Reddit reviews Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design

Those who hurry through life reach the end quickly.
Life. The journey is the destination.

https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Making-Living-Practical/dp/014311459X

I've changed careers a few times.

> What made you do it, did you have to retrain

In my 30s, I was basically a combination auto mechanic and electronics technician. More and more tasks around the shop needed to be computerized, so I was starting to do more software development on the side. When I got run over by a car, I could no longer bend in the middle so I had to stop being an auto mechanic. While it was expensive and painful, I was fortunate that I was already transitioning towards a different career only because there were gaps in what the shop needed that could only be filled by computerized tracking and databases.

At this time I was also working on my 2nd bachelors which was mostly intended as prereqs for a masters in computer engineering (my first bachelors is in electrical engineering). The second bachelors also included lots of fun courses like statistics, women's studies, music theory and Japanese. I never finished the masters degree.

Software development is an industry where having actual credentials, especially degrees, are considered negatives. That said, I continued to spend a lot on programming books over the years in order to keep up with changing technology.

I've been a programmer for past 15 years. I just completed my 3rd bachelors (this time in accounting) because there is too much age discrimination in software development. My estimate is that a CPA with a background in IT should have a good career in auditing (and a few other things).

Looking back, one of the good things I did were to always be learning. People who treated education as a vaccine (once they've had it, they never needed to do it again) ended up unemployed in their later 50s.

Some books I recommend are on this post at a programmer specific site. If you aren't in IT, then the books to read from the "being a better programmer/employee" section are: The Passionate Programmer (this is about keeping your mind and skills up to date). Corporate Confidential, Death March and Spreadsheet Modeling. All the other sections I still recommend reading (your library should have many of these books), although I usually tell folks to read The Righteous Mind instead of Moral Politics (while still good, Haidt's book gives a better framework for understanding the differences between "liberals" and "conservatives" and why they think differently).

Other books that may help you find what you want to do:

Zen and the Art of Making a Living. About how to figure out what you want to do and how to turn that into a career.

Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar. About learning on your own and how to give some structure to it so that it isn't "all over the place". His website.

Tell Me About Yourself. One good way to get your message across in interviewing is to be able to answer questions that start "tell me about a time when..." or "how do you..." . Those questions tend to get asked more commonly these days in the competency based interviewing style. It is much harder to slide through that type of interview by claiming knowledge you don't have.

> I'm starting to find the culture of the organisation a bit toxic

Generally, when things get tight, the struggle for power and resources (commonly called "office politics") gets very ugly. I've included some suggested books on office politics in the link above. If you don't learn at least how to recognize and deflect it, then you may as well have WELCOME tattooed on your forehead because you're gonna become a victim of it.

When it comes to office politics, this joke should be your motto:

> Steve and Mark are camping when a bear suddenly comes out and growls. Steve starts putting on his tennis shoes
> Mark says, “What are you doing? You can’t outrun a bear!”
> Steve says, “I don’t have to outrun the bear—I just have to outrun you!”

http://boyslife.org/jokes/6953/you-cant-outrun-a-bear/

Finally, I'd recommend learning some programming. Every field of industry has been affected by software and automation. I call Access and Excel "the gateway drugs to programming" because so many developers got started by automating some spreadsheet to make their job easier and as the thing got more complicated it also got more essential to getting work done at the company.

So I struggled with this also when I was in my 20s. My family all went to college and we have numerous professionals in my family so the momentum was to go and study accounting....Dad kinda forced us all into that major. But I was miserable. It wasn't exciting enough for me....until I got my first job as an accountant working for a manufacturing business.

So I HATED cost accounting in college....like it was one of my least favorite classes and I struggled to get a C in the class. However this job was real world cost accounting and I LOVED IT!! Like literally was excited as hell to go into work each day because I got to use my brain to figure shit out.

So this right here taught me that there is a HUGE difference between the educational experience and how that will translate into post educational satisfaction on the job. This is something that aptitude tests can't possibly hope to measure let alone direct anyone into a major that will be satisfying. Now sometimes sure....people take those tests and magically find their path but most people I know or have talked to have struggled to find meaningful work....even with these stupid tests.

OK so where does that leave us? Well I think we need a better approach. For me, I had to start allowing myself to "do what I want" meaning, I started asking myself and noticing what was attracting my attention when I wasn't focused on working or accomplishing something......I found that I was drawn to computers and had always been drawn to them.

So while I was working, still miserable and in a job I fucking HATED, I started to ask myself what I wanted to do with computers. This questioning took many forms but it basically boils down to, "Ok SW, you can do anything and computers are a wide branch of study....what do you really enjoy or what would you think you might enjoy doing with them?" And the more I probed around this question I remember that I had always wanted to know how to fix them, how they worked internally, what were all those parts and pieces inside and what did they do and could I learn all of that stuff? I dunno but it sounded interesting to me so I'll spend a little time with it and see how I feel.

But I didn't know where to start with any of that so I headed to the bookstore to see if they had anything. This was back in the late 90s and I didn't have access to the WWW except at work so the bookstore was the best bet. I found out about A+ Certification and the more I looked into that the more appealing it was......so I bought a book and committed to studying it.

Every night I would come home exhausted from work, eat, exercise then plop down for a few hours of reading. I was totally absorbed in the material and 2 hours would pass like it was 5 minutes!!! This happened over and over again and somedays I didn't want to study but I'd committed myself so I did and over time I learned a LOT!

Now my story goes on and on from there but I'll skip a lot of the details. What it led me to was first building my own computer....then building them for work, then I wanted to learn about Linux so I started playing around with that and then I wanted to learn about programming so I started playing around with that which led be back to University at 36 to pursue a Comp Sci degree and here I am, some 9 years after graduating.....unemployed and happier than I can remember being in my life! :)

What's the point in all of this? Well follow your bliss. That's what I did and while you may think, "Wait you're unemployed why would I follow your suggestion?" just know that my unemployment was a choice....a new path and I needed time to give birth to my next area of focus....which is starting to emerge. :)

I posted this video a few days ago and it's a beautiful way of saying what I've said.

I know from experience how difficult Calc 3 is and Linear Algebra came right after that and kicked my ass like no other class I've ever had in my life. Holy shit that was an ass reaming!! What kept me going? My desire for that silly piece of paper and my commitment to getting my degree. Degrees have value precisely because they are hard to obtain!! Most people get pissed off at having to take so many classes that don't relate to what they want to do and over time, even the most highly motivated students will struggle.....I was more motivated than most and it was an absolute BITCH!!

However just because something is difficult doesn't mean I quit and go looking for a different path. I used to think that.....that if something was difficult or if I was struggling, I was off course and needed to find something better where I didn't struggle. WRONG....sometimes we need to press onward, dig deeper, STAY THE COURSE because we're on the right path but paths can be tough as fuck.

I KNEW I was on the right path because I had given myself enough time to explore and try on different ideas and paths and all that so I was willing to commit to the degree. Once committed, giving up wasn't an option because once you start quitting in life, it will forever be an option. NOPE, I wouldn't do that and I knew I had to press on.

I can't tell you if you're in the right degree or not or whether another one will be a better path for you. Only you can decide that but hopefully all these words will help you figure it out.

I found a couple of books to be extremely helpful when choosing a path and they are:

What color is your parachute

And

Zen and the Art of Making a Living

I wish you all the best on your journey.