Why you can’t find your passion | Tina Huang

0:00Hey guys, how's it going? Welcome back to another video. So you probably click on this video because you're feeling a little bit lost in life. Perhaps you feel a little bit paralyzed and uncertain to you whether to go to grad school or to get a job. You might feel like everybody else seems to be getting ahead and just kind of have things sorted out while you are stagnated. Maybe you don't know what to do with your life when you grow up, but you're already grown up. And this video is for you. I really empathize with you and I've experienced all of the above in the past like six to eight years. Starting from my undergraduate when I was pre-med deciding I didn't want to be a doctor anymore. Pretty much like stumbling into bioinformatics and then getting a computer science master's degree, which was one of the best choices of my life. And then, you know, doing computer science, software engineering, and then eventually ending up as a data scientist. I'm not saying that I have my life sorted out. I really don't. If you're going to ask me what I'm going to be doing five years, I can't tell you maybe even two years. I don't know either. But I learned to be okay with that because I really read to find the way that I view what a job is,

1:01what a career is, and what success means. So in this video, I want to share with you guys some of the misconceptions that I have and what I come to realize about them so that now I'm a lot happier and a lot more fulfilled with my career. These are also things that I kind of stumbled across over the years, which I really were someone had told me just straight up. Many, many years back when I was struggling. So let's get to it. Realization number one is that there is no dream job. Oh my god, this took me so long to figure out. I spent ages and ages reading different books about careers, watching YouTube videos, even taking courses. And I've actually also done personality tests, trying to figure out what my treats and how that matches towards what is the best job for me, what could be my dream job. I'm just trying and trying and trying and just nothing really like exactly fit until I finally came to the realization that there is no dream job. And it makes a lot of sense because why would there be a dream job designed specifically for your needs,

2:06your wants, and your desires? Am I saying that she has randomly choose a job or just choose a major to study? No, I am not saying that. But what I am saying, first of all, is don't stress out so much about it. If you're trying to choose what it is that you're going to study, where you're choosing what kind of job you're going to have, choose something that satisfies a large amount of things that you enjoy doing, relatively. And also try to choose things that have to do with your strengths, because research shows that things that are your strengths also tend to be things that you like more. With that being said, if you're someone like me, I was always that kid who was pretty good at everything, but not particularly good, where particularly enjoyed anything. Then you can choose something that's more generalized, something that can open up a lot of doors for you. To be honest, that's why I ended up choosing computer science as my master's degree. After choosing computer science, I chose data science as my job. One, a satisfied my curiosity. I easily get bored in something that I wouldn't get bored doing. It also had a very, like, discovery-focused mindset. So it's about figuring things out and discovering stuff, which I find really fun. I also felt like I played towards some of my strengths.

3:06It's very multi-disciplinary, so it involves a lot of other things from different areas. And that's something that I've always been very passionate about and pretty good at learning stuff. It's also about big picture and a little co-thinking, which is a skill that I hone throughout my undergraduate degree in pharmacology and sciences. And last of all, it paid well and it had good hours. Is it perfect? No, but I like it enough, so I'm able to put up with other things that I don't like about it. So you might be wondering now, okay, so are you telling me that I should just settle with not having a job or something that I really enjoy doing? It satisfies all of these aspects that I want from my career. No, I am not telling you that. I myself am also extremely greedy in the sense that I want to be doing something that really fulfills me. I want to be doing that for as many hours of the day as I can. So the next insight where, like, realization I came to is that a job is not a career. I'll repeat it. A job is not my career. What I mean by a job is say, like, a specific role, something that you're being paid for as an employee to do.

4:06And a career on the other hand is something I define as an amalgamation of different things where different jobs, potentially, that you may be doing, also throughout different periods of your life. So this is important because that dream job that doesn't exist, doesn't define you, doesn't define your career. You can actually take your career into your own hands by doing different things that together make up what I guess you can call like a dream career. And this is actually designed for you because you designed it. What I noticed that people often have a very narrow definition of what a career track is. Like for people who come from a computer science background, for example, there's like four kind of defined career tracks that people like to go to. And people just think that they just have to like choose one of these career paths when compete with everybody trying to climb up that corporate ladder, basically. And hey, I'm not bashing that kind of career path at all. But what I want to emphasize is that not only is the competition much more furious along these paths because everybody's trying to go on them, it's also a lot more personalized. You know, your career is most likely not going to satisfy you as much

5:10because it's not personalized to you. And I think the reason that people do go on those well-trained career paths, well, I guess like first thing is that they just didn't know that you could not do that. And also because they see it as being predictive, as being stable. Well, on the other side, like that other huge sites of pie out there that's not clearly defined. It's called like entrepreneurial. But what I'm here to tell you right now is that that's a misconception. It's not like you either are an employee or you're an entrepreneur. Like it's not black and white like that. You can be both. I mean, that's what I am. Like I am doing both. I'm an employee as a data scientist. I'm also an entrepreneur doing YouTube courses and other things as well. And that's how I started designing my dream career. I do want to make a disclaimer here. I don't want to sugarcoat things and say like, oh yeah, everything is great. Because there's not, there's a lot of trial and error that was being involved and there's times when I have to sacrifice time and sleep. But it's really worth it to me personally. Because I feel a lot more fulfilled doing this and allows me to work towards my long-term goal

6:12of having a career in which I can work on the things that are most meaningful to me at any time that I want. I do hold still a traditional sense of wanting a job security, for example, which is why it's important to me to still have a day job, at least for now. I really admire people who are like, they know their passion is art, for example, where they want to be an actress and they put everything into that knowing that their rate of success could be potentially really low or that they may spend years and years struggling and not having, it's like the luck shades in life, if you will. And I really admire people like that. But me myself, that's not something that I'm willing to sacrifice. So I'll rather go on this route of having a day job first. We're really lucky because we live in a day in Asia. It's actually very conducive to this type of thing. It's easier than ever to supplement your day job, especially with the pandemic that happened. I think one of the biggest silver linings is a redefinition of what work is like. Now work from home is very much accepted in a lot of different companies, even permanent work from home. What that means is that it's easier than ever to supplement your day job with something else.

7:16For me, it's important that some of these things have to produce income because I want to be able to work on what I think is the most meaningful things at all points of my life. And the first level of that kind of freedom is financial freedom because say like I feel like something that I'm doing no longer is very meaningful to me. I want to have that freedom to be able to stop doing it and not have to worry about paying the bills or something like that. So this is my current dream career that I'm building for myself. It involves being a data scientist as my day job. So I am an employee and then I also do YouTube. I make courses. I do some investing and trading on the side. And there's a few other things I'm exploring as well. And I feel really fulfilled doing this with my job. It satisfies a lot of things that I mentioned earlier that I do enjoy doing. But there are some things that are lacking. For example, creativity. And that's something that I really get to express through YouTube. And also autonomy, which is something that I don't have in my day job. But I have my YouTube channel because I can choose the videos that I make. I can decide on any brands that I want to work with. And another one is being able to connect with a large community of people, which is you guys.

8:18And I truly think that by doing these things outside of my 95 job has really made me a better person. It causes me to reflect on my life a lot more. And just to study with Tino Life Stream in itself has really accelerated my learning and growth. I have only recently started taking YouTube income, which is a very long story as to why that's the case. But basically, I was really kind of just like shocked and just so grateful to realize YouTube based income. I'm nearly at a point where I actually think I could be comfortable living from just that. Like, not exactly there yet, because it's still pretty unstable for month to month. But I do feel like I'm like nearly there. And it just gives me so much joy because this is something that I love doing so much. I've been able to have autonomy, that creativity. And I just feel I'm one step closer towards that dream of having that freedom to work on what I find meaningful. And for that, I am really, really grateful.

9:19So I just wanted to say thank you for all of you guys for supporting me along the way. So let's do a little bit of a recap. There is no dream job, but you can make your own dream career, which is an amalgamation of different jobs at different times in your life. If you're conservative like me, what you can do is you can have a day job that pays the bills, that does all those different things, and then start exploring side hustles if you want to call them or different business ideas. Or it doesn't even have to be a revenue generator, but different things to satisfy other aspects. And to do that, I highly recommend that you take advantage of the internet. You can get courses for like $10 on you to meet or Skillshare. There's also free YouTube videos and content. Like for me, I learned how to do this YouTube thing, how to use a camera, how to edit, from a combination of Skillshare and free YouTube videos. And you should also take advantage of democratization in general and decrease barriers to doing things. It's so much easier and requires less capital starting out to start investing, to start trading. You can take the stuff that you learn from courses and become a freelancer, and then offer your services on Fiverr, for example. Like video editing or coding. I worry it can be like me

10:19and take advantage of social media and become a creator. It's such an incredible time because you either need no money or very little money to actually start doing this. And I'm really certain that you'll come to the same realization that I've come to. That just by deviating a little bit from the well-trauged and career paths out there, really remarkable things can happen. Like for me, a year and three months ago, I guess. I had no idea that I couldn't even dream that there would be 170 KV guys at the time of filming this video that are part of this channel, part of this community allows me to express my creativity and is able to allow me to generate income and help me get closer to my ultimate goal of being able to work on things that are really meaningful to me at any time I want. I do feel like a lot of stuff that I said can make a lot of sense theoretically, but I want to give a little bit more practical advice as well. You may feel really overwhelmed because you're like, okay, Tina, you're telling me that I should get a job and then do some other things as well and figure out what it is that I want to do there and put everything together.

11:19And then, you know, I want to share a quote with you that I think about a lot. I think it was from Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's the fact that people overestimate will be achieved in a day and underestimate will be achieved in eight years. So this is my recommendation. So number one is prioritize. Whatever decision that you're trying to do right now, trying to choose a major, trying to choose a job to do, prioritize that. And then once you feel more stable doing that, then start exploring side gigs. Treat this as an exploration. Start small. Don't be like, in order to start my YouTube channel, I first have to buy a camera, a tripod, a microphone. No, no, start small. And if you want to do something like investing, don't be like, I have to first make $10,000. So I can start investing. You can start investing with $10. The key here is to be consistent. I really explore that arena. Then make it educated decision, whether it is something that you actually enjoy doing or not. A key takeaway that took me a while to kind of get into my brain is that just because you give up doing something, it doesn't mean it's a failure at all. If it's a conscious choice, that you think something isn't suitable for your lifestyle,

12:22it's not something that you enjoy doing. It doesn't play towards your strengths and you don't want it as part of your dream career. Then don't do it. War adapt a little bit. Like for example, I started off doing forex training, swing training. And honestly, I realized I didn't really fit that well with my dream career because of the time dedication that's there. And I wasn't just, I wasn't like super interested in that style of training after realizing how much time it entails and how much discretionary input there is. And I feel like it wasn't taking advantage of my strengths as they decided. Which I know, thank you for some of you guys have told me this. And I'm like, you know what, you're right. So I'm adopting more towards systematic trading and more into investment and wealth building. And the last point I want to make here is just to not take life so seriously. A single choice, like what major you're going to do, what master's degree you're going to do, what job it is you're going to take, is not like something that's going to lock you in for the rest of your life. What was more important is learning the skill sets that allowed me to trust myself. I know I feel like whatever situation that you threw me into, maybe I have to learn something really fast.

13:23Like maybe there's something that pops up like a crisis that occurs. I feel confident in myself that I will be able to adapt and react with good choices based upon the knowledge that I do have. All right, we'll come to the end of this video. If you're feeling stuck in life and whatever choices that you need to make right now, I hope that this video has been helpful in some way. I also would just love to know what you guys think. So drop a comment. I'll read every single comment, even though I don't respond to every single one because that would just take me way too long. Unfortunately, I really love reading your comments and getting your feedback. So have a wonderful day and see you in the next video. beim