Tag Archives: decisions

I have no clue what I want to do in life and I’m happy about it

I’m currently in a period of immense doubt about my future and about my life. this isn’t something I’ve ever experienced before, and I’m so glad that I am going through it.

Throughout university I have always been sure about what I want to do with my life and how I wanted it to play out. It certainly wasn’t always the same path but I believed it with full conviction. After a year of university I wanted to do medicine, and I was 100% sure that this was the right path for me and I would definitely do it, then after a year of planning my life as a doctor, I decided medicine wasn’t going to be for me and I would do a PhD instead; for a year, I was set on doing a PhD. In my final year I continually changed from wanting to be a medical doctor, and getting a PhD, with increasing frequency. I decided to sit the GAMSAT (medical entry test) in early 2020 but not put too much emphasis on it, I got a respectable mark and conveniently forgot to apply for entry. I told myself this didn’t matter as I was going to undertake a PhD at that point, so I signed up for a year of honours to introduce myself to research.

After my final year, full of placement and research I was no closer to knowing what I wanted to do, but vehemently told people that I was going to do a PhD if I was asked. This must have given me comfort, sounding like I knew what it was I wanted to do with my life. I was lucky enough to finish my pkacement early, in mid december, giving me 2 months before I started honours to figure my life out. In this period I vowed to not fill my time with work or other commitment, rather have it as a period of contemplation. And boy, contemplate I did. I spent at least 20mins every day meditating (sometimes up to an hour) and wrote every day. I feel as though my turmoil was displayed pretty well in my writing, I was always writing about careers, finance or productivity as these were all the things on my mind.

During this time I spent a lot of time with friends, as well as learning how to surf which I am so grateful I did. I began honours quite apprehensive, something I’ve never experienced before in a situation like this. I realised I did not know why I was doing it. Over my time contemplating, I realised I don’t know what it is I want to do with my life, but by reaching high earlier (ie. choosing medicine or a PhD) it meant I worked as hard as possible to allow myself to be afforded the choice when crunch time came. I believe very high goals are the best thing you can do for yourself in a period of doubt, because it is much easier to elect to take an easier path down the track when you’ve been aiming for something harder than it is the other way around. Although this isn’t without cost.

I realised I had spent so much of my time at university being focussed on my academics that I did not spend a huge amount of time with my friends, I wasn’t the most social person, and I believe my social skills deteriorated because of it. Now, I don’t mean to say I was a hermit, I still socialised, just not as much as I would have liked when reflecting back on it.

Now, I’m in a position where I have absolutely no clue what I’m going to do next year, and I love it. I love it because I think I’m moving beyond the typical social script of ‘do well at university, get a good job and earn lots of money’. One of my biggest fears is committing to a path I don’t truly enjoy, and thats the path I believe I was on. Maybe I do want to do a PhD or medicine, but maybe I don’t. I’ve stopped saying I know my path and I’m just going to enjoy it and see where it takes me. I’m focussing on the things that matter, my health and fitness, my family and friends and just developing more as a person, rather than as a student. I never thought I’d be so happy to be so lost.

PS. I have been reading a lot of books which helped me come to this realisation, this may be of interest to some people so here they are:

Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World – David Epstein: the most successful people are not those who work the hardest and specialise, but those who diversify, are curious and have broad interests and passions, as they allow your thinking to be flexible and not rigid.

Buddhism without Beliefs – David Batchelor: A great book describing buddhist beliefs without the religious aspect behind it, a great introduction to a different way of seeing the world

Ego is the Enemy – Ryan Holiday: A great book detailing all the ways our ego will be our downfall, and how to reduce it’s negative effects

Stress and Anxiety: Don’t Suffer Twice

This week, I listened to a great podcast about mindfulness and anxiety from Sam Harris and Tim Ferris. Whilst writing my weekly review I realised I experienced some stressful situations in the short, medium and long term which the podcast helped me control, with varying degrees of success. If you just want to see the techniques I use, jump to here

Short Term Stress

I had a very difficult exam (my final one for university!) which seemed to be designed to push you for time. I had roughly 30mins to go, with 30 marks unfinished (out of a 100 mark, 2hr exam), all long responses and I noticed myself getting frazzled and spending time thinking about how I was not going to finish, and flipping between questions.

After about 30 seconds of fueling the fire of anxiety, I identified my stress and thought, “it doesn’t matter how many questions I’ve got to go, I just need to keep powering through them and finish them the best I can,” and that’s exactly what I did. I put this ability to identify and put aside my stress down to my meditation, which I poorly adhere to but have still seen the benefits, this being one.

Medium Term Stress

My medium term stress was having a busy week ahead with Friday, Saturday and Sunday being full of work, and a lot of research to do. The way I managed this stress was ensuring I had a to do list of the essential pieces I needed to have finished, and just worked hard to get them finished by thursday so on the days I was working I was able to switch off afterwards so it still felt like I had a weekend; worked a charm.

Writing the tasks down and blocking out time in my calendar has been a great way to show me how much I really do need to get done because the worry about having a lot of work to do is always worse than the actual work.

Long Term Stress

My long term stress is more about the career I want to pursue, I am coming to the end of my degree and have several options but unsure which one to take. I’m still figuring out how best to approach this, but I currently have two heuristics:

  • Which path will be more fun to do
  • Which path has the most options afterwards

So far this led me to choose my degree (Exercise Physiology is more fun than Engineering) my jobs and the research projects I’ve been involved in as well. It is working out pretty well so far.

You can never know whether the decisions you make are the right ones, so by choosing a path which has the most options and will be fun in the short term removes a lot of the stress around making significant live decisions. Tim Ferriss’ fear setting exercise is also really useful for life-altering decisions as well.

Strategies to Stress Less

It’s not that I don’t stress, I do, but I’ve really learned over the past few years how to better manage my stress so that it doesn’t distract me from what is important.

For short term, in the moment stress, like in an exam, you have to understand your stress, allowing it to be put away and ignored so you can deal with the problem at hand. Mindfulness Meditation (with Sam Harris’ ‘Waking Up’ app) has helped in identifying this stress, allowing you to not be consumed by it.

For medium term, stress about the coming days or weeks, writing a list and scheduling your time in a calendar helps to make you realise that the stressor is probably not as time consuming as it seems, and by blocking out time for it, Steve Jobs’ ‘Imaginary time’ comes in and with a pressing enough deadline, clearly set out in a calendar and a list, you can achieve almost anything. What happens when your tasks aren’t time bound is called Parkinson’s Law, where “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” so block off the time you need and have no more, trust me, you’ll finish it.

Finally long term stress. Making life decisions suck, you can never be sure of what result your decision will have, but there are ways to ensure you enjoy it. Choose something that you’ll enjoy doing, the worst thing that happens is you enjoy yourself, then do something else. Choose something which doesn’t close doors, or even opens them, nobody knows what they want to be doing in 5 or 10 years, so don’t limit yourself with your choices.

Finally, the main takeaway from this post should be that the object of your stress will never be as bad as what you think it will be, so don’t suffer twice by stressing about it. Just saying ‘don’t stress’ doesn’t help so I’ve given some thoughts on how I manage my stress so I’m not wasting my energy on my ruminations.

I’d love to know what you do to manage your stress and any techniques which have worked for you, leave a comment down below and get in touch if you’d like to chat through your stresses with me!

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