Mark Twain famously said that you should never let your schooling interfere with your education.
In other words, education does not come exclusively from schooling, and your schooling experience isn’t guaranteed to provide you the education you need.
As a kid, I believed that schooling and education were one and the same. I took the things that my teachers taught me as Truth, and I rarely explored my curiosities and passions outside of what was being taught in the classroom.
Similarly, when I got into the professional world, I believed that my career and my calling were one and the same.
Hence, when I couldn’t find the “right” career for me and ended up changing jobs faster than some people change their clothes, I believed something was wrong with me. I believed that I was broken.
If there’s a part of you that feels broken too, if you feel like a career misfit, and if you’ve struggled to find the right fit for you, you’re in the right place.
You don’t fit the traditional mold, and you were never meant to.
There’s something inside you that’s calling out for something more, something bigger than yourself. And because you’re here, that means that you have not ignored the call. Good for you.
But what do we do with this, and how do people like us find our higher purpose and true calling in the world? That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about.
The Unschooling Movement
Before we dive into discovering your higher purpose and calling, let’s take a brief detour into the world of unschooling, because I think this is relevant for your overall journey.
If you’ve never heard of unschooling, it’s a term coined by John Holt and represents a movement that started in the 1970s, as a subset of homeschooling.
Traditional homeschooling involves having the parent take the place of a traditional teacher while following a set curriculum similar to a traditional school but just at home rather than in a formal classroom.
Unschooling, on the other hand, is completely different. Wildly different. Rather than following a set curriculum, unschooling tosses the curriculum out the window. Instead, unschooling follows the child’s innate curiosity and desire to learn.
My Unschooling Journey
Back at the height of the pandemic, when my kids were at home, I started out with a more traditional homeschooling approach, but as I learned more about unschooling, we started to move more in that direction.
At the time, my kids were obsessed with Pokemon. In the vein of unschooling, rather than saying, “Okay kids, please put away your Pokemon cards so we can start our class,” I chose instead to get on the floor with them, letting their passion lead the way.
We used the cards to learn math, history, geography, literacy, and so much more. And because we learned everything through the lens of something they were naturally drawn to, I didn’t have to “force” them to learn or otherwise separate their passion from their learning.
Unschooling Is Not For The Faint Of Heart
Unschooling is not easy. People look at unschooling and think that it’s a lazy approach to schooling, that parents who unschool are too lazy to create rules and follow a curriculum.
In actuality, unschooling involves a tremendous amount of trust, courage, intuition, creativity, and ingenuity. It would have been easy to come to the table each day with a set curriculum and say, “Kids, please open your books to page 45. Today, we’re going to learn how to add fractions with unlike denominators. First, I’ll do an example, then you will complete this worksheet on your own.”
Instead, each day of unschooling was completely different. I had to be flexible and constantly in tune with my kids, following their lead rather than setting the path for them.
Why is this concept of unschooling important for you to know and see? Hopefully there are some themes within the unschooling movement and my personal unschooling journey that resonate with your career journey.
If you feel out of place, can’t seem to find the right fit for you, and find yourself hopping from job to job without finding the fulfillment you crave, you are part of the uncareering movement.
The Uncareering Movement
There’s something stirring in the world. Can you feel it? A sense of unease, of restlessness, of transformation. A call to something greater. And if you’re reading this, perhaps you’ve felt that stirring within you.
In your lifetime, you’ll likely spend roughly 90,000 hours at work. That’s a lot of time!
And for someone as in tune as you are, you want to make sure that those hours are put to good use – that you’re using your talents and gifts to the best of your ability, and that the work you’re doing is making a difference.
The Traditional Career Path
Most of us are taught to go to school, get good grades, get a college degree, choose a career path, and proceed to spend 40+ years climbing the career ladder in the hopes of retiring with a reasonable nest egg.
If you’re lucky, somewhere along the way, you might have a teacher, mentor, parent, or friend who encourages you to find your passion.
But more than likely, that one voice has been drowned out by the many others in your life who have counseled you to get a “stable” job with “strong prospects.”
Those people aren’t trying to hold you back or keep you down; they’re trying to protect you. Because if you have a stable job, at the very least, you’ll have security. And most people figure that, if you have basic security first, then you can go on to find your purpose, passion, or calling.
If you’re here, there’s probably a part of you that’s questioning whether that’s true, and I’m right there with you.
Purpose First
Personally, I believe that the jobs, careers, and business ventures you pursue are the key to discovering your higher purpose; they are not the foundation for you to then go find your purpose somewhere else.
You find your purpose first, then the security (and often much more than basic security) will come. And, more often than not, that calling won’t appear until you’re willing to forego security and take a risk.
In most cases, you’re going to need to take a leap of faith in order to discover your true calling. And this is where uncareering comes into play.
What Is Uncareering? Here’s A Simple Example…
Just as with unschooling, where you let the child’s interests lead the way, with uncareering, you let your personal passions lead the way.
Let’s say you decided to go to medical school, but two years into residency, you discover that your clinic days are draining all your energy, and you’re dreading them.
On the other hand, in your spare time, you’ve discovered the concept of travel hacking, and you spend all your free time learning more about it.
In fact, you’ve become so passionate about it that you’ve started teaching your friends about it too. Every time after you get together with friends to share more travel hacking tips, you feel energized and alive. Every time you finish a shift at the hospital, you feel drained.
If you were to follow the traditional career path prescription, you’d “suck it up,” finish your residency, go on to do a fellowship, become an attending physician, and then continue in that capacity for the next few decades.
Meanwhile, your passion for travel hacking gets waylaid as a “side hobby,” and as your job becomes more demanding, as your family grows, and as other life things get in the way, the flame of your travel hacking passion eventually dies down.
If, on the other hand, you gathered the courage to explore an uncareer path, your journey might look quite different. Perhaps, during residency, you decide to start a blog to be able to teach more friends and friends of friends about the travel hacking techniques you’ve discovered.
You spend your lunch breaks writing, and you’ve also started waking up earlier to have more writing time. You simply can’t get enough of it.
As your residency comes to a close, you discover that you’ve built up quite a successful side business through your travel hacking site, which now includes blog posts, videos, and online courses.
From there, rather than continue down the typical physician career path, you decide to let your passion lead the way and choose to forego fellowship and focus full time on your travel hacking venture.
In a few years, your interests may change again, and you may once again pivot to something new. The goal of uncareering is not to find a “permanent” career path, but rather, to help you build the skills, muscle, and courage to be flexible, agile, and in-tune with your interests as they bend and shift throughout your life.
Is Uncareering Right For You?
I’ll be the first to tell you that uncareering is not right for everyone. It would be so much easier to find contentment within a traditional career path, clock in and clock out every day, and not have to go through the rigamarole of finding new jobs every couple of years.
Uncareering requires courage, stamina, creative problem solving, and open-mindedness. Most of all, it requires an unwavering commitment to yourself – getting to know yourself, listening to that inner voice, and never settling.
Like I said, it’s not for the faint of heart.
That being said, if you’ve been nodding your head the whole time while you’ve been reading this, you’re committed to following your passions rather than what society tells you you need to do, and if you’re not daunted (and even potentially excited) by the prospect of changing jobs, potentially multiple times, then perhaps uncareering is indeed a good fit for you.
Getting Started With Uncareering
To get started with your uncareer path, the first step – before you start scouring job listings or signing up for a course in entrepreneurship – is to look inward.
When I job hopped my way through 9 jobs in 10 years, I was constantly reflecting on whether a particular role was right for me. My internal compass became ultra fine-tuned and would pick up every little shift.
Self-Reflection
I’m guessing that if you’re here, you’ve probably already started doing a lot of this self-reflection on your own, perhaps through meditation or journaling. Good, keep doing that.
And as you do so, ask yourself some of these self-reflection questions…
- If money were no object, what would I do every day?
- If my mom / dad / grandma / friends completely trusted in me and my career decisions, what would I do?
- In looking forward over the next week, what are the things I’m most looking forward to?
- In looking forward over the next week, what are the things I’m most dreading?
- Are there any parts of your existing role I really love or hate?
- Is there anyone I know where I think, “Geez, I really wish I had their job”?
You don’t need to dedicate a chunk of time to this every day. You can do this while you’re standing in line, waiting in traffic, or in the shower. Quiet your mind and listen to where your inner self is trying to lead you, and resist the urge to judge.
Keep in mind that the answers may not come right away, particularly if you have family expectations or obligations to uphold (e.g., you come from a long line of doctors, and everyone is expecting you to become a doctor too).
This process of self-reflection and coming to terms with what you’re truly interested in can be incredibly difficult and requires tremendous courage, so give yourself the gift of patience and compassion.
As you gain clarity on “what,” then you can start to piece together the “how” and “when,” but the most valuable skill is connecting with what you truly desire, so start their first.
To discover whether it might be time to quit your job, read on…
The Uncareer Path Dashboard: How To Know When To Quit Your Job
