Design your life

How to Build a Wonderful and Joyful Life

Author Name: Bill Burnett, Dave Evans

Ellen loved rocks: collecting them, arranging them, and classifying them by size and shape, or type and color. After two years, at a prestigious university, it was time for Ellen to choose her major. She had no idea what she wanted to do with her life, or what identity she wanted to have growing up; but the time had come to choose. Geology (the study of the Earth's layers) seemed like the best decision at the time. After all, she already loved rocks.

Ellen's mother and father were proud of their daughter, who had chosen to major in geology and would become a geologist. When Ellen graduated, she moved back home with her parents. She began babysitting for a fee and walking dogs for a fee to earn a little money. Her parents were puzzled and confused—this was what Ellen had been doing in high school. They had incurred a lot of expenses for her to get a college degree. So when would their daughter become a geologist? When would she begin her career? This was what she had studied...this was what she was supposed to do.

The secret was that Ellen realized she didn't want to become a geologist. She wasn't interested in spending time studying Earth processes, materials, or history. She wasn't interested in fieldwork, or working for a natural resource extraction company or an environmental agency. She didn't like planning or reporting. She chose geology at random because she loved rocks. Now that she had her diploma, Ellen had no idea how to get a job or what to do with the rest of her life, which disappointed her parents.

If college had been the best four years of Elaine's life, as everyone told her, she would have set a higher goal; but she didn't know what to do. Elaine didn't know that she wasn't alone in not wanting to work in the field she'd majored in. In fact, in the United States, only 27% of graduates end up working in a field related to their academic major. The truth is, the idea that your chosen major represents the field you'll work in for the rest of your life, and the idea that college represents the best years of your life (before a lifetime of work, drudgery, and boredom), are two of what we call flawed beliefs—myths that prevent many people from designing the lives they want.