Career-Building in Your Twenties: How To Increase Your Sense of Purpose

How am I supposed to build a career when I don’t even know what I want in life?

People ask us our entire childhood what we want to be when we grow up. Sometimes we had an answer and sometimes we didn’t. But it was different every time.

I majored in English in college. Not for any particular career-focused reason, I was just passionate about writing. But people always wanted to know what my end-goal was. A teacher? That’s about the extent of people’s imaginations when it comes to English majors.

I can’t even decide what movie to watch next, how am I supposed to have a vision for what I want my entire career and life to look like?

The Reality of Early Career Building

After graduating college, I had no idea what I was going to do.

I still had this vague romantic notion about getting into a prestigious MFA program and not having to worry about bills for another couple of years, but I graduated in December and programs don’t start until the Fall, so I had at least eight months to kill.

So I took the first job that I was offered, a Sales & Marketing Assistant position at a golf course. 🥴 It was hands down the worst job I’ve ever had (and I’d worked some seriously sketchy jobs through college) but I learned a LOT about navigating corporate, and about my own desires and dealbreakers in a job.

But the punchline? I didn’t even get into an MFA program.

At least now had some experience in the real world, and I knew a bit more about my skills and desires, so I was able to leave my first real job and get another one that paid more 🙌 while I re-applied for MFA programs for the next term.

The bottom line here is, I just picked something that seemed like it aligned with my skills and that seemed to be a respectable alternative to “I don’t know”.

I don’t love marketing and I know I don’t want to spend my entire career focused on it, but it gets that societal expectation of “success” off my back and it’s nice to not have to worry about where my next paycheck is coming from.

W.H. Auden once said that wannabe writers that don’t have the skills “will select some highly paid sub-literary pursuit like Advertising” and for whatever reason, I’m not entirely offended by this.

There is a certain beauty and even excitement about not being locked into one career path. Plus, choosing something that I’m adept enough at but not necessarily passionate about leaves so much time for filling my personal life.

Plus, I eventually did get accepted into an MFA program, so I’m ultimately very happy with how things worked out.

Now, I have the opportunity to pursue my love for poetry, but I also have a solid base for a career and I don’t have to worry about being a starving artist (whew).

A Day-in-the-Life

This attitude and approach to career building gives us the chance to enrich our personal lives and development.

For me, this means lots of time for reading and writing poetry and trying to figure out what it is I actually want to be doing.

Ultimately, I try to make my days as reasonably productive as possible, incorporating intentionality wherever I can:

• 8:30: Get up and get ready for work as late as possible (NOT an early riser lol)
• 9-5: In office. Taking any extra minutes or down-time to work on any schoolwork that’s due soon, or working on poems.
• 5-6: Exercise is super important to me both for my mental and physical health, so I take an hour after work each day to lift weights, do some pilates, or just take a walk.
• 6-8: Work on whatever is most pressing. Assignments, reading, writing. Sometimes I’m tired or I’m feeling caught up, so I’ll spend time with my loved ones or do something to re-energize.
• 8-9: Make dinner (or go out), watch a show, shower, and have some down time.
• 9-bed: I’ll usually try to get a little more productivity in before bed, especially if I’m in the middle of a writing project, and that’s it!

Sometimes my evenings are filled with a little more existentialism than productivity, but the idea here is to just keep doing something. Don’t get complacent. When I get complacent, I get depressed. So I’m constantly working towards some little goal. Right now that has a lot to do with my MFA, but before that I was genuinely reading and writing as much as possible, trying to get better.

Intentional Habits

This day-to-day productivity can look like anything. Just because we have no idea who we are or what we want out of life doesn’t mean we lack drive or passion.

I focus on reading and writing because that’s what makes me feel valuable.

Writing is also notoriously a vehicle for stress-relief, self-expression, and coping.

Here’s an article in the Harvard Business Review that discusses some of these benefits of writing.

I use it for all of the above advantages, and I think you’d notice a positive difference too if you decided to dedicate some time to writing. Lately I’ve been struggling with making a big decision, so I decided to write it out. Here are some prompts I used — give it a try if you’re struggling with making a decision!

Stress-Relieving Decision-Making Prompt

• Go with your gut instinct and envision what the effect is five years down the line: What does it look like? Is this a desirable outcome?
• Write about your ideal goal in five years. Even if you aren’t sure, write about the vibe you think you’d want and generally what you hope life will look like. Does this decision align with what you wrote?
• Do this again for other potential choices until the outcome makes sense — I personally felt a sense of calm and even relief.

Exercises like this help us connect back to ourselves and slow down our thought processes. Even beyond helping you solve a problem in the moment, knowing this information about yourself can also help you develop long-term ideas, goals, and self-image.

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