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How to Figure Out What to Do with Your Life
How to Figure Out What to Do with Your Life (Next) will help you figure out where you want to go next in your career and how to get there, using a career design process based on ideas from quantified self, design thinking, lean methodology, and more.
204 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 2, 2021
11 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer Turliuk
2 books6 followersJennifer Turliuk is an entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Fast Company, Wired, and more. She attended Queen’s University and Singularity University (at NASA) and was awarded an honorary degree from Humber College for her contributions to society. Jennifer’s writing can be found in Forbes, Business Insider, Strategy, and various newspapers.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
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February 1, 2021I am most definitely not the target audience for this book and really should have done more of my due diligence on the author before I requested it. Even reading the introduction would have been enough to see that the author is personally interested in a start-up/VC culture and even though she often says the book is meant to be used for any kind of career journey, as a person who lives and works in Silicon Valley, there's a lot of the jargon and mentality of that culture in this book. Which I certainly am exposed to plenty and didn't really need more of.
While I liked the idea of the framework the author puts on the process of figuring out the next steps for your career, so much of this book is just not viable for you unless you're in your twenties or single. Or at least not viable if you have responsibilities like kids and a mortgage and cannot leave your day job to "shadow" other jobs.
There's nothing wrong with this book. I think the framework the author lays out might be totally viable for others but just not the right thing for me with where I am in my life/career.
I do want to highlight one major caveat however. There are a lot of references to people who "made it" despite not finishing a degree, or not starting out in a job with secure paycheck, etc etc in this book. Oprah and Steve Jobs, and Zuckerberg are exceptions. There are way more people who drop out of school and don't become billionaires or people who take risks that derail their lives in ways that aren't easily recoverable. I do think taking calculated/thoughtful risks, especially early in your life, is a good thing, but I am weary when all the examples all the time are the exceptions and not a full picture.
But then again I'm a parent so maybe I am optimizing on being safe.
with gratitude to netgalley and Dundurn Press for an advanced copy in return for an honest review.
Ps: I will not rate this book on goodreads because I don't want to skew the rating since I am the first review and it's not the author's fault that I am not the target audience for this book.
While I liked the idea of the framework the author puts on the process of figuring out the next steps for your career, so much of this book is just not viable for you unless you're in your twenties or single. Or at least not viable if you have responsibilities like kids and a mortgage and cannot leave your day job to "shadow" other jobs.
There's nothing wrong with this book. I think the framework the author lays out might be totally viable for others but just not the right thing for me with where I am in my life/career.
I do want to highlight one major caveat however. There are a lot of references to people who "made it" despite not finishing a degree, or not starting out in a job with secure paycheck, etc etc in this book. Oprah and Steve Jobs, and Zuckerberg are exceptions. There are way more people who drop out of school and don't become billionaires or people who take risks that derail their lives in ways that aren't easily recoverable. I do think taking calculated/thoughtful risks, especially early in your life, is a good thing, but I am weary when all the examples all the time are the exceptions and not a full picture.
But then again I'm a parent so maybe I am optimizing on being safe.
with gratitude to netgalley and Dundurn Press for an advanced copy in return for an honest review.
Ps: I will not rate this book on goodreads because I don't want to skew the rating since I am the first review and it's not the author's fault that I am not the target audience for this book.
August 20, 2021
A quick read that gets right to the key points. It’s a very practical guide that is as useful for a first job as it is for mid-career planning. The author takes you through some in-depth soul searching as well as the basic mechanics of thinking about the right career path followed by the specific steps to get yourself onto that path. There are other career books out there, but none as straightforward, concise and immediately useful that I've come across. A number of worksheets - some of which are very helpful and some of which I skipped over - you can pick and choose. The Know Thyself Tools and Questions are relegated to an appendix but don't skip over them - they should have been part of the main text perhaps because I found them to be crucial to my own career thinking.
July 26, 2023
I read much of this book at least when it tackled the subject of how to figure out what you want to do with your life. In a nutshell, her advice is to do research to discover possible paths and then do small experiments to determine if any of those paths are something you would like to pursue. Write it all down in a notebook and work on it. The essence of it is simple but I found it to be great advice. I am taking it to heart in my career investigating journey. I found this book to be a great help and am thankful for it.
March 1, 2021
The book is great for those who want to find a second career or the career of their dreams. If you want a structured, practical way of finding what job is best suited for your read this book! It's enlightening and shares valuable information!
June 17, 2021
Jennifer Turliuk does an excellent job capturing a lot of the best career transistion practices I have seen in this book. If you are looking for a good book that can help you map out your next career move you should put this book on your list.
April 16, 2023
The initial concept was enough to keep me going for half of the book. I found the section about Shadowing, internships and resumes to be for a younger person as ageism is alive and well in the corporate world.
April 7, 2021
Book flows nicely and it is easy to understand. It offers practical and methodical advice that anyone can follow and benefit from. Good read for anyone who's questioning their career choices!
August 30, 2022
I picked this book up mostly on a whim, after seeing it on display at the local library with a "hot pick" sticker. I thought it might be able to assist me in coaching people who are looking for their next career move.
Two main reasons this book does not work for me.
1) The writing style is not very strong. Too many exclamation marks, not enough editing for conciseness, minimal paragraphing (relying on sub headings instead), for starters. The overall tone of the book is more vlog style: super excited person who speaks in excited, informal, declarative sentences. It comes across as an excited rush of advice without pause or breath. Maybe it works for a younger crowd, but it doesn't work for me because it feels like a rush of words that I are coming at me very very quickly.
2) Speaking of the younger crowd, my second reason is that I'm not clear on who the audience of the book is. The cover and "(next)" in the title makes me think it's for people looking for the next career move in the middle of a life. Yet the advice is at a foundational, early career level suitable for those who are at stage one in their career. Yes, it acknowledges how to implement some of the advice (like job shadow and travel around couch-surfing on a shoe-string budget) if you're still in a job, but for the most part the instructions will work best for those who are early twenties or even late teens, not mid-thirties or with family commitments and responsibilities. Related, the advice it gives is relatively elemental and foundational: get to know your interests and life purpose; here's how you write a resume and cover letter and interview. It's great if you can research and identify specific careers, but if you don't know what those are or what possibilities exist, the book doesn't offer much tangible advice outside of "cold call" and "research." Even the supposed examples from the author's own life aren't actually helpful. Her career explorations are between "join a start-up", "start a start-up" and "venture capitalist". It's one thing to know you want to be involved in a start-up, but that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface about what that start-up will do or offer, which is a huge hurdle in itself.
Maybe this book is helpful if you have no idea how to navigate getting out of high school (it does have some suggestions for college application essays), but for the rest of us, it doesn't have a whole lot of new insight. Maybe her Forbes article was useful, in its time. But it didn't convert into a lasting helpful book.
Two main reasons this book does not work for me.
1) The writing style is not very strong. Too many exclamation marks, not enough editing for conciseness, minimal paragraphing (relying on sub headings instead), for starters. The overall tone of the book is more vlog style: super excited person who speaks in excited, informal, declarative sentences. It comes across as an excited rush of advice without pause or breath. Maybe it works for a younger crowd, but it doesn't work for me because it feels like a rush of words that I are coming at me very very quickly.
2) Speaking of the younger crowd, my second reason is that I'm not clear on who the audience of the book is. The cover and "(next)" in the title makes me think it's for people looking for the next career move in the middle of a life. Yet the advice is at a foundational, early career level suitable for those who are at stage one in their career. Yes, it acknowledges how to implement some of the advice (like job shadow and travel around couch-surfing on a shoe-string budget) if you're still in a job, but for the most part the instructions will work best for those who are early twenties or even late teens, not mid-thirties or with family commitments and responsibilities. Related, the advice it gives is relatively elemental and foundational: get to know your interests and life purpose; here's how you write a resume and cover letter and interview. It's great if you can research and identify specific careers, but if you don't know what those are or what possibilities exist, the book doesn't offer much tangible advice outside of "cold call" and "research." Even the supposed examples from the author's own life aren't actually helpful. Her career explorations are between "join a start-up", "start a start-up" and "venture capitalist". It's one thing to know you want to be involved in a start-up, but that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface about what that start-up will do or offer, which is a huge hurdle in itself.
Maybe this book is helpful if you have no idea how to navigate getting out of high school (it does have some suggestions for college application essays), but for the rest of us, it doesn't have a whole lot of new insight. Maybe her Forbes article was useful, in its time. But it didn't convert into a lasting helpful book.
June 18, 2021
COVID-19 has made many people rethink what they want to do with their life. How to Figure Out What to Do with Your Life (Next) is an excellent resource to help you determine what's important and provides step-by-step advice to help you achieve your goals. An easy (and fun!) read, Jennifer's writing style makes it feel like your talking to a trusted friend. This book makes you see the possibilities of a career change and motivates you to take the next step - dream big!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews