A Quick Tip for Finding Your Calling

Do you want to maximize your personal effectiveness? If you do, you need to find your calling. You need to find something that resonates with your heart. Why? Because doing something you believe in will boost your effectiveness.

How do you know that you have found your calling? There is a good answer in How to Win at the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban:

It’s really easy to know if you are in the right job. If it matters how much you get paid, you are not in a job you really love.
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If you love what you do so much that you are willing to continue to live like a student in order to be able to stay in the job, you have found your calling.

I completely agree. A good example is John Carmack (the creator of many PC games). In Masters of Doom, the author wrote this about Carmack:

He was doing what he had always wanted to do: code games… If he could be here working on games with enough money for food and shelter, that was good enough for him.

It sounds just like what Cuban wrote above, doesn’t it? John Carmack is a person who had found his calling.

How do you find your calling?

The short answer is this: experiment. Try new things. Expose yourself to new experiences. Do side projects. The fact is, you might not realize that you love something until you try it.

When you find your calling, you will know it. As Steve Jobs once said:

You’ve got to find what you love… If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.