3 Best Books for Finding Your Dream Job & Maybe Even Your Calling

When something like the Great Resignation occurs, it’s pretty glaring that many people are still in search of the perfect job or career path. If that’s you, here are three of the best books to help guide you. And even though it’s rarely a quick fix or an easy endeavor, their collective wisdom will offer invaluable insights and help elevate your mindset on your quest to find a job where you can thrive. Joyously.

1. The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson with Lou Aronica

This book is a must-read, even if you love your job. Its author, Sir Ken Robinson, was knighted for his contributions to education and career development. His 2006 TED Talk has been viewed over 70 million times, and this, his most celebrated book, can serve as your North Star, especially when the formal education system may have misled or even failed you.

“They have discovered their Element — the place where the things you love to do and the things that you are good at come together. The Element is a different way of defining our potential. It manifests itself differently in every person, but the components of the Element are universal.”

“When people are in their Element, they connect with something fundamental to their sense of identity, purpose, and well-being.”

“For most of us the problem isn’t that we aim too high and fail — it’s just the opposite — we aim too low and succeed.”

“The Element is about discovering your self, and you can’t do this if you’re trapped in a compulsion to conform. You can’t be yourself in a swarm.”

“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed — it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.”

2. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

This book is great because it shows us how trying a lot of different things is positive and usually necessary in order to find the “Element.” In fact, it argues that a “range” of experiences helps make us more effective, as it provides unique perspectives and invaluable learning. Since the path to success is rarely linear, the book highlights how trial and error is an important component to excellence, encouraging us to embrace it.

“We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.”

“Learning stuff was less important than learning about oneself. Exploration is not just a whimsical luxury of education; it is a central benefit.”

“Modern work demands knowledge transfer: the ability to apply knowledge to new situations and different domains. Our most fundamental thought processes have changed to accommodate increasing complexity and the need to derive new patterns rather than rely only on familiar ones. Our conceptual classification schemes provide a scaffolding for connecting knowledge, making it accessible and flexible.”

3. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool

For me, this the most important of the bunch. It’s one of my favorite books of all-time. It’s the research and data behind the “10,000 hours rule” that Malcom Gladwell helped popularize but actually misrepresented in certain ways. The gist is that once you identify something at which you’d like to become exceptional, it will take an inordinate amount of effort to reach your “peak.” This is known as “deliberate practice,” and you must also select the right “mental representations” or paradigms to follow. Fortunately, the book shows the most effective way for this to be accomplished, regardless of the endeavor.

“So here we have purposeful practice in a nutshell: Get outside your comfort zone but do it in a focused way, with clear goals, a plan for reaching those goals, and a way to monitor your progress. Oh, and figure out a way to maintain your motivation.”

“With deliberate practice, however, the goal is not just to reach your potential but to build it, to make things possible that were not possible before. This requires challenging homeostasis — getting out of your comfort zone — and forcing your brain or your body to adapt.”

“If you talk to these extraordinary people, you find that they all understand this at one level or another. They may be unfamiliar with the concept of cognitive adaptability, but they seldom buy into the idea that they have reached the peak of their fields because they were the lucky winners of some genetic lottery. They know what is required to develop the extraordinary skills that they possess because they have experienced it firsthand. One of my favorite testimonies on this topic came from Ray Allen, a ten-time All-Star in the National Basketball Association and the greatest three-point shooter in the history of that league. Some years back, ESPN columnist Jackie MacMullan wrote an article about Allen as he was approaching his record for most three-point shots made. In talking with Allen for that story, MacMullan mentioned that another basketball commentator had said that Allen was born with a shooting touch — in other words, an innate gift for three-pointers. Allen did not agree. “I’ve argued this with a lot of people in my life,” he told MacMullan. “When people say God blessed me with a beautiful jump shot, it really pisses me off. I tell those people, ‘Don’t undermine the work I’ve put in every day.’ Not some days. Every day. Ask anyone who has been on a team with me who shoots the most. Go back to Seattle and Milwaukee, and ask them. The answer is me.” And, indeed, as MacMullan noted, if you talk to Allen’s high school basketball coach you will find that Allen’s jump shot was not noticeably better than his teammates’ jump shots back then; in fact, it was poor. But Allen took control, and over time, with hard work and dedication, he transformed his jump shot into one so graceful and natural that people assumed he was born with it. He took advantage of his gift — his real gift.