Your Dream Job Might Not Exist...

but that's okay

“What’s your dream job?”

Maybe it involves writing scripts for TV shows, then presenting your stories to a room full of people who are inspired by your brilliance.

Maybe it involves fighting for justice as you defend clients brilliantly in the courtroom. Or saving lives with your scalpel as you perform complex surgery.

But maybe it involves none of these things.

If you have NO IDEA what your dream job is, you’re not alone.

This post will discuss:

• why the “dream job” narrative is misleading

• why even a dream job can disappoint, and

• a smarter way to begin building a career that works for you

Dream Job Narrative

Some of the narratives about work seem to imply that everyone should have a “dream job”. That if you don’t have a “dream job,” something is wrong with your life.

Part of that pressure may come from the questions candidates are asked during job interviews. Interviewers want to make sure that they’ll hire someone who will do an excellent job. So they ask questions designed to elicit responses of excitement from candidates. Candidates sometimes feel that they need to – and sometimes do – need to seem over-the-top excited. If you’ve been in the position of doing many interviews for jobs you’re not ‘really’ passionate about, but needing to seem super-excited, you may feel a little disingenuous.

Another part of the reason that people may need to feel that there’s a ‘dream job’ they’re seeking is: there’s a cultural narrative that implies we should derive lots of meaning from our jobs. Derek Thompson, a writer at The Atlantic, has studied how people conceive of work – both historically and today. Thompson writes, “...more people, especially the elite, are turning to work to provide everything we have historically expected of organized religions.” Many people hold to a “credo that work should be the centerpiece of one’s identity.”¹

Part of that pressure may come from the fact that in some segments of society, people seem to be trying to derive more meaning from their work than in the past, when they got meaning from a variety of other sources. Productivity guru Cal Newport hypothesizes that perhaps the dream job narrative was spread by Baby Boomers, who may have been trying to eliminate cognitive dissonance as they first sought meaning through hippie culture, then may have felt that they ‘sold out’ by becoming rich as the market did well during the 1980s.²

The phenomenon of deriving meaning primarily from work may be (find sources) relatively new. But it can lead people to think that their job must provide meaning in their lives – and that therefore, they should have a dream job.

So, it’s not surprising that many Gen-Zers and Millennials seem to think there’s a ‘dream job’ which they should want.

But for many of us, I don’t think the ‘dream job’ narrative is particularly helpful.

That’s because:

• Many people don’t have a dream job, and

• Even if you have a dream job, it may disappoint

Many people don’t have a dream job

Maybe you’re someone who doesn’t have a dream job.

That’s okay.

Dozens of the adults I’ve spoken to – successful people ranging from their 30’s to 50’s – have said that they didn’t necessarily have a dream job. They’ve taken steps to figure out what they like and what they don’t like, but this hasn’t necessarily translated to them having a dream job. Instead, they’ve found jobs that they’re happy with.³

On the other hand – some people have had a dream job, and that hasn’t changed. One of my friends said, when she was 9, that she wanted to be a doctor. She went to college early and is now in med school, scheduled to graduate next year. But she is exceptionally focused and driven toward this career pursuit in a way that most people I’ve met have not been. And, it’s too early to tell whether she’ll actually enjoy it as much as she hopes.

Dream jobs can disappoint

Some people spend their lives trying to get their dream job – only to realize that the reality of the job is different than their vision of the job. Even if you have a “dream job”, it may turn out that the job itself disappoints you.

I recently met a successful guy (I’ll call him B), who had spent almost his whole adult life wanting to be a professor. He had a Ph.D. in chemistry, and had done a post-doc. He enjoyed lecturing. He enjoyed tutoring students.

But when it came to actually being a professor, he actually disliked it.

B told me that he was rather surprised at how much he disliked being a professor. He hadn’t realized how much of the job was the “administration” component of teaching, rather than teaching itself. For example, he had to write tests, and grade tests – neither of which he enjoyed. He had to find rooms and coordinate booking those rooms for students who needed extended time on exams. Students would argue with him about their grades, trying to get him to increase their scores by enough points to bump them up a grade.

“I didn’t expect them to be so grade-grubbing,” said B, “and it wasn’t an environment that I enjoyed.” When he had merely been lecturing, or providing one-on-one tutoring, the students interacted differently with him. And he hadn’t been responsible for much of the “admin” of teaching.

He in now working on early stage R&D (research and development) at a biotech company in Cambridge, MA.

I have another friend who really likes kids, and loved being a full-time nanny. She thought she’d also enjoy being a preschool teacher – because she got to work with kids. After a few months, she realized she really didn’t like her job. There was too much work that wasn’t teaching: meet with other faculty, with parents, and doing the ‘administration’ work of her job, rather than the teaching itself. She thought being a preschool teacher would be a fantastic job – but it wasn’t.

And sometimes, there’s no way to figure that you don’t like your dream job — except to try it and see.

Try this instead of obsessing over a dream job

Broad knowledge about what types of work you like – as opposed to specific knowledge about a dream role – can help you move your life towards where you want it to be.

Instead of idealizing a dream job, or feeling bad that you don’t know what your dream job is, it can be helpful to gather real data about aspects of jobs that you like or don’t like.

Career experts including Cal Newport and Bill Burnett and Dave Evans have recommended this advice. Cal Newport calls his method structured journalling⁴, whereas Bill Burnett and Dave Evans recommend keeping a Good Time Journal, but both approaches drive at the same concept, which is:

• Keep a real-time record of experiences that you enjoy, or don’t enjoy.

• Review the record to identify patterns in those experiences

Knowledge of what you like and don’t like in a work environment (or in your general life environment) can help you figure out what roles or jobs you may like more than others. Even if you don’t have a dream job, there will almost certainly be some jobs that you enjoy more than other jobs.

So when people ask you “What’s your dream job?” you might say, “I don’t necessarily have a dream job – but here are elements of jobs that I enjoy.”

And you might remember that more important than chasing a “dream job” is finding a job that has enough of the elements you do enjoy.

Leave a comment below! Are you one of the people who has a dream job, or are you trying to figure out what you want to do? What elements of work do you enjoy most?

1. Derek Thompson, “On Work”, 2023, page xi.

2. Deep Questions with Cal Newport, epsiode 320: “Jobs and the Deep Life.”

3. Freelance writer Kat Boogaard says something very similar in her article here; she’s never had a dream job – but she’s found something she likes and she’s happy. https://www.themuse.com/advice/its-not-just-youi-dont-have-a-dream-job-either

4. https://share.snipd.com/snip/f43df724-9de5-46c4-b96b-ec6284f86372