If you have just started reading, here’s what you’ve missed:

There’s this intrinsic problem with identifying work you love: It’s really messy. I imagine that is why more people do not focus on the task of helping you identify what you would love love to do.

Crawling back into your own body and learning more about who you really are, which is what finding the right job for you is at the core, is not like creating a business plan or learning marketing techniques.

Identifying the work you are basically born to do is really personal. It requires self-reflection, honesty, and things are going to get a little touchy-feely up in here. There’s no way around this – and it’s enjoyable, don’t get me wrong. But there is no quick and clean plan to neatly provide you and so we can call it a day.

But there are better ways to get to where you want to go.  I am systemizing work that has worked on me and others successfully so that you can sit on your cozy couch and think up a career that truly fits who you are.

By going through each of the six steps to career success in light of the question at hand: How do you come up with a career that you will love?

I am thawing out a framework that will guide you towards the right career for you by taking it one step (out of six) at a time. Sound good? Great!

I hang my work this week on the framework of Seth Godin’s “Hierarchy of Success” posted last week.

1. Attitude
2. Approach
3. Goals
4. Strategy
5. Tactics
6. Execution

#5 Tactics

Your tactics are key and I will discuss some…

But first, I find the distinction between #5 Tactics and #4 Strategy a little fuzzy. For clarification, a strategy is a plan, method, or series of maneuvers for obtaining a specific goal or result. Tactics are the maneuvers themselves that form the strategy when strung together.  Your strategy is a plan that is chocked full of tactics.

The tactics are the pearls, and the strategy is the pearl necklace.

Here are some tactics to help you on your career search:

• Tactic #1: Stay loose. When it comes to your Approach process of identifying activities and jobs you love, resist reading too far into any one attractive idea or grow attached to it.  Think of this process as if you were going through school all over again: kindergarten is not the time to pick your college major.  You’ve just enrolled in kindergarten. I’m not suggesting it will take you 15 years find the perfect career for you (this is an accelerated elementary school program), but nobody strikes Texas gold the first time he or she steps onto the oil field.

• Tactic #2: Be prolific. Don’t just identify one career or job that you love, identify a several fun-time activities to engage in on a weekly or monthly basis. Keep a notebook with you for writing down any and all ideas that seem fun to you (later you can sift through the ideas that fall short of your Goals).

• Tactic #3: Follow the fun.  If going to your local Renaissance festival sounds like fun to you and it’s within your budget, do it. If it’s arguably legal and definitely calling your name, go full steam ahead.  Hint: The work that you were born to do will feel really fun. Even the quality of your less-than-favorite tasks that might accompany this work will very different from your less-than-favorite tasks in your ill-suited-for-you job.

• Tactic #4: Ask self, “Self, what would you do if you had no need for love, appreciation or affection?” I really love this question.  It’s a VERY good one to ask yourself to determine what YOU want to do in this moment, or (when asked silently to yourself in your own head) while conversing with others, or when you are struggling about what to do in a relationship, and now I’m thinking it’s even a good question to ponder sometimes regarding your pets. We are often acting on an agenda that we are not conscious of. We enter an industry to gain the love of our parents (without any clue this is the case). We earn the appreciation of others (or so we think) by overworking. What would you do if you had all of the love, appreciation and affection in the world and there was none left to earn? If you are in the wrong job, there is a pesky agenda in there somewhere that helped drive you there.  See what sounds attractive to you without it.

• Tactic #5: Live in a fantasy.  Keep reality far, far away from this process. As you come up with ideas that are fun and you stay loose about where the ideas might lead, pretend that ANYTHING is possible.  If something sounds really amazing, like living in Paris and New York City, with a home in the country to boot, or working 3 hours per day while making 6 figures, or becoming a world-renowned writer, keep it all on the master list.  If you find yourself following your thoughts with, “yeah, but that’s impossible” to a relentless degree, try this little exercise on for size.  It’s one of my faves from one of my faves (Byron Katie – she rocks. Talk about a girl who gets results!).

Now that you’re armed with the Tactics you need to win the war, so to speak, for your jobby job search, here are some short examples of what these Tactics might look like in action:

• You love to paint. So go paint.
• Without the need for love, appreciation or affection, you, in fact, have NO CLUE what you would do. That is a-okay.  Sit with the question while you freely write thoughts on an entire page. You don’t need to find an answer, just hold the question in your head like you’re holding a marble, and write whatever comes to mind as you consider the question. Write on one page of free-association for four days in a row.
• You have one of those moleskin notebooks that you keep with you and jot down all of your many ideas.  You are noticing only one pattern: Every idea you have has you working for yourself. Interesting. Go back to Goals and start toying with what self-employment models might fit.
• You have one of those moleskin notebooks that you keep with you and jot down all of your many ideas.  You are noticing two patterns: You seem to really like a challenge and none of your brilliant plots involve sitting behind a desk. See above.
• Rather than making your love for dogs into a full-on career in animal husbandry right off the bat, start by getting to know your dog’s groomer, or checking out the ads in the back of Dog Fancy to get an overview of the different services and products out there in the industry. Test these jobs out with your Approach, and if they pass, put them in your notebook.
• You may like the idea of being a journalist because you love writing, but your love of news may actually take you in a different direction that you never could’ve predicted….
• Which leads me to this real-life example: Oprah’s life coach and the woman who trained me, Martha Beck, had a strong desire to take a writing class.  This class ended up being kind of lame, and I am paraphrasing, but in the first class she met a woman with whom she formed a very helpful writing group that significantly shaped Martha’s now monolithic writing career.

Identify some work-type activities using #2, Approach,and tack on activities that are jut fun, and get out there and test out the waters… which leads me to Strategy – stay tuned!

As you get hooked on water sports or wine tasting, remember to keep your #3, Goals, in mind, too.

There’s little glory in being a professional buoy skier when a physically restful job is a key goal for you, so fit your job into your life, not the other way around.

If you liked this post, take a look at these posts.

1. Guerilla Weight Loss Tactics (that work!)
2. Can’t Think of a Career? Strategy is key.