It’s for working professionals who are searching passion and fulfillment in their work. Most of the people at work are not engaged. There could be many reasons for not loving what you do. One of the effective ways to be engaged at work is to really understand what you love to do and find a way to make it happen. Let’s discuss some basic steps to know what you love to do and how to get there to your dream job or a business.

How to find what you want to do:

For years, I’ve been observing people engagement at work. For many people, it might be difficult to understand what they love to do. After reading many articles, I believe below basic steps can help to know what we really want to do. Here they are:

• If you have enough money for your life and dependents, what work or a business would you still like to do for free?
• If no one is observing you on your performance, what would you do for a day?
• If you’re a social worker, what would you love to do to help others for free?
• If you are attracted to anyone’s job or a business, what is that job or a business? In other words, who do you see as successful in their lives?

For example, if I have no money expectation with the work and no concern of my social image, I’ll do these activities:

1. I am a seeker. I want to understand who we are and why are we on earth?
2. I love making connections. I love understanding people. It attracts me to know what inspires people, what are the difficulties in their lives, and what do they want to do in their life.
3. I can’t stop knowing how technology is continuously changing and enabling people’s lives.

How to do the the work you love to do:

At first, we discussed noting down what we want to do. The next step is to find a way to get the job or business you want. Here are few steps that I found effective:

1. Write an as-is and a to-be plan: Write down what you do in your current/as-is job or a business. Write down a to-be/dream job or a business plan.
2. Plan high-level steps: Once you found what you want to do, do not change or quit your job immediately. Instead, find out small changes that you can make to your current job or business towards your dream job or business. Plan for small steps at a time on a consistent way. To build the consistency of efforts, read my article here. This article is about learning. It gives an insight on finding time in your weekdays consistently.
3. Know about the dream job or a business: Find ways to learn more about your to-be dream job or a business.
4. Know people who’re in a similar to-be job or a business: Be around people who’re already doing what you want to do.
5. Prepare yourself mentally: Build the mindset that you can do it. If you believe in positivity and self-affirmations, practice the technique to stay positive using self-affirmations. Also, if it works for you, start seeing yourself in your to-be job or a business.
6. Take actions: Start taking actions in an incremental way. Start with one step at a time. Without impacting your current job or business, what steps of a to-be job or a business you can perform this week? Here are some examples of how to move towards a to-be job or a business in an incremental way:
   1. A Lead software engineer is not happy sitting alone for hours with his or her code. He or she loves people connections and also love technologies. What if he or she finds a way to collaborate more with people? What if he or she contributes in organizing forums to meet peers and other colleagues? He/she can slowly move towards a people management role that requires understanding of technologies.
   2. A software engineer loves writing articles. What if he or she offers help in writing documents and other creative materials at work? What if slowly, he or she moves towards a technical writing career?
   3. A corporate employee is interested in real estates. What if he or she starts learning real estate business at part time? I know a friend who changed his career from a software developer to a real estate agent. He utilized is technical and leadership skills in organizing and creating attracting digital presence. He’s successful in what he does and he loves his real estate business.

We all have a limited life time. It’s critical to do what we love. With a step-by-step plan with consistent efforts, we can transform our career from a current job or a work situation to a desired job or a business. Let me know your thoughts on this article.