You’ve likely been asked to describe what you care about, what activities you enjoy, and what makes you happy. You’ve also likely struggled to articulate the perfect words to explain it all. The main reason behind this is that you actually haven’t engaged in enough conscious introspection to be able to answer the question perfectly for even yourself.

You need a “What I Want” Guide. It’s a short but meaningful project with which you concretize your passions, put what you love and hate into words, and figure out your workplace needs and how to communicate them. Even if you are confident about what you want, you should still make a What I Want Guide. It’s fun and it’s incredibly fulfilling.

Making Yours

The formatting of your guide can be however you want. This is about you. Do what makes you happy! It could be a huge poster or even a video. With that advice, making a visually appealing booklet-type guide worked excellent for me and I think it would be perfect for most readers.  Here’s how you can make your own.

Title Page

You can get creative with this if you want. I made mine simple but that matches my preferences and personality. If you’re more of a radical personality, make it crazy! Splash that paint.

Bold Statement

Try to get it down to a big opening statement. You don’t need to worry about capturing everything about you but get the mind in a place that will line up with the theme of the guide. You can include a paragraph that expands in the statement if it helps you clarify.

I used “I want to do it all” because I have bunches diverse skills and don’t want to limit myself by pushing certain skills to the side. I then described a workplace moment that sounds extremely appealing and I concluded with some concepts I relate to.

Psychological Motivators

This is where you get introspective. Psychological motivators are the foundations of what makes you feel “good.” Don’t use any particular activities or get extremely specific when it comes to the actual type of work you like to do. Instead, focus on broad concepts like “feeling significant is important to me” or “if I can’t exercise my creativity, I feel empty.”

This section requires you to consciously look into yourself and think about what things give you psychological reward. I recommend some serious meditation to help you figure this out because it’ll be difficult in the presence of distractions.

Things You Love

Get specific now. This is where you’ll put the specific ways in which you bring your energy into the world. For some, it’s writing, photography, or creating music. For others, it’s sports, public speaking, traveling, coding, or analyzing numbers. Define what activities make you come alive and put them in your guide.

Things You Hate

Identifying what makes you feel dead inside is equally as important as identifying what makes your heart sing. When you don’t know precisely what makes things uncomfortable, you don’t know what to avoid.

You’ve likely spent less conscious time here than on what you love. Don’t underestimate the importance of knowing what you don’t like. Put real time into this section.

Summary

This isn’t absolutely necessary, but it’s nice to put everything in one area in a short, comprehensible way. It’s also a great place to write a concluding paragraph.

Other/Miscellaneous

There is so much to you, and there may be other sections to add. Make this guide yours. Change it, morph it, or do something totally different with the same idea in mind.

This guide is yours, so make it yours! There are no rules.