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This quote captures a rule I'd like to live my life, and by extension my career by. I'd like to have a job where every day looks different because you respond to whatever eventualities arise. What is a good way to find these?
I'm not asking for specific job positions (although feel free to suggest some) because I imagine such positions exist in most fields β I'm rather asking for ways to find these/filter for these in a given field.
Art jobs are like this! Especially if management are also art people, then every day is utter chaos lol.
Two things an art job is great for:
Developing a thick skin. Make art every day, send it off, receive a detailed list of everything that sucks about it, re-do it, repeat this about 30 times until it finally goes out, then receive death threats from the audience.
Learning to function under chaos. A regular Tuesday at Art Job is roughly equivalent to the worst day in company history and a normal office job.
Two things an art job is not good for:
Keeping the desire to make art for fun in your spare time.
Being a regular functioning human.
I have a low tolerance for repetitive work, am an accountant and my "career" has basically been two startups. There are places that just keep changing, changing systems and processes all the time. I don't have to do things the same way every time, I keep trying new ways, and nobody feels stepped on if you suggest a better way of doing their job.
I would say look for the culture - when you walk in here there are people talking, people cussing, getting up to get water or to go for a walk to clear their head. We can walk into the president's office and make a suggestion (or email or teams them), and people do also transfer between jobs here, it's encouraged.
What I will say the tradeoff is though - chaotic places like this always require more hours at least some of the time. They are more flexible with you but also require some flexibility from you. For me that choice is a no brainier, I am useless in a more regimented job. But it doesn't suit everyone.
He's not talking about dynamic jobs. He's talking about not being a slave.
I run four companys' marketing departments, it's different every day and mildly interesting but it's not like I'd rather be doing it than frolicking in the springtime sunlight
As far as ways to filter for such positions, maybe look for roles that require traveling? At the very least, you'd be in a different location throughout your week.
Seconding this. If you're handy, look into work as a field repair technician of some kind. I used to repair machine tools for a company that covered a tristate area. Not only did I not know what I would do from one day to the next, I didn't know how long the day would be or if I'd even be home at the end of it or staying in a hotel. Money was great and the work was very interesting. Admittedly, the drive time and lack of a schedule for home life gets old after a while but, I did it for 15 years and the first ten were great. I was ready for another career after a decade but stuck it out for another five years because I was picky about the new gig.
No regrets.
This quote is full of shit though.
By this logic, the less predictable your daily life is, the more "alive" you are.
So for a lot of us, to be "alive" is to experience constant anxiety about what's about to happen.
...
Actually, that tracks.
Agreed. I find that the more I pre plan my day, the more stuff I can get done, like gym, work, weekend out with partner etc. And if I donβt, the day is just gonna be wasted on gaming or watching videos.
Makes me want to be somewhat, partly, dead
Yeahhh. Dunno bout basing my life off of any quote let alone this one lol
Consulting. Iβve done a little bit of it before as an occupational hygiene consultant. In a 2 week period Iβd done air quality tests at a sulphuric acid processing plant, noise dosimetry at a bread factory, management system audit at Shell petroleum, and reviewed findings of air quality tests at a building where half the workers were βgetting sick all the timeβ.
But itβs not consistent work, and if you go into business for yourself; 1- good luck finding the work, and 2- have fun spending months chasing up invoices.
Does this apply if I don't even know what day it is?
Any job is like this if your time management is bad enough
ADHD time blindness activate!
I think the most alive you could be would then be some manner of homeless drug addict. You have no power over your life, so no notion of what any day will look like.
This quote kinda rubs me the wrong way because it treats predictability the same as banality.
If you want a job where you never know what the day is going to look like, work for a poorly managed company. You never know what you're going to be doing, sometimes the project you're working on one day is cancelled without warning and now people are mad at you for not having been working on the new priority for the past month. Sometimes you go in and you work 36 hours straight without warning because someone else messed up and your boss doesn't give a shit who's responsible and you're the one who knows how to fix it, so fix it or fuck off. Better hope you don't have a family or you're going to have to make choices.
Knowing what you're going to do tomorrow is just having work of any consequence. Food service knows what they're doing tomorrow. So does a CEO, a software developer at a competent business, or a project manager. I can think of very few jobs whose scope of work is limited to a day, and is so variable that you just don't know what you'll be doing. Temp? Personal assistant to an eccentric actor? (Not the manager type assistant, they need to know the schedule. The one that buys coffee, six turtles and a pair of roller skates and doesn't actually exist).
I could just be dead inside because I know that tomorrow is going to go a particular way that I like.
Is this a quote? By whom? The picture of this dude means nothing to me π€£ Maybe Iβm uncultured. I cop to that possibility.
This quote brought to you by Tweed Man Who Eats Too Much Red Meat.
Oh it's Nassim Nicolas Taheb
Emergency medicine. I've heard various medical fields/disciplines described that way
Open a building in any capacity.
If you're working at almost any new place, things will go wrong daily and be different.
Could specialize in the ironing out phase?
Company founder/early executive. It's a new thing every day and to top it off every year or so, if things are going well, your whole job gets reinvented!
You need financial stability to pursue founding, though... especially right now.
I wish I really was but only my soul for now.
Every solution in capitalism is the same, begin with lots of money.