Road 10: The secret behind making the right choices

I don’t know why but after ages I decided to login to my blog. To my surprise, the blog is receiving 1000+ views for the past few months. That is about enough to make a mediocre writer like me feel guilty enough to not blogging for a while. The world is too kind sometimes I guess.

So, the HOT topic right now for everyone around me is, “life after college”. We’re at that point in our lives where we’re giving our last engineering exams and right after this we take the plunge into the real world. Scary. Exciting. The last month has been filled with the “one-last-time” parties. Facebook feeds are plastered with albums, “will-miss-this/that” statuses. Farewell. Batch Parties. #placed.

Everyone seems to be getting jobs, internships or post-graduation offers and yet most of them seem to be confused about what they should be doing.

Bottom line, the question everyone seems to be asking is, “Which option do I choose? And given that I make my choice, how do I know for sure that 2-3 years down the line I won’t regret it?”

I started reading up a little on this before coming to an answer and there are two very similar patterns that I found.

There is this one group of people, successful or not so much, who decided to go in the direction life took them in. They took up the job offer just because it was offered to them. They started their own companies just because no one else was willing to give them a job. Never really thought about what they really wanted to do because life always threw at them a safer option. They had a constant voice at the back of their heads saying, “What if? What if I don’t do this and then there is nothing else to do?” Now what is common with this group is that all of them still have the same voice at the back of their heads saying, “What if? What if I had done this/that. Boy that could have been a whole different life.” Maybe a little less successful or maybe more. But they’d never know.

The second group are the people who quit midway through college because it’s not what they wanted to do. Who rejected job offers from the biggest of the firms even without knowing where the next rupee was coming from because again, it’s not what they wanted to do. Just the other day I was watching this Varun Agarwal INKtalk on YouTube where he talks about a Harvard graduate who’s working as a mechanic in his own garage in Kolkata. Reason: It’s what he always really wanted to do (If you haven’t seen this video yet. Watch it. The link is at the bottom of the article). There’s one pattern common in this group too, which is, successful or not, they’re happy. They are not blaming their parents for forcing a life decision on them because all along it was their decision.

I have no first-hand experience in this area and I will only have one probably five years down the line after I have already made the decisions for the first part of my working life. So I don’t even know which of the two groups I mentioned above I want to be a part of. But, all I have right now is experiences of people from the past and the present and the ability to make an informed decision based on their experiences.

So this is what I did. I got myself into a quiet room, took out my scratchpad and started making a list.

“Things I want to do before I am worm-food”. The first 10-15 items on the list just flowed out but then it got tough afterwards. I realised, “What kind of life am I living if I can’t even write down a few meaningful things that I’d want to do before I die?” So I took some time off. Spent a couple of days to make this a list of 50 meaningful things I want to do.

PS: We all want fancy cars and bungalows so try leaving that out from you lists.

Surprisingly once I was done with the list the only thing on my mind was that I just have to check off everything on this list. Doing anything else would be a terrible waste of time. And I don’t care if things don’t work out because I don’t want to be 50 someday and think, “What if?” Frankly I can’t wait to finish college and get started with the things on my list. Strike them off one-by-one.

That’s Road 10 guys.

Confused about the choices you are about to make? Well pull out a scratchpad and start writing. “Things I want to do before I am worm-food!” Take a few days to make this list and write down only those things that you REALLY-REALLY want to accomplish. Then sit back and notice the fear of making the wrong decision just vanish away.

Did that help? Write to me.

Oh and the link I mentioned above.
Varun Agarwal’s Talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMPqsjuXDmE