????親愛的安妮：我很想聽聽您對我的情況有什么看法。6周后，我即將以優異成績從大學畢業，但我不知道自己該如何謀生。問題并非我對什么都不感興趣，事實恰恰相反。實際上，我花了6年時間才完成學業，因為我一直在換專業，此外，我還輔修了許多不同專業，如商業和電影等。

????現在，我的親朋好友和其他學生給了我各種建議，比如“追隨你的激情”，或者“做一些安全的事”，如讀法學院或研究生等。職業選擇是否也有某種神奇的公式？我希望做在10年或20年后仍會感興趣的事情。這種想法現實嗎？——B.B.

????親愛的B.B.：現實情況是，不存在這樣的神奇公式，但不論你相信與否，你現在的困惑其實是一個很好的跡象。畢竟，你未來將要工作40年或50年，所以現在設想一下如何分配這漫長的時間，實乃明智之舉。

????內森?格哈特表示：“社會不會接受“不知道”這種答案。當一個人完全確定該如何邁出下一步，尤其是當他們的決定來自其他人時，我通常會懷疑，他們是否真正深思熟慮過?！?/p>

????格哈特很清楚自己在說什么。15年前，他和幾位同事決定乘坐一輛露營車行遍整個美國。他們采訪了各色職業人士，從捕龍蝦的漁夫到腦外科醫生，再到大名鼎鼎的商界人士，如星巴克公司CEO霍華德?舒爾茨。這些對話的內容涉及他們如何選擇自己的職業，在職業生涯中實現了什么，如果有機會他們會有怎樣不同的選擇等，并成為美國公共廣播公司系列紀錄片《路上美國》的素材。有一本新書收錄了這些對話內容，或許會對你有所幫助——《路線圖：如何選擇終生事業》。

????格哈特表示，你首先需要牢記，你聽到的大多數善意的建議，“被我們稱為噪音。人們會對你說各種廢話?！?/p>

????就以常被人提起的“追隨你的激情”為例。格哈特采訪的1000多名成功人士確實找到了他們的激情所在，但“你首先要像嬰兒學步一樣，經歷一個漫長的學習過程。只有極少數人很早就知道自己想要做什么，并真正將其變成自己的事業。如果說“追隨激情”曾是人們選擇職業的方向，在時下卻并不奏效?，F在，職業選擇的過程是做出許多小的決定，讓自己逐漸積累動力，當感覺出現問題時再重新調整?！?/p>

????那么，你應該從何處開始？首先，關掉“噪音”，專注于真正能吸引你注意力的事情。然后開始進入或者盡可能靠近那個領域，即便要從底層做起。格哈特引用了電視制片人邁克?拉佐的話：“讓自己靠近最感興趣的事情?！?/p>

????中學輟學的拉佐對電視非常感興趣，尤其是動畫。格哈特稱，拉佐在特納廣播公司求得了一份郵件收發室的工作，“這樣一來，他便可以在分發郵件的時候，自由進出每個人的辦公室，近距離了解人們都在做什么?！彼麑﹄娨暪澞烤幣女a生了濃厚的興趣，而且他發現自己非常擅長這種工作。后來，拉佐憑借自己的努力，終于成為卡通電視網第一位電視節目編排員，現在經營著自己的制作公司，取得了巨大的成功。

????留心意外的機會。例如，Facebook數據中心業務總監德爾菲娜?艾博麗告訴格哈特：“同齡人的選擇都是意料之內的職業道路，但我希望做一些不同的事情。我一直在尋找能讓我實現這一愿望的機會?！睘榱松?，艾博麗在一家地方銀行的機房找到了一份低等的工作，盡管她沒有接受過任何技術培訓，也沒有相關經驗。

????令她意外的是，她竟然非常喜歡那份工作。她在《路線圖》中回憶稱：“我沒有在技術面前退縮，而是投入其中。我會坐下來，把問題弄清楚。即便是現在，這種理念也讓我受益匪淺?！?/p>

????格哈特建議，你需要記住最重要的兩條：“首先，對于成功，不存在放之四海而皆準的定義。你必須自己去定義什么是成功，然后為之努力。這是一種可釋放自我的領悟?！?/p>

????其次，盡管你只有20多歲，改變方向相對容易，但相比其他人為你鋪就的所謂“安全”的職業道路，在你認為自己想要工作的領域進行慢慢嘗試，可能要面臨更大的風險。但格哈特的另外一位采訪對象，凱鵬華盈公司的風險投資家蘭迪?柯米薩認為“最大的風險在于，耗盡一生去做自己不想做的事，以為這樣就可以在未來獲得自由，去做自己真正感興趣的事?！?/p>

????反饋：你如何選擇當前的職業？如果有機會重來一次，你會做出同樣的選擇，還是會做出不同的選擇？歡迎評論。（財富中文網）

????譯者：劉進龍/汪皓

????審校：任文科

????Dear Annie: I’m curious to hear what you think about my situation. In about six weeks I’ll be graduating summa cum laude from college, and I have no idea what I want to do for a living. The problem isn’t that nothing interests me, it’s that everything does. In fact, it’s taken me six years to get through school because I kept changing my major, and at various times I’ve minored in different things too, including business and film.

????Now, I’m getting all kinds of advice from relatives and other students, like “follow your passion,” or else “do something safe,” like go to law school or grad school. Is there some magic formula for choosing a career? I’d like to do something I’ll still be happy with in, say, 10 or 20 years. Is that a totally unrealistic idea? — Baffled in Boston

????Dear B.B.: Alas, there’s no magic formula but, believe it or not, the fact that you’re baffled is a promising sign. After all, you’ve probably got 40 or 50 working years ahead of you, so it’s smart to make few, if any, assumptions right now about how you’re going to spend them.

????“Our society doesn’t accept not knowing as an answer,” observes Nathan Gebhard. “But when someone is totally sure of their next step, especially if they seem to have gotten the idea from someone else, I always wonder whether they’ve really thought it through.”

????Gebhard knows whereof he speaks. Starting about 15 years ago, he and a couple of colleagues set out to crisscross the U.S. in an RV. They interviewed working people, from lobstermen to brain surgeons to celebrity businesspeople like Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Those conversations—about how they ended up in their careers, what they’ve realized over time, and what they would do differently if they could—became the basis of the PBS documentary series Roadtrip Nation and of a fascinating new book you might want to check out, Roadmap: The Get-It-Together Guide for Figuring Out What to Do with Your Life.

????The first thing to keep in mind, Gebhard says, is that most of the well-meaning advice you’re hearing is “what we call noise. People will tell you all kinds of nonsense.”

????One example: The oft-repeated counsel to follow your passion. The 1,000-plus successful people Gebhard has met have indeed found their passion, but only “at the end of a long process, a long series of baby steps. An absurdly small minority knew early on what they wanted to do and just went and did it. Careers don’t work that way anymore, if they ever did. Instead, it’s about making lots of small decisions that build momentum over time, and readjusting if something doesn’t feel right.”

????So, right now, where do you start? First, tune out the “noise” and focus on what truly grabs and holds your attention. Then start working in that field, or as close to it as you can get, even if you have to start at the bottom. Gebhard quotes television producer Mike Lazzo: “Put yourself in the proximity of the things that interest you the most.”

????Lazzo, a high school dropout, really cared about TV, especially animation. He applied for a job in the mailroom at Turner Broadcasting where, Gebhard says, “he got to drop into everyone’s office, while he was delivering their mail, and see up close what they were doing.” Programming caught his fancy, and he turned out to be good at it. Lazzo worked his way up to become the first programmer ever at Cartoon Network, and he now runs his own highly successful production company.

????Keep an eye out for the unexpected. For instance, Delfina Eberly, director of data center operations at Facebook, told Gebhard, “The roads that my peers took, they were expected, [but] I wanted something different. I was searching for something to connect to.” To pay the bills, Eberly took a lowly job in the computer room of a local bank, even though she had no tech training or experience.

????To her own surprise, she loved it. “Instead of shying away from technology, I leaned into it. I would just sit down and figure it out,” she recalls in Roadmap. “And that philosophy has really served me well, even today.”

????The two biggest things to keep in mind, Gebhard says, are, “first, there is no universal definition of success. You get to define what it looks like for you, and pursue that. It’s a very freeing realization.”

????And second, taking baby steps into a field where you think you’d like to work, while you’re still in your 20s and can change direction relatively easily, might look riskier than following a supposedly “safe” career path that someone else has laid out for you. But consider what Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist Randy Komisar, another of Gebhard’s interviewees, calls “the most dangerous risk of all—the risk of spending your life not doing what you want, on the bet that you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”

????Talkback: How did you choose your current career? If you had it to do over again, would you go into the same field, or a different one? Leave a comment below.