just get to do whatever it is that you want to do if you don't know how to code you have no experience in there why would someone hire you as a software engineer well that's why you have to actually build up that career Capital that gives you those skills to open up opportunities for you I do just want to make a point here saying that it doesn't actually matter that much what it is that you choose to have that specialization is that vertical bar of the t-shaped person it's honestly just needs to be something that you're interested in doing and you don't mind spending a significant amount of time delving into that field so this is a problem that you have in which you're listing like highest payings jobs in 2023 and you're like I have to choose one of these jobs because it has a high salary this is not really the case and this is a whole other video but I call this the myth of averages essentially you shouldn't be tricked by the average salaries of things because you're not trying to aim for average if you're good at something you can always make way more than the average for example Steve Jobs vertical wasn't designed into Arts including typography and calligraphy traditionally that does not lead to high-paying jobs at all okay so in any case after you get good at that vertical thing Steven now you're able to build up that horizontal bar where you can integrate your expertise with many different disciplines and that is how you become a t-shaped person you take advantage of your Renaissance soul and transcend what you could do in just a single discipline just like how Steve Jobs brought design into Arts into technology to end this video fittingly with a quote from Steve Jobs in his famous 2005 commencement speech at Stanford he said you can't connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future thank you so much for watching this video and I will see you in the next video or live stream