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This article does not provide career advice, but it can help you find the profession you truly love throughout your life.

How can you find the profession you truly love?

It takes an hour to read this article, but please believe that this hour is worth it.

Happy reading.

Career is a topic I have wanted to write about for a long time. Society tells us many things, including what we should pursue in our careers and the various possibilities of professions. I find this to be a strange phenomenon because "society" knows very little about what we want.

In the topic of careers, "society" is like that uncle who, when you return home for the New Year, insists on sharing a bunch of nonsensical life experiences with you. You will quickly lose interest in what the uncle says because, for the most part, it is meaningless, and the things he actually says are already outdated.

If society is that uncle, then conventional wisdom is like the uncle's nonsense. However, often in the topic of careers, after hearing this nonsense, we do not lose interest; instead, we listen intently to every word of the nonsense and then make significant career choices based on it. This is indeed a very strange phenomenon.

This article will not give you career advice.

This article can provide a thinking framework to help you make career choices, which considers "who you are," "what you want," and the rapidly changing career landscape in modern society. You may not have enough experience in making career choices, but you are certainly more qualified than "society" to decide what is best for you.

Whether you are just starting your career, unsure of what you want to do, or have been in the workforce for many years but are uncertain if you are on the right path.

I hope this article can help you reset your thinking and help you think more clearly.

Your Life So Far#

For most people, childhood is like a river, and we are like tadpoles in that river.

We cannot choose the river. From the day we wake up, we are on the path chosen for us by our parents, society, and the larger environment. We are told the survival rules of the river, the correct swimming style, and our goals.

Our job is not to think about the path but to achieve success according to the predefined definitions of success on the already chosen path.

For the vast majority of readers, this river leads to a pond called university. We may have some choice in which pond to go to, but these different ponds called universities are not that different.

In the pond, we have more space to move and freedom. We start to think and look outside the pond—seeing what reality looks like, looking at the place where we will spend the rest of our lives.

These usually bring us complex emotions.

Then, after 22 years of waking from the river, we are kicked out of the pond called university and told, "Go, create your own life."

This arrangement is clearly problematic. The most obvious point is that you are a person with no skills, who knows nothing, and has not much else.

Before you start solving your "loser" problem, there is another bigger issue—the predefined route has ended.

Students in school are like employees in a company directed by a CEO. But in the real world, no one will be the CEO of your life, and no one will be the CEO of your career path—this person can only be you.

You have spent over a decade, even longer, becoming a good student, but you have no experience as a CEO of anything. Until now, you have only been dealing with very small problems—like "how to be a good student."

Graduating from university is like someone who has only played flight simulation on a computer, holding the cockpit key of a Boeing 747. The questions you need to answer become "Who am I?", "What are the important things in my life?", "What career paths do I have? Which one should I choose? How do I create my own path?"

When you leave campus, your familiar life guide suddenly leaves, and you are left standing alone at a crossroads with countless forks, feeling lost.

But time waits for no one.

You will walk down a path, and this path is your life. At the end of life, when you look back, you will be able to take your first bird's-eye view of the entire road.

When scientists study people's reflections on their lives at the end of life, the research shows that many people are filled with deep regrets. Many of these regrets come from childhood; most of us did not have the opportunity to learn how to create our own paths when we were young. Most people still do not create their own paths as adults, which is why they find the roads they have taken absurd when reflecting at the end of life.

This article teaches how to create your own path. I hope readers will spend an hour looking at the road they are on and then see where this road leads, so they can be sure that this road is not so absurd.

Chef and Cook#

I have previously written about the difference between "first principles thinking" and "analogical thinking," which I colloquially refer to as "chef" and "cook."

“First principles thinking” (chef) is thinking like a scientist—taking out core facts and observations and drawing conclusions from their collisions. It is like a chef trying various ingredients to create a dish. As long as you keep doing this, the chef will eventually create new recipes.

“Analogical thinking” (cook) is looking at how things already are and then mimicking them. The mimicking process may add a bit of personal elements, just like a cook following a ready-made recipe.

A cook who follows a recipe completely and a chef who independently invents recipes are two extremes on the spectrum of thinking. In all moments of your life that require thought and decision-making, your thinking process is always somewhere on this spectrum.

Your choice is simply whether you lean more towards being a chef or a cook, whether you create or imitate, whether you are original or go with the flow.

Being a chef requires a lot of time and energy. Because what you are doing is harder than reinventing the wheel; you are trying to be the first person to invent the wheel. Being a chef is like groping in a foggy forest with your eyes closed; you will face many failures.

Being a cook is much easier.

Most of the time, being a chef is a waste of time, and the opportunity cost is very high; after all, time is the most precious thing. I am currently wearing branded clothing and branded sneakers; this is a way for me to go with the flow in my clothing choices. I often see people on the street wearing the same brand as me.

Choosing to follow the trend in clothing is understandable because what I wear is not important to me; clothing is not how I express my personal characteristics. So for me personally, in terms of fashion, I am willing to be lazy with cook thinking.

However, in other parts of life, some things are very, very important, such as where to live, what kind of people to be friends with, whether to get married, who to marry, whether to have children, how to raise children, and how to set priorities in life.

Setting a career path is naturally one of those very, very important things, and the reasoning is easy to understand:

Time#

For most people, working (including commuting, thinking about work after hours, etc.) will take up 50,000 to 150,000 hours of time.

A long-lived person has about 750,000 hours in their life. When we subtract childhood (175,000 hours), basic life-sustaining activities like eating, sleeping, exercising, and chores (325,000 hours), your real "meaningful adult time" is only 250,000 hours. So, a person's career will occupy 20% to 60% of a person's meaningful adult time.

Such an important matter, how can it be approached with cook thinking?

Quality of Life#

Your career has a significant impact on all your leisure time. For those without wealth accumulation, wealthy spouses, or large inheritances, a career is a means of making a living.

Other attributes of a career will determine where you live, the flexibility of your life, what you can do in your spare time, and even who you will marry.

Influence#

A career will take up a lot of your time and is a means to support your leisure life. In addition, a career is also your main avenue for generating influence. Throughout a person's life, everyone will influence thousands of people in different ways, and those influenced by you will go on to influence others.

Although we do not have a time machine, if we did, we could randomly select an 80-year-old person, go back eighty years, discard that 80-year-old baby (now the old person), and then come back with the time machine. I guarantee that the world upon return will be vastly different.

All lives have an impact on the present and future world. And this influence is often within your control because it all depends on your values and the direction of your own energy. No matter which career path you take, the world will be different because of it.

Identity#

As children, adults would ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. As adults, we introduce ourselves by telling others our profession. We do not say, "I practice law," but rather, "I am a lawyer."

This may not be a very good perspective on careers, but that is how society is. A career is often a person's primary identity.

So, choosing a career path is not a trivial matter like deciding what to wear today; it is a very, very important matter, one of those things that "must be dealt with using chef thinking at all costs."

Your Career Map#

Three Groups of People#

Next, let's talk about you. Although I am not clear about your specific situation, I guess you are in the blue area of the diagram below—meaning you are on a career path.

Whether you have not yet started or have been on the path for a while, you definitely have a "career planning map" in your mind.

We can divide people with career planning maps into three groups, and these three groups exist at every stage of life.

The first group has a big question mark on their map.

These people are hesitant about their career paths. They have been told to pursue their heart's desires, but they are not particularly interested in anything. They have been told to do what they are good at, but they do not know what they are best at. They may have had clear ideas in the past, but they are no longer the same person; they are no longer sure who they are or where they want to go.

The second group has a clear arrow on their map. They believe the direction of this arrow is correct, but their legs are walking in another direction. They live in a common life dilemma—walking on a career path they know in their hearts is wrong.

The luckiest third group knows what direction they want to go and believes they are on the right path.

But even the third group will occasionally stop and ask themselves, "Who drew this arrow? Was it really me?"

This question often has no answer.

All three groups can benefit from self-reflection on their career paths.

Some readers may say, "You are just a person who writes articles online; can you really help me?"

Well, let me list my qualifications:

1. For the past twenty years, I have been analyzing my career path;

2. My path has had many twists and turns. At 7, I wanted to be a movie star; at 17, I wanted to be the President of the United States; at 22, I wanted to be a composer for movie soundtracks; at 24, I wanted to start a business; at 29, I wanted to write a musical; recently, I want to be a writer.

3. I have spent most of my life wandering on my career path, but I now love my job. This may change, but in my decision-making process, I have seen the decisions that led to wrong outcomes and those that took me in the right direction, which has helped me understand where people are easily misled.

4. Besides my personal story, I have also closely listened to many stories from close friends. By deeply observing and repeatedly discussing my friends' career paths, I have gained a broader perspective on this topic. This has also helped me distinguish which issues are unique to me and which are universal.

5. Finally, this article will not tell you which careers are better, which are worse, which are more valuable, and which are not worth pursuing. Many academic studies can answer these questions, but this article will not. This is merely a framework for self-reflection on career paths, aimed at helping readers face themselves more honestly and effectively. This framework has been useful for me, and I believe it may also be useful for others. Now that we have clarified your career map and the arrows that may exist on it, please throw this map far away. We will revisit this map only at the end of the article.

Redrawing the Map#

Now we need to think deeply and redraw a map.

First, we need to create a Venn diagram.

The first step is to draw a "Wants" box, which should contain everything you want from your career:

The second step is to draw a "Reality" box. This should contain all possible careers or the careers you can potentially reach. This depends on your potential in different fields and the general difficulty of succeeding in each field:

The overlapping area of the two boxes is your optimal career choice. The careers in this part are the arrows that should be drawn on your career planning map; we call this the overlapping part the "options pool".

This method seems straightforward, but accurately filling in these two boxes is still quite difficult. To make this method effective, we need to get these two boxes as close to reality as possible. To achieve this effect, we need to rigorously question our inner selves.

Let's start with the "Wants" box.

The difficulty in filling the "Wants" box lies in the fact that you have many different desires. In other words, you have many different aspects of yourself, each with its own wants and fears.

Since desires can conflict with each other, you cannot obtain everything you want. Obtaining one desired thing often means not being able to obtain another. Sometimes these two things may be completely contradictory.

The "Wants" box is a game of compromise with yourself.

The Octopus of Desire#

To fill the "Wants" box well, you need to seriously think about what you want to gain from your career. To help everyone do this, we need to borrow the help of the "Octopus of Desire."

Each of us has our own Octopus of Desire. Each person's octopus looks different, but the differences are not that significant. I bet that most people's desires and fears are similar.

First, it is important to clarify that there are many major categories of desires, each living on different tentacles of the octopus. These tentacles often argue with each other.

It doesn't end there. Each tentacle is made up of different desires, and these desires and fears often contain huge contradictions with each other.

Let's look at each tentacle one by one.

Personal Desire Tentacle#

The Personal Desire Tentacle (Personal) may be the hardest to summarize; everyone has different personal desires. This tentacle reflects each person's personality and values and carries the most complex and challenging human need: satisfaction.

This tentacle not only carries your present self but also many past "selves."

The dreams of a 7-year-old,

The idealistic understanding of a 12-year-old,

The little secrets of a 17-year-old,

The thoughts of your current self...

All scattered on the Personal Desire Tentacle. Each "self" wants a share. And once any "self" does not get what it wants, it will fill you with disappointment and loss.

In addition, your fear of death may also appear on the Personal Desire Tentacle. For example, wanting to leave a mark on the world or achieve great things. The existence of the Personal Desire Tentacle is why many billionaires do not want to indulge in a life of luxury and pleasure for the rest of their lives—this tentacle's demand is strong.

However, the Personal Desire Tentacle is also the most often overlooked one. In many cases, personal desires are the least favored because the fears carried by this tentacle are often not that urgent, and in the early stages of a career, other tentacles often dominate due to instinctive brute force.

This neglect often leaves significant regrets after the dust settles. Unfulfilled personal desires are often the true reason why many very successful people are not happy—they achieved success, but not in the fields they wanted.

Social Desire Tentacle#

The Social Desire Tentacle (Social) is the most primitive and animalistic tentacle. The driving force of this tentacle comes from our biological evolution process, and the beings on this tentacle are very special.

We all have a desire for "social survival," and we are incredibly concerned about what others think of us because of this desire. This means we want to be accepted, included, and liked. Similarly, we dislike awkwardness, negative evaluations, and blame.

Then there is your self-esteem. It is similar to "social survival," but the need is stronger. Your self-esteem not only wants to be accepted but also wants to be admired, desired, and pleased, and the greater the degree, the better.

Being hated is hard to bear, but being ignored is even harder to endure. You want to be widely recognized and valued.

This tentacle also has other roles. For example, when you do not receive appropriate appreciation, your inner little judge gets angry. In the little judge's mind, others should ideally recognize your intelligence and talent as correctly as you do. Moreover, the little judge holds grudges, so many people fantasize about making a comeback in front of those who do not believe in them.

Finally, there is a little dog living on this tentacle, whose greatest wish is to please its owner, and the most unacceptable thing is to disappoint the owner.

However, this little dog's owner is not you, but the person who has psychological control over you; you may spend your entire career trying to please this person with your achievements (for example, a demanding parent).

Lifestyle Tentacle#

The Lifestyle Tentacle (Lifestyle) desires a peaceful life, like a happy and leisurely day, plenty of free time, rest and relaxation, and comfort.

It also cares about your life from a macro perspective; it hopes that you can do what you want with the people you like at the time you recognize, and that life should be filled with joyful moments and rich experiences, without bumps, and with very little toil or setbacks.

The problem is that if you place the desire for lifestyle at a high priority, it is hard to satisfy the entire tentacle. Wanting to satisfy that part of the desire to be lazy all day means you cannot strive to create long-term wealth to support your desire for a luxurious life.

Satisfying the desire for a stable future means that another part of the tentacle's desire for long-term freedom must be extinguished. The desire to live a life without pressure and the desire to climb Mount Everest like Wang Shi cannot harmoniously coexist.

Moral Desire Tentacle#

The Moral Desire Tentacle (Moral) believes that the other tentacles are conscienceless bastards, only knowing self-indulgence. On this tentacle, you look around and see that the world is full of problems that need to be solved; you see billions of people unable to enjoy a good life because they were born in the wrong place; you see the life of the Earth facing an uncertain future between utopia and dystopia—this uncertainty exists because of the presence of those selfish desires in everyone.

While the other tentacles fantasize about what kind of life you would have if you had a billion dollars, the Moral Desire Tentacle fantasizes about what kind of impact you could have with a billion dollars.

Naturally, the other tentacles dislike the Moral Desire Tentacle. They cannot understand charity and public welfare—"Others are not me; why should I spend time and energy helping them?" They can only understand charity and public welfare that benefit themselves.

The Moral Desire Tentacle often conflicts with the Lifestyle Tentacle, while other tentacles can often cooperate with the Moral Desire Tentacle. If charitable actions can win respect and admiration from specific social groups, the Social Desire Tentacle is often willing to engage in charity; the Personal Desire Tentacle can also often find meaning and self-worth in charitable actions.

So, when you engage in charity or any selfless act, there are always several separate thoughts occurring within you. The desire to gain public recognition through giving lives on the Social Desire Tentacle, the desire to feel "I am a good person" lives on the Personal Desire Tentacle, and the genuine desire to see vulnerable groups achieve better lives lives on the Moral Desire Tentacle.

Similarly, not giving to others can also hurt several tentacles. Guilt and sadness can harm the Moral Desire Tentacle, being perceived as selfish and greedy can harm the Social Desire Tentacle, and a decrease in self-esteem can harm the Personal Desire Tentacle.

Pragmatic Tentacle#

The Pragmatic Tentacle (Practical) thinks that the other tentacles are okay, but it wants to remind you that rent is due tomorrow, and you actually do not have enough money in your bank account to pay the rent, and you are only 34 hours away from the rent due.

Yes, it knows you already deposited the check into the bank yesterday, and the amount will be credited tomorrow morning. But it also remembers that during the same tense moment of paying rent last month, the other tentacles promised to save expenses to boost the bank balance so that paying rent would not be so stressful every time.

The Pragmatic Tentacle also notices that last Saturday, when you went to the bar with a bunch of people, the Social Desire Tentacle asked all your friends to have a drink because that way they would think you are a classy and generous person.

Meanwhile, the Lifestyle Tentacle chose to rent a great apartment, but the rent is still a struggle for you as a broke person this month.

Your Moral Desire Tentacle invested over ten thousand yuan six months ago to help a struggling friend run a snack delivery business, but it seems that this business has not had any updates recently.

And your Personal Desire Tentacle, while pushing you to do two internships at the same time, is earning less than the tips you made as a server at a themed bar during college, which makes everyone very frustrated.

The bottom line of the Pragmatic Tentacle is that it wants you not to go hungry, to have clothes to keep warm, to afford medicine, and not to have to sleep on the street. It does not care how these things are achieved; it only cares that they need to be achieved. But the other tentacles always prevent the Pragmatic Tentacle from getting what it wants.

Every time your income increases, your Lifestyle Tentacle raises its own desires and expectations, causing the Pragmatic Tentacle to constantly work hard to ensure that you can pay off your credit card every month.

Your Personal Desire Tentacle has all sorts of strange demands that take up a lot of your time but do not earn much money. Although the Pragmatic Tentacle is very willing to lower its standards to let you rely on your parents, your Social Desire Tentacle cannot lower its face because that would be "too embarrassing," and the Personal Desire Tentacle also feels "we are not that desperate."

So this is how it is: your Octopus of Desire has many tentacles, and each tentacle conflicts with the others.

Each tentacle also has its own unique desires, and these desires can even fight within their own tentacle. Moreover, sometimes within a single desire, you may also conflict with yourself, just like wanting to do what you want to do but not knowing what that is.

Or, when you really want to be respected, but you find that your career choice, while earning the respect of some people, also receives opposition from others, even some eye rolls.

And when you decide to satisfy your desire to help others, you will be torn between

(1) making some contributions that may not yield immediate results for the long-term survival of humanity,

(2) making some immediate impacts for your local community, constantly struggling between these two options.

No matter which option you choose, you will feel cold for your callousness.

The Octopus of Desire is indeed complex. No human can satisfy the entire Octopus of Desire. Human desires are a game of choices, sacrifices, and compromises.

Dissecting the Octopus of Desire#

Let's revisit the "Wants" box. When we think about career goals, fears, and dreams, we are actually considering the net output of the Octopus of Desire, which is usually its longest tentacle.

Only by deeply digging into our subconscious can we see what is really happening.

Each of us has the ability to explore our inner subconscious. The content of the subconscious is like things in a basement—we are not incapable of seeing them; they are just in the basement, so we usually cannot see them.

We can check them at any time, as long as we can

(1) always remember that the house has a basement,

(2) really spend time and effort to go down to the basement to see, even if going down to the basement may not be a comfortable experience.

We are moving forward, but this is just the beginning. When you understand your Octopus of Desire, you have just begun. What you need to do is dig one layer deeper into the subconscious, going to a place deeper than the basement. Here, you can build an interrogation room and bring each desire in one by one for questioning.

For each desire, you should ask: Why are you here? Why are you in this state now?

Desires, beliefs, values, and fears do not appear out of thin air. They either come from the long-term nurturing of inner consciousness observing life experiences or from external imposition by others.

In other words, they are either invented by you using chef thinking or learned by you using cook thinking.

So in your interrogation room, what you need to do is peel back the skin of each desire and take a good look at whether it comes from within or from others.

The effect of peeling back the skin can be achieved through the "Why Game." Your initial why question should be, "Why is this something I want?" You will get a reason.

Then you will continue to ask why this reason creates desire. Why does this reason hold such weight in your heart?

Your reasons will be dug deeper.

As long as you keep doing this, you will get one of the following three results:

1. You will trace the reason back to its origin, clarifying the complete thought chain of how you obtained this reason through independent thinking. You will find that this desire does not wear a mask.

(2) You will trace the reason back to the person who implanted this reason in you—like "My parents forced me to accept this viewpoint." Then you will realize that you never truly agreed with this viewpoint. The wisdom you have accumulated does not genuinely convince you of the core rationality of this belief.

In this case, it is actually a false desire pretending to be your true desire. You peel back the skin of this desire and reveal its true face.

(3) You may get lost in tracing the source of the reason, saying, "I don't know why; I just feel it is right." This situation may be your true desire or another disguise of the impostor; you just cannot remember who implanted this idea in you.

Deep down in your heart, you have a certain intuition about the true belonging of this situation.

If it is situation (1), this is a real and solid feeling or value that comes from your chef thinking.

If it is situation (2) or (3), you will find that you have been played. Others have sneaked into your Octopus of Desire while you were not paying attention and tampered with it. For that part of the belief, it comes from cook thinking; you are just like a robot, repeating someone else's recipe.

If you are a wise person, this self-reflection will make you realize that your Octopus of Desire is basically self-created and that the desires on it closely follow your current situation.

However, most people, like the author, discover many impostors or many situations (3).

When you peel back the mask of the impostors, you may find that some beliefs come from your parents:

After peeling back the masks of some other impostors, you may find that they come from conventional wisdom, or the community you live in, or the cultural context of your age group, or your close circle of friends.

Sometimes, in this process of tracing back to the roots, you may find thoughts from classic literature, words spoken by your idols, or strong viewpoints often repeated by your professors.

You may even discover that some of your desires were written down by your younger self. That childhood dream deeply engraved in the back of your consciousness is a desire that will only be acknowledged when you face yourself honestly.

The interrogation room will not be a very pleasant process, but this time is worth it.

You are not the child you once were, just as you are not your parents, nor your friends, nor your peers, society, idols, nor the past decisions and current environment.

You are "you at this moment," the only one, the unique version of yourself. You are the only one qualified to decide what you want and what you do not want.

To be clear, this does not mean that listening to the wise advice of your parents, the thoughts of famous philosophers, the viewpoints of respected friends, or the beliefs of your younger self is wrong. Humble people can be influenced; external influences are an important and indispensable part of ourselves.

But here is the point to clarify:

Are you taking these external influences as information, carefully deciding to accept them after your inner true self has thought about them?

Or are these external influences directly invading your brain, occupying your heart?

Are you deciding that you want the same things as others because you heard what they want, combined with your life experience; or did you hear what others want and think, "I know nothing; that person seems to know a lot, so if they want that, it must be right," thus engraving someone else's thoughts in your mind without questioning them?

The former is chef thinking; the latter is essentially being a robot. Being a robot means you feel that others are more suitable than you to make decisions for yourself.

The good news is that everyone makes this mistake, and you can correct it. Just as your subconscious can be peeked at by you at any time, you can also change, update, and rewrite your subconscious.

This is your thought; you can do anything you want with it.

So now you need to kick out the impostors. The ones wearing masks need to be sent away, including your parents.

After sending them away, your Octopus of Desire may have shrunk a lot, and you may feel like you do not recognize yourself. We may mistakenly think this is a wrong feeling, even a crisis of existence. But in fact, this feeling means you are ahead of most people.

From naive overconfidence to wise and realistic humility, the gap experienced is not comfortable.

But like most people, staying stuck at the edge of the cliff to avoid pain is not a good strategy.

Wisdom is not related to knowledge; wisdom is only related to recognizing reality. Wisdom does not mean you need to walk far to the right on the X-axis in the above image; it is about how close you are to the orange dashed line.

Gaining wisdom may be painful at first, but this is the only place that allows for growth. Ironically, those who remain at the cliff often mock those who bravely jump into the valley and continue to climb. Because those who stop at the cliff do not know how to understand themselves; they have not yet experienced that step.

Recognizing your true self is a very difficult and never-ending journey. But as long as you jump off the cliff, you have completed the initiation ceremony, and from then on, you can continue to improve.

As you climb along the orange dashed line, you will gradually enrich your Octopus of Desire with your true self's desires.

You may not clearly know what those missing desires are because they exist deeper in the subconscious. They are in the basement (subconscious) of the basement (interrogation room), which we call the "denial prison."

Denial Prison#

The denial prison in our hearts is a place that most people are unaware of, where suppressed and denied desires are stored.

The real self-desires we discover in the interrogation room are relatively easy to find because they stand directly in our subconscious.

Even your self-awareness knows of these desires' existence because they often come to the surface from the basement, jumping around in your thoughts. Our relationship with these desires is relatively healthy.

However, there are also some real desires that do not live on your Octopus of Desire. They should exist in their rightful place, but impostors occupy that space. These lost desires are hard to find because they live deep in the subconscious, in a place that is almost non-existent.

Those desires we have expelled are locked in the denial prison because facing them or recalling them can be very painful. Often, these desires are locked away in the denial prison as soon as they are born. Our stubbornness often leads us to deny our own evolution.

Of course, sometimes these desires are locked in the denial prison by others.

Some of your real desires are locked in the denial prison by impostors wearing masks.

If your parents convince you that you actually want a prestigious job, then they are also convincing you that your inner desire to become a craftsman is not really you.

At some point in your childhood, your desire for craftsmanship was locked away in the eerie denial prison by your parents.

So, let us muster the courage to walk into this basement of the basement of the basement and see what we can discover.

You may encounter some not-so-pleasant monsters.

Do not worry about these monsters for now; let’s first look for desires related to your career.

Perhaps you will discover a long-suppressed desire to be a teacher, a longing to become a celebrity, or a love for having large amounts of leisure time that was kicked into prison by your younger impulsive self.

Because the denial prison is indeed very dark, there are some real desires you may not be able to discover. But please be patient with yourself because you have already left space for them on your Octopus of Desire; they will eventually surface.

The Priority of Desires#

The investigation of your Octopus of Desire will also involve the ranking of desires. Equally important to the desires themselves is their priority. This hierarchy can be easily seen in our actual actions.

If you think a certain desire is important but you are not really doing anything for it, then it may not be that important to you; some other things you put into practice may have a higher priority.

Also, remember that the ranking of desires is also the ranking of fears. The Octopus of Desire contains everything you want to gain and not gain in pursuing a career.

Each desire has its opposite fear on the other extreme. Your desire to be admired is backed by the fear of embarrassment. The desire for self-actualization is backed by the fear of mediocrity.

Your desire for self-esteem is backed by the fear of humiliation. If your actions do not align with your inner ranking of desires, it is usually because you have overlooked the role that your fears play. The relentless pursuit of success may simply be an escape from a negative self-image or a rebellion against envy or lack of recognition.

If your actions point to desires you do not really care about, you may need to take a closer look at your fears.

When you consider both desires and fears, think about how your inner ranking looks. Then remember to ask that important question: "Who created this order? Was it really me?"

For example, we are often told to "follow your passion." This saying is actually society telling us to "put desires related to passion at the forefront."

This is a very precise instruction; it may be right for you, but it may also not be. It requires you to evaluate independently.

To get the ranking right, I suggest redoing the ranking using chef thinking, based on your true self, referencing your evolutionary process, and then realizing what is most important to you at this moment.

This does not mean putting the loudest desires and fears at the top; doing so would let impulses control your life. The one who should be making the ranking is you—the core consciousness reading this article, the observer who can objectively view the Octopus of Desire.

This will bring about another compromise.

On one hand, you want to use the wisdom accumulated throughout your life to make value-based positive decisions;

On the other hand, it is about self-acceptance and self-compromise.

Sometimes, you may have some strong, undeniable desires, but you find it hard to feel proud of these desires. But regardless, these desires are part of you, and when you choose to ignore them, they will constantly provoke you, making you feel terrible.

Creating your own desire ranking is a compromise between "what is important" and "what is you." It may be a good goal to give higher priority to more noble qualities; however, it is also okay to move some less noble qualities forward.

How to draw this line depends on you. Knowing when to accept your less noble qualities and when to reject them is also a form of wisdom.

To create a good order, you need a good system. You can do it in a way you like; my preferred method is a bookshelf system:

The bookshelf divides all desires into five categories. The highest priority inner drives enter the "most special non-negotiable bowl" (most special bowl). The most special bowl contains your most important desires; you want these desires to be satisfied no matter what, and if necessary, you can abandon all other desires.

This is why so many legendary figures in history think in a one-track manner, because they have a full most special bowl, which often leads them to willingly sacrifice relationships, life balance, and health, ultimately becoming legends.

The most special bowl is not large because it should not be used often. In the end, it may only contain one or two desires. If too many things are put in the most special bowl, its magic will be lost. If too many things are in the bowl, it is as if it is empty.

The top shelf is for desires that can drive your career choices, and of course, this layer should not contain too many desires—ranking high priorities is as important as ranking low priorities. You are not only choosing the most important desires that will make you happy; you are also choosing those desires you want to deliberately avoid or oppose.

No matter how you rank them, there will always be some desires that are dissatisfied because they are ranked lower, and some fears will be constantly targeted. This is unavoidable.

This is why most of your desires should be placed on the middle shelf, bottom shelf, and trash can. The middle shelf is reserved for those desires you are willing to accept, which are not very noble. They should receive some of your attention; if you ignore them, they are likely to ruin your life.

The remaining most desires will be placed on the bottom shelf. Putting a real part of yourself on the bottom shelf is actually telling yourself, "I know you want these things, but there are more important things to focus on right now. I promise that soon, if I gain more information or my thoughts change, I will upgrade you to a higher shelf."

The best mindset for viewing the bottom shelf is that the more you can place on the bottom shelf, the easier it will be for the desires on the top shelf and the most special bowl to be satisfied.

Similarly, the fewer desires placed on the top shelf, the higher the likelihood they will be satisfied. Your time and energy are limited, so this is a zero-sum scenario. The most common mistake beginners make is placing too many desires in the most special bowl and upper shelves while placing too few on the lower shelf.

The final position is the trash can, which is used to place the drives and fears you refuse to accept. Many inner conflicts come from the trash can, so controlling the trash can is an important part of virtue and inner strength.

But just like your other ranking decisions, your criteria for whether to throw something in the trash can should come from your own deep thinking, not from others' instructions.

In this difficult prioritization process, you also need to face the painful screams emitted by those desires ranked low. But remember, you are the only wise person in this process.

Desires and fears lack patience and do not have a big-picture perspective. Even those seemingly noble desires, like those on the Moral Desire Tentacle, cannot see the whole picture like you can.

Many people who have created miracles and improved the world may have initially pursued selfish goals like wealth or personal satisfaction. These selfish goals may have initially conflicted with the Moral Desire Tentacle.

Remember, the Octopus of Desire is not the wise adult; you are.

Finally, remember that the decision you make is not a permanent one. On the contrary, it is a draft drawn with a pencil. This is a proposition you can test and modify, and the testing process is how you feel when you actually live according to the ranking of desires.

At this point, your "Wants" box is mostly organized; now let's look at your "Reality" box.

The "Wants" box focuses on what you find beautiful, while the "Reality" box focuses on what is possible.

When you seriously examine the "Wants" box, you will gradually find that what is in the "Wants" box may not be what you truly want, but rather what you think you want, or what you have become accustomed to wanting.

The "Reality" box is the same; it does not show your reality but rather your description of reality, your perception of reality.

The purpose of self-reflection is to fill these two boxes as accurately as possible. We want the perceived desires to closely align with our inner selves. At the same time, we also want our assumptions about possibilities to closely align with objective possibilities.

In examining the "Wants" box, we observe what lies beneath the surface of "want"—desires and fears. And when we peel back the surface of "possibility," we see beliefs.

Specifically regarding your career possibilities, we focus on two sets of beliefs: beliefs about the world and beliefs about your potential.

For a career option to enter your "Reality" box, your potential must match the objective requirements for success in that career field.

As human beings, we are not very good at objectively analyzing both sides of this comparative relationship. I am not sure how you think about the difficulty of career paths, but in my experience, people generally assume the following:

Traditional careers, such as medicine, law, education, and business, have predictable paths. As long as you are smart enough and work hard enough, you will reach a successful and stable goal.

There are also some less traditional careers, such as art, entrepreneurship, non-profit organizations, and politics, which are much harder to say. Success and stability are not guaranteed outcomes, and to achieve great success, you either need to be lucky enough to win the lottery; or you need to be born with very good genes and natural talent; or a combination of both kinds of good luck.

These assumptions about luck are reasonable. If you lived half a century ago, your beliefs about careers and the effort needed to achieve success would require a rigorous examination process, just like your questioning of desires. Moreover, I believe that behind most of these beliefs, you will find that they are supported by conventional wisdom.

When you peel back the masks of these beliefs, you will find that they are actually impostors from your parents/friends/school career mentors. And if you continue to peel back the faces of these impostors, you will find that their faces are actually a second layer of masks; the true nature of these beliefs is a public opinion, a common viewpoint, or a repeatedly cited statistic.

These conventional wisdoms have not been validated by you but are treated as truths by society.

Today's world is undergoing tremendous changes, making the conventional wisdom of half a century ago outdated. However, our thinking retains the tone of ancient society, so we still tend to use cook thinking and regard conventional wisdom as truth.

These issues also extend to how we view our potential. When you overestimate the impact of innate talent on people's career success, or sometimes confuse skill proficiency with talent, you will have a pessimistic estimate of your success rate in many paths.

Because we understand the development trajectory of traditional careers better, we are more inclined to pursue traditional careers.

When a first-year medical student sees a senior surgeon at work, they will tell themselves, "One day, I will also become such a senior doctor; I just need to work hard for twenty years."

However, when a young artist, entrepreneur, or software engineer looks at senior figures in their respective fields, they think, "Look at how talented they are; I am so far behind them," and thus fall into despair.

Another common notion is that those who do well in non-traditional careers will have a "big breakthrough" opportunity, as if they won a scratch-off lottery ticket. Many people are unwilling to pin their hopes on a lottery ticket when it comes to careers.

The above are just a few examples of a series of fantasies and misunderstandings about career success. Next, let's think about how career success actually comes about:

Career Landscape#

To be honest, I do not understand this topic very well, and I think most people do not either; the world is changing too quickly.

But this is actually the key; if you can piece together a sufficiently accurate picture of the career landscape, you will have many advantages over most people, as most people will only use conventional wisdom as their guide.

First, you need to piece together a broad career landscape—what jobs a person can obtain in today's society.

My current job is "an author writing long articles on various topics ranging from 8,000 to 40,000 words, and occasionally doing some drawing."

Under this conventional wisdom, is there a job suitable for me? Today's career landscape consists of thousands of options, some with decades of history, and some may have emerged due to a new technology that was born just three months ago. If you have a profession you want to pursue but do not see it in the market, you can create one yourself.

It is quite stressful, but also very exciting.

Each career option will have a career path. Career paths are like board games; on the shelf of conventional wisdom, there are only a few game instruction manuals. Even those board games with manuals only tell you the past rules of the game. Although the gameplay of these board games may have changed a lot, with many new techniques, opportunities, and loopholes.

When you consider a career path in today's society and want to make an accurate assessment of it, understanding the current rules of the career's game is necessary to understand what advantages and disadvantages a person needs to have to succeed in that path.

For example, if you want to assess whether you are suitable to be a professional basketball player based on your understanding of your height and strength, what if the game of basketball is no longer played on a standard basketball court but on a field the size of a soccer field, with ten hoops, each the size of a car? In that case, the requirements for height and strength in this "basketball" game may not be as high as the requirements for speed.

This is actually good news for you because there may be dozens of high-quality career paths suitable for you in this world, but the people on each path may be competing based on outdated rules. Just understanding the new game rules of this career path and playing by the latest rules will put you ahead of those people.

Your Potential#

Next, we need to talk about your unique advantages. One of the common mistakes we make, besides using outdated rules to evaluate our strengths, is that we cannot confirm what strengths are truly suitable for the new rules.

When assessing your probability of success on a specific career path, the key question should be:

After enough time, can you improve to achieve your own definition of success on this career path?

I like to view this "improving to succeed" journey as a distance problem. The starting point of the journey is your current state (Point A), and the endpoint is your definition of success, marked by a star.

The distance of this journey depends on the position of Point A (where you are now) and the position of the star (your definition of success).

So, if you are a computer science graduate and your career goal is to become a mid-level engineer at Google, your distance might look like this:

If you have never done any computer-related work and your career goal is to be a top engineer at Google, the distance you need to cover is much greater:

If your goal is to establish the next Google, then this journey is going to be much longer:

At this moment, conventional wisdom may pop into your mind and tell you that mastering a skill does not guarantee success; you may have reached your star but still feel you are not successful enough.

This statement is basically wrong because it distorts the meaning of "star." The "star" is not the level of mastery of a specific skill, such as coding ability, acting ability, or business acumen; the star represents overall success in the game.

In traditional careers, this game is relatively straightforward. If you want to be a top surgeon, you need to be very skilled at performing surgeries, and then you can reach your star and achieve success in your career.

However, those non-traditional careers often involve more factors.

For example, achieving the "becoming a movie star" star does not just mean your acting skills need to be as good as Morgan Freeman's; it means achieving breakthroughs in the overall game of "movie star." Acting is just one part of it; you also need the courage to show up in front of resourceful people, the wit to build a personal brand, a very strong optimistic attitude, and long-term hard work and perseverance.

When you do well in all these aspects, your probability of becoming a top movie star will increase significantly—this is the true meaning of reaching for the stars.

Conventional wisdom does not understand how these non-traditional careers operate; it only teaches you a narrow perspective: talent and effort.

In the face of career paths with more complex game rules, conventional wisdom is helpless and then calls the remaining factors "luck." For conventional wisdom, it mistakenly believes that becoming a movie star requires a bit of talent and a lot of luck.

So how can you calculate your chances of reaching a specific star? The formula is very simple—elementary school math.

Distance = Speed x Time

In our career topic landscape, this formula can be rewritten as:

Progress = Pace x Persistence

Your prospects in any career pursuit depend on a) how quickly you can improve under the rules of that career's game, and b) the time you are willing to invest in pursuing that star.

Let's discuss these two aspects.

Pace#

Why do some people progress quickly in the game of careers while others progress slowly? I think there are three factors:

Degree of Chef Thinking#

As we mentioned earlier, chefs look at the world with fresh perspectives and draw conclusions through their observations and experiences. Cooks, on the other hand, reach conclusions by following recipes.

In careers, recipes are conventional wisdom.

Careers are complex games; everyone starts as a novice, while "chefs" continuously improve through a closed loop:

"Cooks," however, improve at a snail's pace because the recipes they refer to change very little. More importantly, in this ever-evolving and changing world of career games, the strategies of "chefs" can evolve in real-time to keep up with changes.

The recipes of "cooks" become increasingly outdated, and they remain unaware of it. This is why I believe that, at least for non-traditional careers, the degree of your chef thinking is the most important determining factor for the pace of improvement.

Professional Spirit#

This is quite obvious. Those who work 60 hours a week and 50 weeks a year will grow about four times faster on their career paths than those who work 20 hours a week and only 40 weeks a year.

Those who choose a balanced lifestyle will progress slightly slower than workaholics. Those who like to slack off or procrastinate will progress slower than those who are orderly and diligent.

Those who are always slacking off, goofing off, or playing on their phones while working will be less efficient than those who are deeply focused.

Talent#

Of course, talent has an impact. Smart and talented people will progress faster than those who are not as smart. However, intelligence and talent are only part of the equation. Cleverness and wit are also useful, and these two traits are not necessarily directly linked to IQ.

Depending on the career, social skills may also be very important. In many careers, likable people have a significant advantage over those who are not likable, and those who are enthusiastic about socializing will naturally spend more time building relationships.

There are also other factors, such as existing social networks, existing resources, and existing skills, which will have an impact. But these are not the determining factors of "pace"; they are the determining factors of the starting point (Point A).

Persistence#

When I mention persistence, I am talking about long-term persistence, not just showing up to work every day with professional spirit.

Persistence is simpler than pace; the longer you spend pursuing a star, the closer you get to it. A car going 30 mph for ten minutes does not go as far as a car going 10 mph for two hours.

This is why persistence is very important. A person who is only willing to invest three years in their dream career and then return to a fallback job is actually giving up the opportunity to truly achieve that dream career.

No matter how talented you are, if you decide to give up after two or three years of effort without a breakthrough, you are unlikely to succeed.

A few years is not enough to complete the long journey required to reach the brightest star, no matter how big your pace is.

Your Real Strengths and Weaknesses#

After discussing the formula for pace and persistence, let's take a look at the concept of strengths and weaknesses.

I am not saying that "strengths and weaknesses" is a bad concept; I am just saying that our understanding of this concept is wrong. When we list our strengths, we usually list the areas where we already possess skills.

But strengths should not be our skills; they should be the traits that determine our pace and persistence.

Creativity, or the lack thereof, is an important factor in this discussion. For example, agility and humility (important characteristics of chef thinking) are clear strengths, while stubbornness and intellectual laziness (hallmarks of cook thinking) are significant weaknesses.

The subtle elements of professional spirit, such as being able to focus deeply or being prone to procrastination, should also be important parts of this discussion.

Of course, we should also include talents beyond skills, such as wittiness and likability.

Regarding the traits related to persistence, resilience, determination, and patience should be strengths. A mindset that desires to gain quick fame is a clear danger signal.

More importantly, all these traits should not be discussed based on their current state but should be considered based on the potential you have for each trait.

If I give a basketball to Michael Jordan, who has never seen a basketball before, he will certainly play poorly. But saying that basketball is Jordan's "weakness" is a very wrong judgment. You should look at his progress after a few weeks of playing basketball and analyze his progress curve.

This approach is effective for learning specific skills and also applies to most traits related to pace and persistence.

Filling the "Reality" Box#

Your "Reality" box should contain a long list of all the careers that a highly improved version of you could achieve (as you define success).

This will be a very long list; you can only exclude those careers that are far beyond reach, even with the greatest pace and longest persistence (for me, that would be becoming an Olympic-level figure skater).

Even if such a list is not very practical, if you set aside other distractions and think about it, if you could fully develop yourself wholeheartedly, you would actually have so many choices; this in itself is a fantastic thing.

However, for efficiency's sake, let's only consider those options that will ultimately fall into your "options pool" (the overlapping part of your "Wants" box and "Reality" box). To achieve this effect, we need to evaluate the following factors:

1. Overall landscape. Assess the existing career landscape in the world, including those that already exist and those that can be created.

2. Specific games. For any career that seems somewhat interesting, think about what the current game rules of that career are—the participants, how others have recently succeeded, the latest rules, the latest loopholes, etc.

3. Starting point. For those interesting paths, evaluate your starting point based on your existing skills, resources, and relevant connections.

4. Success points. Think about where the stars are located on each path. Ask yourself what the minimum level of success you need to achieve on this career path is.

5. Your pace. Make a preliminary estimate of your pace of improvement in different career games. This estimate should depend on your strengths and the room for improvement in those strengths (i.e., your acceleration).

6. Your level of persistence. Assess how much time you are willing to invest in each path.

The rest is math. You draw each chosen career path as a line, marking the starting point A and the endpoint star on it. This way, you will get segments of distance.

Then calculate the pace and persistence you can apply to each segment of distance. If the product of pace and persistence exceeds the length of each segment, then the career represented by that line can enter your "Reality" box. Of course, these calculations are unlikely to yield precise values, but obtaining a formula with approximate values is also very beneficial.

A process of filling the "Reality" box generated through chef thinking will make overly optimistic people more grounded. At the same time, for most people, this process will make them realize that they have more choices than they originally thought, empowering them to dare to choose the direction ahead.

A good process of filling the "Reality" box will certainly lead to a self-reflection on the "Wants" box as well. Reconstructing career paths in your mind will certainly change your views on different desires.

A job that requires thousands of hours of networking or decades of grinding may no longer seem as attractive as it once did. Another job that does not actually require as much luck as it seems may appear more approachable afterward.

There are also some career paths that you did not really consider before and did not know you deeply desired. But after this self-reflection, your thoughts have changed.

Our deep analysis of "Wants" and "Reality" ends here. After this deep thinking process, we can return to the initial Venn diagram.

I believe that by now, you have seen some changes; you now have a new "options" pool filled with career options that can satisfy your highest priority desires and are also achievable. At this moment, you have these choices in front of you, and we should look up to the future.

Do you remember your initial career plan? The one with arrows or question marks drawn on it.

If it was an arrow, then please take another look at your "options" pool. After so much self-reflection, should the option represented by that arrow still remain in your "options" pool?

If so, congratulations, you are ahead of most people.

If not, this is both bad news and good news. Remember, transforming from a wrong arrow to a question mark is itself an important progress.

In fact, a new question mark represents that you have completed the leap of faith at the cliff.

This leap not only helps you begin to understand yourself but also helps you start to understand this world; it is an important step in the right direction. Cross out your original wrong arrow and join the question mark party.

Join the Question Mark Party#

Now the question mark party faces a problem—you need to choose a new arrow from the "options" pool.

This is a difficult choice, but you can simplify it a bit.

We originally thought of careers as 40-year-long pipelines. Once you enter one of these pipelines, your path is fixed. You work in that profession for 40 years and then leave that pipeline to start your retirement life.

In fact, careers may never have been 40-year-long pipelines; they just look that way. To take a step back, even those traditional careers used to resemble pipelines in the past.

Today's careers, especially non-traditional ones, do not resemble pipelines at all. But outdated conventional wisdom misleads us to still view career paths this way, making the already difficult task of choosing a career path even harder.

When you view a career as a pipeline, making the right choice feels like participating in a high-stakes gamble, instantly exploding the degree of choice anxiety. For perfectionists, this is a deeply painful experience.

When you view a career as a pipeline, you lose the courage to change careers, even if your soul truly wishes to make such a change. It makes changing careers seem full of risks and awkwardness, making those who change careers appear like failures.

This also makes those versatile and resourceful seasoned professionals feel too old to make such a bold decision to change careers.

Conventional wisdom still tells us that careers are pipelines.

Conventional wisdom makes us crave things we do not truly want, makes us deny what we genuinely desire, makes us fear things that are not dangerous, and leads us to have misconceptions about the world and our potential.

Conventional wisdom tells us that careers are pipelines, causing us to suffer unnecessary panic.

The current career landscape is not a series of pipelines but a vast, incredibly complex, and rapidly changing scientific laboratory. People today are working in this laboratory, complex and rapidly changing scientists.

Today's careers are not pipelines or boxes or identity labels; they are a series of exciting scientific experiments.

Steve Jobs compared life to "connecting the dots." He pointed out that when we look back at the past, it is easy to see how those dots connect and create the present us; however, connecting the dots of the future is almost impossible.

If you look at the autobiographies of great people, you will find that their paths look more like a series of connected dots rather than a straight, predictable pipeline. If you look at yourself or your friends, you will also see a similar trend.

Statistically speaking, the median duration a young person stays in a job is only 3 years. Even for older individuals, the average is only 10.4 years, which is not excessively high.

Viewing your career development as a series of dots is not a psychological trick to help you make decisions; it is an accurate reflection of reality. Viewing a career as a pipeline is not only meaningless but also an illusion.

Similarly, you can only focus on the next dot on the path because that is the only dot you can see. You do not need to worry about the dots far behind because you cannot do that, nor do you have the qualification to do so.

When that distant dot comes into your view, you will understand many things that your current self does not understand at all. You will be a completely new self, and your Octopus of Desire will change along with you.

You will understand various career landscapes better, understand the game rules of specific careers better, and become a better player. And by that time, the career landscape and game rules will have also undergone many changes.

A website called 80,000 Hours has collected a lot of data to prove all of this. This data tells us that people change, and the world changes; you will only know what you are good at as time goes by. Psychologist Dan Gilbert has also wisely told us that we cannot predict what will make us happy in the future.

Pretending to see far-off dots is ridiculous. Leave those future dots to your wiser future self to worry about; what we need to do now is focus on the next dot.

If we think of ourselves as scientists and society as a scientific laboratory, we should regard the current Venn diagram of "Wants" and "Reality" as an early and rough hypothesis. The next dot is your experiment to test this hypothesis.

Testing hypotheses in the dating market is a very instinctive thing. If your friend is struggling to figure out what kind of person they want to marry but never goes out on dates, you will definitely tell them:

"You can't just stay at home; you need to go out on dates to know what you really want."

If this friend goes on a date once and then keeps analyzing whether this date is their soulmate, you will surely remind them again:

"You can't know the result from just one date; you need to go on several dates with this person to gather enough information to make that decision."

As bystanders, we would think this friend is too foolish and does not know how to find a happy relationship. So when choosing a career, we should not make the same mistake as this friend. The next dot to face is not a big deal; it is just like your first date with someone.

This is a good thing because this mindset makes drawing an arrow to the next dot less daunting; you are simply drawing an arrow to the next dot. The real reason for choice anxiety is that you can see the career options available in today's society while mistakenly viewing those careers as 40-year-long pipelines; the combination of these two is deadly.

Reconstructing your next major career decision as a choice with much lower stakes will make many options seem more interesting rather than filled with pressure.

All of the above is not difficult to say; the next part is the truly difficult part.

Start Taking Action#

You have done a lot of self-reflection and weighed, compared, predicted, and considered a lot. You have chosen a point and drawn an arrow. Next, you really need to start taking action.

We are actually particularly bad at taking action. We are always anxious and afraid of being greasy. Taking a real bold action is very tiresome. If there is a procrastinator hidden in your heart, it will show up at this moment.

The Octopus of Desire can help you. As we discussed earlier, your actions at any moment are determined by your octopus. If you are ready to take that step but have not really taken it, it is because the part of the octopus that does not want to take that step has a higher ranking in your subconscious than the part that wants to take that step.

Your consciousness may have tried to