This week, The Simple Dollar is taking a deeper look at five common personal finance debates.

A while back, I posted an article entitled How to Choose a Career - The Simple Dollar Way, where I advocated strongly for allowing your passions and talents to lead you to a career, not the money.

This led to a lengthy discussion, where many people argued rather strongly on behalf of simply chasing the money. In the words of Carlos:

I’m not suggesting that you do something you hate, but, one’s income is the single largest ‘asset’ they have. Earn some bling, pile it up to the sun, walk away when you tire of it.

Which avenue is the right one to take?

What Are The Options?
On one hand, you have the option to do what you love. The careers that many people are most passionate about are not high paying - they usually revolve around chasing an artistic dream or taking on a social work-oriented career. Others might thrive on starting their own business, even though the odds of success are long and the income can be very dodgy, especially at first.

On the other hand, you have the option to do whatever makes the most money. For many people, this means doing something they’re not as happy doing as they might otherwise be.

Paul, another commenter, summed it up well:

I agree with some of the others here. I would have loved to continue to follow my passion, but I also have to feed my family. I loved being an Emergency Medical Technician but $10/hr doesn’t quite cover it.

So I switched to dispatch and make $15/hr, a 50% increase. Still in the same line of work, but I’d rather be back on the ambulance.

If Paul did what he loved, he’d be making $10 an hour as an EMT in the back of an ambulance. Instead, he chose to follow a path he didn’t like as much, but it earns him $15 an hour.

So What Should I Do?
The real answer to this dilemma comes down to this: what do you want out of life? What do you see when you close your eyes and imagine yourself in five years, the way (in your heart of hearts) you want things to be?

Do you see yourself working at a job that you’re truly passionate about, doing work that you feel is important? Do you see a career that flows so perfectly with your personal activities that the border between “work” and “fun” doesn’t even exist? If that’s the case, then chase the dream - it will lead you to that life. Find your passions, match those passions with your talents, and run with it.

On the other hand, maybe you see yourself enjoying the fruits of your labor. Do you see travel? Do you see a nice, big home with kids playing in the yard? If your visions show you the trappings of a life separate from work, then it might be wise to chase the money, as this will allow you to fill that life with as much value as you wish.

There is no right answer here. At different points in my life, I chose each path. Earlier on, I chose the money. I followed the training and a career path that I thought would pay well and that I enjoyed quite a bit, but I knew that it was not the thing that my heart cried out to do. Eventually, I jumped the rails and moved onto a path where my work days are often so enjoyable that they just naturally flow with my personal activities - chasing the dream.

The answer only comes with a lot of introspection, and just because you choose one answer right now doesn’t mean that later on you might not choose another. Perhaps you’ll work for the money for a while and spend your time really figuring out your dream and then one day you close your eyes and imagine yourself doing something completely different. Or maybe you follow your passions for a while, then eventually settle down with a spouse, two kids, a dog, and a house in the suburbs.

The only thing you must do is this: close your eyes, right now, and imagine where you’d like to be in five years. Don’t let anything else interfere with it - what do you want, in your heart of hearts? Then open your eyes and start moving in that direction.

After my article a few weeks ago on how the status quo bias costs you money, a reader I’ll call Jeff made a very astute observation: the status quo bias often keeps people from making the best career decisions.

Let’s back up a second, though. What is the status quo bias? From the earlier article:

Most people are familiar with the status quo bias. In simpler terms, it simply means that people prefer things to stay relatively the same. We talk to the same people, follow the same path to work, go through the same daily routine, and so forth. We enjoy little changes - like reading a different book, going on a different trip in the summer, or watching a different movie - but radical changes? Not so much.

Let’s roll back the clock about a year. I was burning the candle at both ends keeping up with a burgeoning writing career and a full-time job that often spilled out into the evenings and weekends. Between the two, I was burning myself out and I knew that I had to buckle down and choose one or the other. I even more or less knew that I was going to choose the writing.

Yet I put myself through many months of utterly exhausting misery while I “made up my mind.” Why did I do this? It turns out that the status quo bias was really the culprit.

The real problem was that I was so used to the routine of my old job that I had a hard time seeing my life without it. The routine of getting up in the morning, heading into the office, getting there about 7:30, seeing the same people at the office every day, going home at about 4:30 or so, and getting up the next day and repeating it had been done so many times, I could scarcely imagine my life without that routine. Add into that the routine of the twice-monthly paycheck and the “five days on, two days off” routine of the standard workweek and breaking away from all of those molds at once seemed almost overwhelming to me.

It felt safer to keep things relatively the same, even though it was wearing me down. Even though I knew the choice I would eventually take - and I also knew that the current state of affairs was untenable over the long term - I held onto the status quo as long as I possibly could.

Even more amazing, I repeatedly tried to justify reasons to stay with my current job. I did like it, for the most part, but there were aspects that I didn’t like, mostly bureaucracy and my tendency to burden myself (or be burdened) with responsibilities out of my area of expertise. Because of that, I kept telling myself I would be foolish to give it up, and more than once I began drafting posts saying I was going to stop with The Simple Dollar, only to talk myself out of it.

This leads straight back to Jeff’s observation that the status quo bias often keeps people from making the best career decisions. Clearly, the status quo bias was at work when I was making my career choice, and it took a lot of time and a lot of positive encouragement from my wife for me to finally make that career change.

Hopefully, you’re one of the lucky ones, the people who read this article and thought that the decision and change was quite easy. For the rest of us, though, the status quo bias can be quite a challenge. Here are five things that really helped me overcome it and make a strong but challenging career choice for myself.

First, share the whole situation with someone you trust and whose opinion you respect. Quite often, that person can see from the outside that the new path is really the right one for you to follow and will often become your cheerleader and motivator, encouraging you to make the switch. For me, this was my wonderful wife, who supports me in so many ways - without her encouragement, I would have never made the switch.

Second, focus on the positives of the career change. When you’re trying to stick with the status quo, it’s very easy to look at the negatives of the change you’re considering. For me, I kept looking at the risks - the loss of regular and dependable income, the uncertainty as to what opportunities the future might hold down that path, and so on. Instead, look strongly at the positives - which for me included a flexible schedule that left me a lot more time with my kids and the opportunity to do something I deeply, deeply enjoy (write).

Third, be realistic about the balance of positives and negatives of your current job. It was easy for me to paint my old job as glowing during that time. I would think very positively of all of the aspects that I liked and tried very hard to not think about the negative aspects. One exercise that helped me was making myself list ten things I liked about my current job, as well as ten things I didn’t like. Doing that helped me see that just like any job, it’s a mix of things I liked and things I didn’t.

Fourth, have a nice fat emergency fund to make the leap less scary. Once I began to see that there was a real conflict going on between my two career paths, I started tightening the screws on an emergency fund, saving my nickels and dimes for a rainy day. Even then, I knew that whichever path I chose, I would be helped by having cash in hand. Obvious for the new job, but even if I chose to stay with the old one, the emergency fund would help out with making some bigger purchases easier (like an inevitable car purchase I would have had to make if I were to continue commuting).

Finally, try a dry run at your new job. At one point, I took a full week off from my old job and “pretended” I was engaged at my writing career. I went through an entire week and discovered that this was actually a path I could see myself following. It made the idea seem more real, more tangible, more possible.

All of these tactics helped me overcome the “status quo” that was my earlier job and move on to my new career as a writer. Without these tactics, I likely would have stayed in my old job - and I might have regretted not taking the leap for the rest of my life. Don’t let the status quo bias influence your career choices - step back and take a serious look at things and you might find that change is the right path for you.

When I walked away from my nice and steady nine to five desk job in March, a lot of people asked for my reflections on it, and I provided my thoughts two weeks after quitting, which were almost entirely positive. Naturally, many of those readers wanted me to return to the topic in a few months to see whether I still felt as positive about the decision to quit a full-tme decent salary job to essentially work at home as a writer on an extremely flexible schedule. My reflections below will likely apply to anyone with young children who has made the decision to work at home.

Below is a mishmash of reflections on that change.

My family is the big reason I quit, and that’s been a huge positive
I quit my job because I felt like the demands of my simultaneous 9 to 5 job and my writing activities was simply eating too much away from the time I could spend with my family. I have a two year old son and an infant daughter and, at the time, I continually felt regret that I wasn’t spending quality time with them.

That concern is now gone. I spend hours upon hours each day with my wife and my kids. A couple hours of playing in the yard and at least two meals a day at the kitchen table with my children is not only now the norm, but the expectation. I read them stories, teach them things, kiss their “owies” when they get hurt, and reaffirm their self-confidence. We go to the park, the circus, the zoo, the library, and all sorts of other enriching activities.

The flexibility of my schedule gives me some aspects of being a stay at home parent. We still take our children to daycare on an irregular basis (usually our older one, because after several days he begins to loudly miss the people there, especially his closest friend and his favorite teacher, but we’ve taken the younger one, too, in order to spend a day solely with our son), but that’s aided by the fact that my wife is currently on a lengthy break from her own job. When she returns, I’m not sure what we’ll do quite yet.

The best part, though, is experiences like this: I’ll be eating lunch with my son and he’s starting to get sleepy. He says he wants to go to the park and I say, “Sure, we can go right after your nap.” Then we trudge upstairs, I read him a book, and he drifts off to sleep. A couple hours later, after I’ve finished some work, I hear him awaken and so I stop what I’m doing, roust him, and we head off to the park. I’ll get the stuff I’m working on done late in the evening or early tomorrow morning - right now, there are important monkey bars to climb on. That is something that could never possibly happen at my old job - it happens all the time now.

The huge amount of time that I didn’t have before has opened the door to countless projects
Since I’ve quit, I’ve written a book (due to be published on December 17), went on a vacation with my family, planned another vacation, polished up a second book proposal, and initiated two other big projects that you’ll see in the coming months. None of this would have happened without stepping away, and all of them help to cement the decision I’ve made, shoring it up with other opportunities.

In an average week, my career shift has freed up about fifty five hours, and I had already been devoting about thirty to The Simple Dollar and related activities. Now, The Simple Dollar (and related activities) eats about fifty hours out of the week, which means I have thirty five hours (or so) to spend with my family and on personal projects that I didn’t have before.

I feel genuinely fulfilled by my work
When I’m actually engrossed in writing, I deeply enjoy it. I almost can’t believe that I can earn a living doing something that I enjoy so much. While I do still have management-type things to worry about (making sure I’m working on the right stuff, interacting with editors, etc.), they’re only a small fraction of my time and quite manageable. I get to spend the vast majority of my time on the things I’m passionate about.

Those are the good things. What about the bad things?

I miss my old job - at least the socialization aspects of it
Let’s face it: at my new career, I’m at home by myself in an office. No one else is there - just me and my work. If I’m stuck, I can’t just get up, stroll down to the refrigerator, get out a beverage, and chat with two or three people along the way. Instead, I’m alone.

Sometimes I just randomly IM people. At other times, I send emails. On occasion, I’ll even place some phone calls, just to hear a voice and to socialize a bit. I tend to miss people.

I get stir crazy and often have to leave to go do something
After a few days straight of not leaving my property, I get really stir crazy and get compelled to go do something during the day. I usually turn one of these trips every week or two into a grocery shopping trip and about once a month I’ll make a library trip, but many of the other sojourns are simply excuses to go interact with people.

My solution, over the last month or two, is to simply look for more social organizations to participate in - blogger meetups, public speaking groups (like Toastmasters), and so on. I’ve also gotten more involved with some community groups and committees. I simply need to do something out of the house, preferably with other people.

Time management is a completely different challenge than before
With my previous career, it was always pretty obvious what needed to be done next - and I just did it. If I was ever unsure, I’d just ask my supervisor.

Now, I’m effectively deciding the priority of all of the stuff I want to work on, and that can be tricky. I’ve discovered, for example, that even though I might be several days’ ahead on articles for The Simple Dollar, that doesn’t mean I should give more articles a low priority, because just when I do that, something comes up that eats a few days and I’m right back where I was at. I also have to make a lot of hard judgments on starting new projects. Will they actually fit? What will I have to cut back on to try out this new initiative? Sometimes it’s obvious - sometimes it’s very hard.

Another big challenge is knowing I have the freedom to just slack off whenever I want. I could easily just retire to my comfortable chair with a book, or browse a mountain of blogs, and really, in the end, no one would be the wiser. The only drawback would be that I’d simply be less productive. I’d miss out on writing opportunities and other interesting chances.

My biggest frustration is the interruptions
Where I used to work, if you closed your office door, that meant you were left alone, period, unless it was a mission critical emergency. Doing that meant I could have time to really focus on a complex task without interruption.

At home, the same isn’t true. If I’m settling in to focus, I have to turn off the ringer on my house phone, turn off my cell phone, log off of all instant messaging programs, close my email program, close the blinds on my windows, and shut my office door, and even that’s only a partial block. I still get interruptions from things like my wife coming in and asking me if there’s anything else we need to add to the shopping list, or my two year old pounding on the door yelling, “MY PANTS ARE POOPY!”

Once I’ve lost the focus, it takes me a while to get back on the proper train of thought - I can’t just sit down and pick up with the sentence I was on when I walked away.

The new money management stresses me out sometimes
Without the drumbeat of a steady paycheck (and a drop off in income), careful money management and frugality are more important than ever. My income is simply no longer steady from month to month - some months leave me feeling rich, while other months seem to point towards poverty. It’s not consistent.

As a result, our emergency fund is bigger than ever - almost a year’s worth of living expenses in cash. With this, I can handle the variability of any month - or even a downhill string of months. This has meant something of a slowdown in our debt repayment schedule, obviously, since the total income isn’t as big as it once was and also there’s not as much cash to go around.

Interestingly, our actual living expenses have gone down significantly, too. I have more time for frugal projects - our garden is tremendous this year, and we’ve made tons of bread, fresh pasta, and other such things.

So, in conclusion…
It was a great decision. I feel more fulfilled by the work/life balance than ever before. The change is not without problems (mostly social interaction-type problems), but overall I’m still very glad I made the switch. If you’re thinking of doing the same, give it some very strong consideration, particularly if you’re self-motivated and can keep yourself on task outside of a management structure.

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest.

A little while back, I discussed my thoughts on finding a career - in a nutshell, my belief is that the best possible career is one that balances your passions and your natural talents. Is Your Genius at Work? takes something of a different tack on that idea. Dick Richards, the author of the book, argues that we all have an inherent exceptional talent of some sort, and that by discovering what that talent is and figuring out how to use it, we set the stage for a masterful career.

While I’m not entirely convinced that I agree with this philosophy, I do agree squarely with Richards on one thing: discovering the things you’re naturally talented at can be an incredible boon to your career, whatever it is. It may require you to restart your career, or find a completely new career, but if you’ve got natural talent in some area, you have a giant leg up on the competition.

The entire point of Is Your Genius at Work? is to tease out your “genius” - in other words, it’s about discovering your strongest talents.

Is Your Genius at Work? is really like two short books in one. The first half of Is Your Genius at Work? is rather like a normal book, discussing the ins and outs of discovering your “genius,” figuring out how to use it, and putting it to work. The second half of the book is a mountain of exercises for figuring this out yourself.

Chapter 1 - Answer Four Key Questions
Richards states that the process of discovering your genius (your innate true talent) comes down to being able to answer four questions: What is your genius? Is your genius at work? What is your purpose? Is your genius on purpose?

I found Richards’ language to be a bit over the top, so I felt it useful to translate what he was saying. The four questions, in my own mind, boil down to: what are your greatest talents? Are you applying them in your career? What do you hope to accomplish with your life? Are you applying those talents towards that great accomplishment?

Chapter 2 - Recognize Your Genius
So, how do you figure out what your “genius” is? Richards says that there are three steps to the process. The first is noticing certain aspects of your experience - look for events in your life where things just click for you. The second is to associate that information with other events in your life - when have you experienced similar moments of just having everything click? The third is to figure out what those patterns have in common, because they’re all clues to your underlying genius.

Makes sense, right? Just look for the instances in your life where you do something that amazes others or is a big step beyond everyone else and figure out what they have in common. When it clicks into place and becomes clear - that’s your genius.

Chapter 3 - Notice Yourself
Obviously, it can be pretty difficult to notice our own behaviors, particularly in the intensity of the moment. Richards offers a few approaches - finding the common thread and so forth - but the real key, I think, is to simply become more mindful of your behavior.

Here’s an approach that worked well for me: just take note of all of the things that you do that either earn a lot of compliments from others or feel particularly enjoyable to me. Once you have a bunch of items, look at them long and hard and try to figure out what they have in common with each other.

Chapter 4 - Find the Face of Genius
Richards argues here that discovering one’s genius is the core part of figuring out our purpose in life, and that without it, we wander aimlessly, hoping to find answers and often feeling depressed about the direction of our lives.

In other words, we inherently want to use our genius. It’s what we yearn for, on some level - to use the things that come most naturally to us to benefit ourselves and the wider world. The problem is that modern life often puts countless obstacles in the way of finding and applying this genius - we’re pushed and pulled into countless activities and places from a very early age, without the room to breathe to figure out what our genius is.

Chapter 5 - Harvest Your Experience
Here, Richards focuses on evaluating your life experiences for finding your genius. While it’s easy to look at the positives for this, I was most intrigued by Richards’ suggestion that you also look at the negatives. What sort of negative labels do people apply to you? Do they say you’re flighty, or that you’re neurotic?

Those signs are probably clues to your genius, but also signs that you might not be in the right area to apply them most effectively. Use such negative statements as clues to figure out what you inherently do well - even if it’s something that’s not convenient or valued in your current environment.

Chapter 6 - Pursue the Blinding Flash
At some point, you’ll have an epiphany - a blinding flash of a moment where you discover what your genius actually is. It might come from self-discovery, but it also might come from the comment of another.

The key thing is that you’ll know it - it’ll ring very, very true for you. When you recognize it, don’t let go. You now see the “blinding light” - now comes the chase. Where can you go to maximize your use of that blinding light?

Chapter 7 - Detect Your Purpose
On the flip side of your genius is your purpose. It’s the thing you feel called to do in life. When you’re heading in that direction, you can feel it - it’s much like a compass finding its true north. When you’re not headed in that direction, it just doesn’t feel right.

Although I haven’t really found my genius, I do know my purpose - sharing thoughts and information that helps people. My purpose in life is to help people to help themselves - give them a push to consider their situation and maybe make a change, intellectually or otherwise. Whenever I’m writing a Simple Dollar post, talking to people, answering emails, or preparing other such things, it feels right - it feels as though I’m called to do it.

Chapter 8 - Tune Your Self
Richards closes by tying these ideas together. Your life and work should be the application of your genius to achieving your purpose. I view this philosophy as being exactly what I was talking about in my career advice: find your passions and your talents and find a way to do them both.

For some, this whole exercise might lead to a complete change in career direction. For others, they might find that they’re already pretty close to the path. I think, right now, I’m fairly close to my path.

The Exercises
The last third or so of the book is done in the format of a workbook, with specific exercises designed to help you tease out your genius and your purpose. For the most part, they take the concepts of the earlier chapters and boil them down into a simple, concrete activity that you can do in a half an hour or so.

Take the first exercise, for example. List all the words you can think of that end in -ing and describe activities you enjoy, then make another list of nouns that describe what you naturally create around you - what you bring to the table. Then, simply choose the word from the first list and the word from the second list that seem to resonate the strongest with you. For me, I came up with “writing about humanity.”

Some Thoughts on Is Your Genius at Work?
Richards focuses very heavily on words and labels. While I wholeheartedly agree with the concepts in this book (which I tried to isolate above), he spends a lot of time focusing on creating descriptive labels, an aspect that I didn’t find nearly as intriguing or powerful. Coming up with a name for your genius isn’t nearly as important as understanding it deeply.

The half book / half workbook format is very nice. I think it’s a method that should be used in more books, particularly ones that one should read to help themselves come to a decision or improve their way of living. It works really well here.

To really work, this book requires some serious introspection time. It’s not one of those books with tips that you can immediately apply and improve yourself. It’s more fundamental than that - it requires introspection to be useful.

Is Is Your Genius at Work? Worth Reading?
Is Your Genius at Work? is one of those books that’s either going to be incredibly worthwhile or useless to you. The keys for making it incredibly worthwhile are pretty obvious, too: are you willing to take the ideas seriously and actually put in some time in introspection and doing the exercises? Do you yearn to feel like you have a purpose in life or in your career? Do you have only a vague idea of what you’re actually talented at (or none at all)? The more you said yes there, the more effective this book will be.

I think this book would have been incredibly powerful for me a few years ago, before I actually spent the time to recognize what I’m good at and what I’m drawn to do. Those are the things that Richards really focuses on in this book.

My advice? Read it if you’re young - in college or younger. Read it if you feel like your career is going nowhere. Read it if you don’t feel passionate about your career at all. Read it if you feel like your natural talents don’t match what you’re doing. If you feel like your career is in good shape and it fills you with at least some degree of excitement, this book probably won’t help that much. If you’re on the other side of that fence, Is Your Genius at Work? might just be incredibly helpful in figuring things out.

Carlos left an interesting comment in yesterday’s article on finding a career:

The “do what you love, and the money will follow” mantra is getting very old. My loser brother (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) has a Master’s Degree in social work from a well-known and prestigious university. He’s 39, and earns $8.50/hour counseling troubled teens. He could earn more/hour working at a convenience store, and probably have less stress in his life. His ‘passion’ doesn’t provide him with enough income to contribute to a 403(b) or Roth IRA. His ‘passion’ is blinding his attention to his own future and long-term financial well-being.

Perhaps you’ll remember that several weeks ago, I posted an interview with one of my closest friends, Rachel. Rachel had the brains and the opportunity to follow pretty much any career she wanted, but she chose to do just what Carlos’ brother did - she’s a social worker.

I asked her point blank in that interview why she chose to make little money doing social work when she could easily be earning more doing something else. Here’s what she said:

I think the easy answer to is say, “Because I want to help people.” But really, how cliche is that! Also, it might have been an answer that could have gotten me to this point, but it certainly wouldn’t have been enough to keep me here. What keeps me here, simply put, are the people, both the ones I work with and the ones I “care for”. There’s just something very human about this work. Sometimes I think about looking for a job that pays better, but then I think about how much I’d be losing just so I could be “financially secure”.

In other words, Rachel finds an incredible amount of value from the non-financial aspects of her career, so much so that these other aspects make the financial aspects pale in comparison. She has the tools and skills to earn a lot more - trust me, Rachel is one of the most intelligent people I know and if you get into an area where she has some expertise, you’d be shocked at how deep the rabbit hole of her intellect goes. But Rachel finds enough non-financial value in her career choice that, for her, it more than replaces the financial losses of her career choice.

When you’re in the process of defining your career, you have a spectrum of choices available to you. You can look entirely at the choices available to you based on your natural skills and choose the one that simply earns the most, regardless of your actual passions. You can follow your passions and choose a career that fills you with intrinsic joy every single day, but doesn’t earn much at all. Or you can do something in the middle.

I’m a strong advocate of something in the middle. That’s why yesterday, I suggested using both skills and passions to find a career, because a job for which you have absolutely no passion is a job that will make life miserable, no matter how much you make.

SP, another commenter on the thread, was criticizing the concept, but actually agreed with this entire idea:

I like math, I’m good at it. I like problem solving so engineering is a good fit for me. But is math/engineering my passion? Well, no (unless this is a job interview). But it is something I enjoy that people will pay me a considerable amount of money to do.

He likes math and problem solving (passion) and is good at it (skill). Mathematics might not be his biggest passion, but it’s one he was able to transform into a pretty lucrative career (engineering). His job clearly doesn’t depress him, though it’s perhaps not the maximum fun use of his time. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.

I took a significant pay cut to do what I’m passionate about - writing. Because of the path I chose, I get to spend 90% of my workday researching, writing, and creating content. That’s the part of the job I’m passionate about, and that’s why at the end of almost every work day, I don’t stumble downstairs depressed and empty, the way I would sometimes feel after my old job. Instead, I bound down the stairs and run out in the yard to play with my son, almost as if I’m going from one fun thing to the next. Again, there is some skill-passion balance here, but I found that I was far more happy earning a little less and moving that slider far closer to the passion end of the scale.

Frugality is all about finding the maximum value in everything, from your purchases to how you spend your time. I get far more value out of spending an hour earning $15 doing something I dearly love versus earning $30 doing something that I enjoyed every once in a while but mostly filled me with frustration. I may be earning less per hour, but those hours are filled with a degree of happiness that was unreachable before, and I’m actually in better financial shape for it - lower taxes, no commuting costs, no eating out all the time, no quick stops at the bookstore or electronics store to buy something to be a balm for the way I felt.

I think both Rachel and Carlos’s brother have found a passion-income balance that works for them. It’s far farther down the passion end of the spectrum than I would choose, but I respect their choice. They did not put their “seeking income” blinders on when making a career choice. Instead, they found something that brings an incredible amount of value into not just their careers, but their lives as a whole - their work and their life choices are intrinsically tied to their core values. I can’t speak for Carlos’s brother, but Rachel has found a lot of creative ways to become very financially stable even while earning a pittance - she gets a lot of free meals, virtually free housing, and is actually funding her own Roth IRA. She sacrifices a ton of material stuff in exchange for other values.

The best career for you is the one with the maximum value for you - and that’s not measured in just dollars and cents. Yes, income is one big piece of the puzzle, but if you lead with just that piece, you’ll likely find yourself doing something that earns well, but something that results in you feeling very empty and tired at the end of the day. And if you find yourself burning that extra money sitting in Starbucks, buying flat panel televisions, and doing activities in the evening and on weekends that are simply there to take some of the edge off the dull pain of the job you hate (except for that paycheck you love), you’d be far better off in a career with a little less paycheck and a little more passion.

There are a lot of ways to choose a career. Most of them are bad.

Someone tells you, “Hey, you know, you should be a…” Bad.

You started a job and just kind of stuck around because nothing better came along. Bad.

You pick out a college major because it seems interesting at first glance without really knowing the kind of work it entails. Bad.

Your parents always had some particular dream for you. Bad.

You took a job because you needed some quick cash and never left because you got hooked on the paychecks. Bad.

Although they might all seem like different paths on the surface, these careers all have one big thing in common. None of them take you into account. Your passions, your talents, your interests - none of them matter in any of those cases. Instead, they’re all driven by the opinions of others or the vagaries of a paycheck.

Instead, I suggest the following. This is the exact advice I’ll give to my nieces and nephews as they approach graduation age, and the exact advice I’ll give my own kids as they approach graduation age.

The Simple Dollar Plan for Choosing a Career

First thing, throw your preconceptions out the window. So many people block out what they should be doing because of something they’ve been told in their past or something they’ve falsely come to believe about themselves. “I’d love to do X, but…” is a statement that keeps you from choosing the right career.

Second thing, don’t worry about income when choosing a career. Most career paths are littered with “average” people - people who jumped into the career because of the reasons above and aren’t pursuing the career with their passion. The people with passion are in the top 10%. Thus, you’ll make more in the seemingly lower-end career that you’re passionate about than you will in the more high-end career that you’re more ho-hum about.

Third thing, listen to your heart. Don’t listen to anyone’s blather about what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, or what you should be interested in and what you shouldn’t. I watched one boy’s artistic impulses get crushed by a family who thought that boys shouldn’t be artists. I watched a woman’s ability to paint brushed aside by a husband who thought it wasn’t lucrative enough for his tastes. Ignore those people. Listen to what your innermost heart is telling you.

Fourth thing, be realistic about your skills. Most jobs require some skills to get your foot in the door. For example, I’m never going to be a major league baseball player (although I dream of throwing out the first pitch at a Cubs game). That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be able to find some job in the baseball world. There are lots of jobs associated with baseball, from concession stand operator and sports management to physical therapy and sportswriting. Don’t give up on your baseball-fueled dreams just because you can’t pitch like C. C. Sabathia or hit like Suzuki Ichiro.

Got all that? What’s left is figuring out what your skills are (your actual vocation) and what you’re passionate about (the subject of your vocation). Find a way to match the two, and not only will you be happy for a very long time, but you’ll also find yourself naturally rising in your career path.

How do I figure out my skills? There are lots of indicators for this. Not all of these will match perfectly, but many of them will coincide.

What classes come easier to you naturally? Do you find math easy? Do you find English easy? How about foreign languages? Maybe you excel at sports/physical education, or perhaps at the sciences.

What are you naturally drawn to doing in your spare time? For example, if you are sitting at a desk with a pen and paper for fifteen minutes, what winds up on that paper? Math equations? Doodles of baseball players? What else do you do in your spare time?

What areas do you test well in? Take some standardized tests. Where are your scores high? Those are areas you likely have a natural aptitude for.

What careers naturally match your default personality? Take a Myers-Briggs test like this one and see what areas you’re naturally drawn to. Such tests aren’t perfect, but they are good guides for general areas to look at.

What do others perceive you as an expert at? Perhaps you’re a great matchmaker, or maybe you’re the best at solving algebra problems. Whatever you’re good at, others often identify it and begin to think of you as an expert at it.

What career paths make you feel happiest when you imagine yourself following through with them? Picture yourself in ten years doing what you envision a normal job in a career path. Do you seem happy there, or unhappy?

Remember, none of these will individually point you to where your skills and talents lie, but together they’ll give you an indication of some general directions.

How do I figure out my passions? I’ve written extensively about finding your passion before. It really boils down to a few basic things.

Ask questions Whenever something interests you and you have a question in your head, ask it and seek the answer.

Ignore what’s “cool” Instead, listen to what you like. The definition of “cool” is often just the reflection of other people’s interests mixed with some clever marketing - it’s not a reflection of what you enjoy.

Dabble in everything Try new things all the time. Don’t get stuck in a rut of doing the same thing over and over. Try doing a completely new activity every weekend.

When something really piques your interest, try it again - and again If something was truly enjoyable, try it again in a few days. Then again, and again. Find out if it was just the thrill of something new or something that actually engages you.

Associate with people who share this new interest of yours Surround yourself with people who also enjoy this passion. Join a club - or form one. Seek out friends who also enjoy these things.

Don’t keep pushing it if it starts to die out Sometimes we’ll feel a flare of interest in something, then it’ll dry out. If it does, don’t let it bother you.

If you spend a consistent period of time doing this - a few years, for example - you’ll likely stumble upon the areas you’re passionate about.

Think of ways to tie your skills to your passions If you’re lucky, they’ll naturally coincide, but quite often they won’t. That means you’ll have to search. Don’t be afraid to ask for help in thinking of ways they overlap in a way that appeals to you. If you have genuine talent in one area and deep passion in another, there’s almost always something out there to bridge the gap.

Find out more about specific careers At this point, you’ll probably have some worthwhile ideas. Maybe, if you’re really lucky, you’ll already have figured out what you want. At this point, seek out people who are already working in that area you’ve found. Email a few and ask them what their career is like. Quite a few will be happy to answer, and their answers will likely clue you in even more as to what’s right for you and what isn’t.

Find a mentor in that area - or near that area Once you’re close to or beginning to engage in a career path, find a mentor - someone who’s already succeeded on the path you’re facing. Ask lots of questions of people who are strong in the field and seek one or two that you really click with. Let those people mentor you and guide you to success.

Most of the emails I get from people asking for advice about their employment situation stem between a confusion between what a job is and what a career is.

A job is simply something you do to earn money. Career advancement is not something you’re interested in there and the work often doesn’t interest you at all. In five years, you’ll likely not be doing anything like your current job.

A career is a series of connected employment opportunities, where you build up skills at earlier employment opportunities to move you into higher paying and higher prestige employment opportunities later on. In five years, you’re planning to be doing something very similar to what you’re doing now, but hopefully with more income and more interesting problems to tackle.

Perhaps looking at some differences might help clarify it even further.

A job has minimal impact on future resumes and job applications because it’s completely unrelated to the stuff you’ll be applying for. A career is a series of heavily related jobs that will always be used on future applications and resumes.

A job is just there to put some easy cash in your pocket. A career provides the backbone of experiences and learning that will fuel your professional life for years, if not your entire life.

A job offers very few networking opportunities, because the people at a job are not people you’ll likely know at a future job. A career is loaded with networking opportunities, as most of the people around you are involved in similar careers to yours and they’ll keep popping up time and time again.

Advice About Jobs

At a typical job, your goal is usually just to get the task done and not annoy the boss. All you really want from a job is a regular paycheck and a positive reference from the boss, and all you have to do to get that done is to get your tasks done and stay out of the way.

This means that you shouldn’t be investing significant emotional energy into the job. Just do what you’re supposed to do with the minimum amount of expended mental and physical and emotional energy, and save that energy for other endeavors.

If your employment situation sounds more like a job than a career, you shouldn’t be killing yourself for it. You should be doing the tasks that are required, then conserving your energy for the other things going on in your life - a second job, raising a family, trying to jump-start a career, and so on.

Advice About Careers

In a career, however, your goal is to not only get the task done, but it’s also to learn skills, gain experiences, build connections, and put yourself in position for promotions, raises, and possibly similar positions in other organizations. That’s a lot more than just getting the task done, and that means putting your ear to the grindstone.

In other words, you should be investing at least some emotional energy into a career. You should be looking for ways that you can get promotions and raises and bonuses and useful resume-building skills and experience. This means always going the extra mile and doing tasks that are beyond your minimum job description, building positive relationships with people around you, and so on.

You should fight hard for a career until you get to the level of success that you want. That doesn’t mean alienating other pieces of your life. It means setting a professional goal, figuring out what you have to do to get there, and getting to work.

A Comparative Example: Convenience Store Clerk

Most people treat convenience store clerking as a job. They go in, do the minimal tasks that are assigned to them by the manager, and watch the clock until they can get out of there to do something else. You know what? That’s what they should be doing. It’s merely a job to them - a way to trade some time for some cash. They don’t want to work at this all their life - they just want a few bucks in their pocket.

Some people treat it as more than a job, though. They hope to become a manager at the store and, perhaps someday, own a store. They take the work seriously, and when there’s no clerking tasks to go around, they spend their time doing other things that need to be done: cleaning the store, learning how the accounting procedures work, and other things like that. They ask lots of questions of the manager and use that for fuel to learn what’s going on, and they often remain as a clerk for many years. Quite often, these people get promoted to assistant manager and sometimes do become the manager. I know at least one person who started working as a clerk at a Casey’s (a gas station/convenience store chain here in Iowa) and eventually wound up owning two of them.

The Big Point

Know going in whether or not this employment opportunity is a job or a career. Ask yourself whether you hope to be promoted at some point, or you just need to collect a paycheck.

If you just need a paycheck, simply don’t become emotionally involved at all. Do the tasks you’re told to do and conserve your emotional and mental energy for the other pieces of your life. If you’re hoping that this employment opportunity will push you on to other things, then turn on the passion.

Figuring this out right off the bat can save you a ton of investment in a job. Save that investment for your family, your passions, or your career.

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest.

When I was in college, I switched majors three different times, bouncing around the hard sciences and the humanities like a rubber ball and finally settling on multiple majors that balanced my interests. I started down the path of a hard science career, then quit to become a writer, and someday I dream of following other passions, too. I read voraciously, tackling complex books on everything from nature to history and philosophy, with lots of literature mixed inside. One day, you might find me digging in the garden - the next, I’ll be tinkering with something electronic.

When I picked up The Renaissance Soul and read the subtitle Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One, I knew I had to pick it up. The phrase “Too Many Passions to Pick Just One” struck a real chord with me, as it’s something I’ve felt throughout my life. I’ll bury myself deep into a project - what one of my friends calls “woodshedding” - and emerge feeling as though I’ve accomplished something interesting and real. But then I’ll feel wanderlust and I’ll want to move onto something else - a new passion.

Margaret Lobenstine’s book seems to address this head on, and I was eager to dive in and see if it had any advice directly applicable to me. Does it? Let’s find out.

Examining The Renaissance Soul

One - Renaissance Souls: Who You Are - and Who You’re Not
The Renaissance Soul opens by clearly defining what a “renaissance soul” is: a person who thrives on a variety of interests and redefines the accepted meaning of success. That’s a pretty broad definition of the term, but it makes sense - if you’re a person who is deeply engaged in a wide variety of subjects all at once, you’re probably a renaissance soul. If you’re skillful in one area, but you have a lot of other interests and resent being pigeonholed by your one known skill, you’re probably a renaissance soul. Take me, for instance: I’m passionate about writing, literature, politics, history, food, the sciences, economics, and mathematics, just to name a few things, and I could see myself following any of them for a career path if I saw a strong potential to support my family in that area. They all burn inside me, some more brightly than others on occasion.

Two - Yes, but …: Common Doubts of the Renaissance Soul
But it’s too late to start something new! But I really want to be an expert at something! But I can’t earn a living unless I stick to one thing! But I don’t want to be a renaissance soul! Lobenstine addresses all of these concerns here, mostly reflecting on the idea that a diversified skill set is often a useful thing in an increasingly complex economy, focused passion can make up a lot of ground against expertise especially when combined with diverse skills, and stressing something vital that I’ve come to discover over the last few years: you can make big career leaps if you prepare yourself financially. Frugal living pays off again and again… I love it.

Three - Panning for Golden Values
Lobenstine argues that many renaissance souls are made to feel guilty because of the choices they make, because the choices of a person with many interests and passions would seem to indicate a lack of commitment to a central goal. In truth, most renaissance souls are deeply committed - but not to specific goals. Instead, their commitments are all about values - aspects of life that they find important. Their passions flow through these values like water through a channel. For example, a person who values spirituality might be seen as “flaky” and uncommitted if they bounce from church to church and religious experience to religious experience, but in fact the person is deeply committed to finding their spiritual path.

Four - The Power of Renaissance Focal Points
Most renaissance souls tend to have a flood of things they want to be working on, and thus it’s easy to simply feel overwhelmed by interests. This can make it particularly difficult to focus in on any one thing and do it well, so quite often renaissance souls either make jittery jumps from thing to thing, slide through life unenthusiastic about anything, or bury themselves in one thing and lament the things they’re missing (I was the latter for a long time). Lebenstine’s solution? Pick a set of four focal points (for now) and focus on them to the exclusion of others. In other words, list out all of the things that interest you and keep four of them for focus right now, with the recognition that at a later date, you can change to other focal points. This can often give you the push you need to dig into something that excites you without feeling overwhelmed by choices and options.

Five - Your J-O-B: No More Day Jobs
Lobenstine tackles the difficult issue of a need for income balanced with a need to focus on your focal points - in other words, how does a renaissance soul balance the need for income with the driving desire to follow one’s passions? Ideally, a renaissance soul seeks to find opportunities where their passions actually pay the bills, but many people aren’t in that situation. She suggests re-evaluating what a job actually is. From Lowenstine’s perspective, a job can provide five things: income or benefits, energy (meaning it leaves you with the kind of energy you need to focus on your passions elsewhere), time (meaning it’s not a giant time vacuum and that there’s some flexibility in terms of schedule), training and equipment, and networking and publicity opportunities. Your full time job should be providing as many of these as possible - if they’re only providing income, your job is likely stifling any opportunity you have to dig into your passions. I know that for me, I had a job that provided good income and benefits and ample time, but it left me completely drained in terms of energy and there were little resources to utilize or opportunities to network in the other areas I was passionate in, so I chose to use my spare time to focus on one other passion (writing) until it became profitable enough to allow me to walk away and explore many other passions to a deeper extent (my family, politics, cooking, etc.).

Six - Getting Paid for Your Passions
As hinted at in the previous chapter, the real goal is to find a way to translate your myriad of passions into income sources. Lobenstine suggests spending your free time building real, demonstrable skills in the areas you’re passionate about, then hunting for jobs that incorporate both skills from your current career along with the demonstrable skills from your area of passion. For example, let’s say you have a job as a researcher, but you’re passionate about writing. You could spend your spare time honing your writing skills, working on getting published in a few places, and creating a writing portfolio. Then you could fuse the two - start writing on the topics you’re researching, using your leverage from both areas to get pieces into print. Perhaps you could even grow into being a staff writer on a publication that focused on your research area.

Seven - But I Don’t Want to Go Back to School!: Alternative Resources for Renaissance Souls
Instead of going back to school for your passion, use the fact that you already have financial security (that steady job of yours) to open up opportunities to get the experience you need for free. You can do this by volunteering, for example - if you’re passionate about design, you could try to get an unpaid part-time position at a design firm just to get some real-world experience under your belt. Another option is to find a mentor in your area of interest and let that mentor guide you towards opportunities where you can really grow in your passion - good volunteer slots, low-end jobs, and methods to grow specific useful skills for your area of interest. In other words, let experience be your guide, not schooling.

Eight - What If I’ve Got My Whole Life Ahead of Me?: Renaissance Soul Strategies for Young People
The biggest step you can take as a young person with diverse interests is to major in a field that intensely works to develop your critical thinking and reasoning skills - fields such as philosophy and mathematics. You can also double major in another area and add some minors in specific areas. Learn skills that can translate to any career - for example, a strong minor in a foreign language can open a wide variety of doors for you. Also, when you’re in college, get involved in a number of organizations that touch on your various interests and dig in to your heart’s content. When you do move on to a real job, don’t start living to match your paycheck - live cheap and sock away as much as you possibly can so that you have the freedom to follow other passions, and don’t let your job become all-consuming - give yourself plenty of free time to follow interesting pursuits.

Nine - Committing Yourself to Action the Renaissance Soul Way
This chapter is a primer on goal setting. Lobenstine breaks it down into a nice mnemonic: PRISM, which stands for Price, Reality, Integrity, Specificity, and Measurability. What sort of expense does your goal have? Is it actually realistic, or are you hoping for something out of the realm of reasonable possibility? Is your goal something that’s in line with our most deeply-held values? What exactly is your goal - what markers are there to tell you when you’ve achieved it? What’s your timeline for approaching this goal, and when will you have achieved what you want to achieve? Asking these questions honestly can help mold a nebulous goal into something you can start taking realistic action on immediately.

Ten - Time-Management Magic for Renaissance Souls
Lobenstine’s approach to time management is basically the “rocks and sand” approach described by Stephen Covey in his worthwhile First Things First: basically, schedule blocks of time each week for the things truly important to you and don’t let the trivial things interrupt them - let them fill the leftover time like sand fills the space around rocks. She also offers up a litany of solid basic time management tactics: don’t multitask, block out interruptions when you need to focus, have a daily routine, and so forth.

Eleven - Staying the Course: Overcoming Momentum Blockers
Lobenstine covers several potential momentum blockers here, but the one that really stood out to me was perfectionism - a need to continually polish and make things better. Lowenstein’s solution is to limit yourself - agree to a certain timeframe that you’ll give yourself to polish the thing you’re working on and when that time is up, it’s good enough - turn it in and move on with life. This issue strikes at home for me and it’s something I constantly battle. I’d love to just sit around and polish my writing over and over again, but I’ve come to realize that it’s often more important to just get the thoughts out there than to worry about repeating the same words too often or perfectly polishing the grammar. This is particularly true when it comes to The Simple Dollar - this site thrives on ideas, not on exact use of the pluperfect. I’ve learned to put away my perfectionism when it comes to this site and instead use it to polish other things I work on - if I hadn’t done that, this site would be much more boring.

Twelve - If It’s Still Hard to Get Going…
Fear. Anxiety. Failed expectations. These things often hold us back, even when we’re ready to make a leap. We all fear the unknown. We’re all anxious about the potential for failure. We all worry sometimes about disappointing the ones we love. It’s very difficult to walk away from what’s safe and unknown, but allowing that fear to control your decision just means that you’re keeping yourself from living the life you’ve dreamed of. My philosophy is this: it’s your life, and you’re the one that will be left alone with the regret of having not taken the road less traveled. So take it and don’t look back.

Be a Role Model
The book closes with an avenue of thought that really inspired me: the idea that by having the courage to follow your passions, you might become a role model for others and convince them to do the same. I know at least one person who was simply amazed that I had the courage to walk away from a job and do something I dreamed about - and I used that opportunity to tell her that she could do that, too. In fact, I’ve already recommended this book to her.

Some Thoughts on The Renaissance Soul

I had a flood of thoughts when reading The Renaissance Soul. Here are a few of the more interesting ones.

This book captured my thought patterns very well. Lobenstine gets it, on a very deep level. I love reading literature because it gives me the opportunity to understand aspects of the human existence of others, but rarely do I read a book that seems to get a fundamental aspect of my own life. That’s a truly enjoyable experience - it allows me to directly, intimately relate with someone else and realize I’m not alone in some aspect of the way that I think and live.

You can be a role model by making the hard choice. When deciding to make the leap to become a writer, I mostly saw things through the lens of disappointment. Would others think I was making a foolish choice? I hadn’t really considered that making a hard choice could actually inspire others, and I think that’s important.

Good goals rest on top of good values. The goals you are most likely to achieve are ones that are tied into your core values and passions. They will drive you on to success. Figure out what really drives you on a fundamental level, establish some goals to reach related to that fundamental drive, and hold on tight - the results will probably amaze you.

Is The Renaissance Soul Worth Reading?

You should know right off the bat whether this book is compelling to you or not. Just look at the cover again:

Are you a person that has “too many passions to pick just one”? If you are, then you’ll get some intense value out of reading this book. More than anything, you’ll realize that you’re not alone in feeling this way at all. For me, at least, it felt quite good to see this - to realize that I wasn’t just a person who couldn’t commit to a single lifelong direction.

This was a very powerful book for me. For others, it might not be so powerful. You’ll probably quickly be able to figure out which group you’re in, and if you’re in the group that’s somehow seized by the concept, read this book right away. You’ll be very glad you did, even if you don’t get a single piece of actionable advice out of it. Why? Because so much of what’s being said will feel innately familiar to you in a way that few books really do.