When you want to buy a new car, you can test drive some before you make a decision.
You can ride the bicycle around the block. You can try a taste of the beer before you order a pint.
What about when you want to buy something else? You can lay on the mattress in the store, but you can’t really know what it would feel like when you wake up in the morning after a deep sleep.
Test drives are everywhere, but they’re imperfect. By definition they’re just a test. A brief taste of what’s to come. But I think we can all agree that some testing is better than none.
Yet, some places we look, test drives don’t exist. Where I see this gap is in our careers. How many job shadows have you done? How many hours of observation did you do before picking a field to pursue?
For most people those numbers are very low. My thesis is that if we can increase them, people will be more happy in their jobs and they will be more likely to find something they’re passionate about doing.
I’ve been thinking about this problem a lot recently.. Possibly more news to come soon. Thanks for reading,
Zack