Most people spend decades in their career without ever answering the most important question: what do I actually want? This is according to Carla Harris, one of the most respected leaders on Wall Street. Here’s her advice on how to figure out what you actually want and how to position yourself to win.
Why We End Up in Careers We Don’t Want
Early in your career, you’re often following someone else’s plan. What your parents told you. What everyone around you is doing. What looks right on paper.
In your 20s and 30s, you’re really prosecuting somebody else’s agenda. College students think they know what they want, but they actually know what their parents have been telling them they should do. Then they get to a competitive college, and they follow what everyone else is doing—investment banking, consulting, pre-med—because that’s what the “smart kids” or the “cool kids” are doing.
All of a sudden, you get to your 40s and you say, “This is not really doing it for me,” or “I don’t really have a personal life.” But it takes courage to admit you don’t know what you want. So you keep going. Then you get to 50, and you’re wiser, but it takes even more courage to say, “I know life’s got to be better than this.”
Don’t “push through” that feeling. Pause and consider what you actually want.
The Three-Sheet Method for Designing Your Career
When you’re trying to figure out what you want to do, take a blank sheet of paper and look at all of your experiences. Ask yourself:
Sheet 1: What did I like?
- Was it speaking directly with people?
- Was it working on a team?
- Was it working by myself?
- Was it creating something out of nothing?
- Was it just executing?
Sheet 2: What kind of people did I enjoy working with?
- Did I enjoy working with people smarter than me?
- Or did I want to be the smartest person in the room?
- Look at the context where you flew—or where you really enjoyed it.
Sheet 3: Design a job.
Now you know what you like to do. You know the context you like to work in. You know the kind of people you want to be around. So write 3–5 bullet points of things you really like to do. Assume money is no object—that this job will pay you whatever you want. Now, what does that job description look like?
Focus on Content, Not Title
Don’t just focus on the job title. Focus on what you actually like doing. There are so many people who focus on the job title—but you should look at the content.
For example, graduate students often say they want to do mergers and acquisitions because they want to know how to value companies. But you can also learn how to value companies in equity research, or in credit. If you focus on the content of the job, you will find that there are lots of roles where that content is common—and that you might really enjoy.
When you get honest about what you actually like doing, you can start designing a path that actually fits you. Because the best career isn’t about a title—it’s about what you do every day.
