Instead of asking yourself: what you are going to do with all this education you have …

Instead of wondering: what you have to do to get someone to hire you …

Instead of focusing on all the external expectations, constraints, etc …

Why not ask yourself this question?

What is my best contribution?

How can you best use your knowledge, skills, talents, and whatnot to make a contribution?

It doesn’t need to be a huge Nobel prize winning contribution.

Maybe your best contribution is inspiring undergraduates to engage with Victorian literature.

Maybe your best contribution is advancing research in your discipline, publishing articles and monographs that move debates in your discipline forward.

Maybe your best contribution is working with a non-profit organization to ameliorate the conditions of a disadvantaged group.

Maybe your best contribution is working as an investment advisor for a major bank.

Instead of thinking about what you have done as inevitably leading in some particular direction, step back and think about what you have learned about yourself in your life so far and which direction seems most interesting right now.

What are you passionate about?

How did those passions lead you to where you are now?

What new passions have you discovered recently?

How could your passion help you make a better contribution in some areas than in others?

This kind of abstract thinking can help you develop criteria for evaluating opportunities that present themselves and help you seek out and create opportunities.

And with passion and the knowledge that you have something important to contribute behind you, it will be much easier to convince someone to hire you.

Related Posts:

The importance of your vision.

Spotlight On: Meaningfulness Matters

You don’t have to find a “gap” in the literature

Lightly edited November 2023 including adding Related Posts.