There are moments where I really wish somebody could just tell me what I’m supposed to do with my life.

Not necessarily forever. I’d settle for knowing what I’m supposed to do next.

I’m in one of those moments right now. I have a decision in front of me that could change the direction I’m going, and I keep going back and forth between taking the opportunity and continuing down the path I’m already on.

Part of me thinks I should take the leap. Another part thinks about everything I’ve already built, everything that could change, and everything that could go wrong.

“One minute I'm kind of like, this is what I should be doing. And then the next I'm like, wait, but what about this?”

The more I’ve thought about this particular decision, the more I’ve realized it’s connected to a much bigger question a lot of us have, especially in our 20s:

What am I actually supposed to do with my life?

I don’t think there’s a simple answer. But I do think there are better ways to figure out what you want than waiting for your entire future to suddenly become clear.

Stop Trying to Figure Out Your Entire Life

I think this is the first mistake we make.

You’re 22, 25, or 29, and suddenly a decision about what to do next becomes a decision about what you’re going to do for the rest of your life.

Should I stay at this job? Should I take another opportunity? Should I move? Should I keep building this thing? Should I change careers?

Those are important questions, but they don’t have to answer everything.

You’re deciding what you want to do next, not what you’re required to do forever.

That’s something I’ve written about before in How Do You Stop Overthinking Your Future? When you treat every decision like it permanently determines the rest of your life, even relatively normal choices can start feeling enormous.

Your life probably isn’t going to be one perfectly straight path anyway. You’re going to change. Your priorities will change. Opportunities you don’t even know exist today will appear.

You don’t need to figure out the entire route.

You need to figure out the next direction.

Figure Out What You Actually Want Right Now

This sounds like the obvious answer to figuring out what to do with your life, but I think it’s one of the hardest questions to answer honestly.

What do you want?

Not what sounds impressive. Not what your parents want. Not what your friends are doing. Not what would look good on LinkedIn or Instagram.

What do you actually want your life to look like right now?

Maybe you want to make as much money as possible. Maybe you care more about freedom. Maybe you want stability. Maybe you want to build something yourself. Maybe you want to live somewhere new, meet different people, or have enough time outside of work to actually enjoy your life.

None of those answers are automatically better than the others.

The problem is that we sometimes choose a path before deciding what we want the path to give us.

Start there.

Separate What You Want From What You Think You Should Want

There are a lot of “shoulds” in your 20s.

You should be further along by now. You should have a serious career. You should be making more money. You should know what you want. You should be dating seriously. You should move to a certain city. You should take the impressive opportunity.

But whose timeline are you following?

Comparison can make it incredibly difficult to hear your own answer because somebody will always appear to be ahead of you. One friend gets promoted, another gets engaged, somebody starts a company, and suddenly whatever you’re doing feels inadequate.

The American Psychological Association has written about how social comparison can influence the way we evaluate ourselves. That becomes particularly relevant when you’re trying to make decisions about your future, because somebody else’s life can start becoming the standard for what yours is supposed to look like.

Use other people as information, not instructions.

Someone else being happy with a certain path doesn’t mean you would be.

Pay Attention to What You Keep Coming Back To

I don’t think your gut should make every major life decision for you. You should consider the facts, understand the risks, and think through the consequences.

But after you’ve done all of that, pay attention to where your mind keeps going.

Is there something you’ve wanted to try for years? Is there a type of work you constantly find yourself curious about? Is there a version of your life that keeps coming back even after you’ve talked yourself out of it?

That doesn’t automatically mean you should do it.

But it probably means it deserves your attention.

Sometimes we say we don’t know what we want when the more accurate answer is that we know what we want and we’re afraid of what pursuing it would require.

That’s a very different problem.

Figure Out Whether You’re Confused or Afraid

This has been a big realization for me with my current decision.

There are parts of the situation where I genuinely don’t know what will happen. But there are other parts where I know what I’m leaning toward and immediately start thinking about all the ways it could go wrong.

What if I fail? What if I regret it? What if I disrupt something that’s already going well?

Fear can look a lot like confusion.

That’s where How Do I Stop Being Afraid Of Failure? comes into play. Before telling yourself you have no idea what to do, ask whether you’re actually uncertain about what you want or simply uncertain about whether it will work.

Those aren't the same question.

You may know exactly what you want and still be terrified to do it.

Stop Looking for the Perfect Career

One of the biggest places this question comes up is work.

We put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves to figure out what we’re supposed to “do with our lives,” when what we often mean is: What career am I supposed to have?

I don’t know that there’s one perfect answer.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has documented how frequently people change jobs over the course of their working lives. Your first job, your current job, or even the career you’re building today doesn’t necessarily have to be the thing you do forever.

You’re allowed to try something and discover you don’t like it.

You’re allowed to become interested in something else.

You’re allowed to be good at something and still decide you don’t want to spend your life doing it.

Instead of asking which career you’re supposed to choose forever, ask which opportunity makes the most sense for the person you are today.

That’s a much more manageable question.

Think About What You Want Your Days to Look Like

This is something I think gets overlooked when we talk about finding purpose or choosing a career.

We focus on titles and outcomes instead of Tuesday afternoons.

What does your actual day look like?

Do you want to work with a lot of people or mostly by yourself? Do you want structure or flexibility? Do you want to work from home or be around people? Do you care about traveling? How much do you care about money compared with time?

The life attached to a decision matters just as much as the title attached to it.

A career might sound perfect when you describe it in one sentence and make you miserable when you actually live the daily routine.

When you’re figuring out what to do with your life, don’t only picture the highlight reel.

Picture a random Wednesday.

Try Things Before You Build Your Identity Around Them

One of the reasons figuring out your life feels so difficult is that we think we need to know before we try.

But sometimes trying is how you find out.

Take the meeting. Start the side project. Apply for the job. Talk to somebody in the industry. Take the class. Go on the date. Visit the city.

You don’t need to turn every curiosity into a permanent commitment.

This is something the Stanford Life Design Lab has emphasized through its design-thinking approach to life planning: instead of trying to perfectly think your way into the future, you can test possibilities through smaller experiences and experiments.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

You can spend six months wondering whether you’d like something, or you can find the smallest reasonable way to experience it and get actual information.

Ask Your Future Self

When I get too deep inside a decision, I’ve found it helpful to imagine myself a year from now looking backward.

What would that version of me want me to do?

Would he be happy that I protected what I already had? Would he wish I had tried something different? Would the thing I’m terrified of today even seem that important anymore?

“I'm glad I at least tried because now I know what would have happened.”

That doesn’t mean you should always take the leap.

There are plenty of times where staying on your current path might be exactly what your future self would want you to do.

The exercise is useful because it shifts the question away from “What am I most afraid of right now?” and toward “What life am I actually trying to build?”

Talk to People Who Know You

You don’t have to figure out your entire future alone.

Talk to your friends. Talk to your parents. Talk to siblings, mentors, coworkers, or anybody whose perspective you genuinely trust.

Sometimes another person can see patterns in you that are difficult to recognize yourself. They might remind you of things you’ve repeatedly said you wanted or point out that you seem happiest when you’re doing a certain kind of work.

That’s part of why How Do I Stop Doing Everything on My Own? applies here too. Getting help doesn’t mean asking somebody else to choose your life for you.

Just don’t turn asking for advice into another form of overthinking.

If you ask 20 people what you should do, you’re probably going to get 20 slightly different answers. Listen to the people you trust, then bring the decision back to yourself.

They can give you perspective.

They can’t give you certainty.

Accept That You Might Choose Wrong

This is the part none of us really want to hear.

You might choose something and eventually decide it was the wrong move.

You might take a job and hate it. You might move somewhere and want to leave. You might pursue something for a year and realize it isn’t what you thought it would be.

That doesn’t mean you failed at figuring out your life.

It means you learned something about yourself that you couldn’t know beforehand.

The goal can’t be to construct a life where you never make the wrong choice. The goal has to be becoming someone who can make a choice, learn from what happens, and change direction when necessary.

That’s a completely different way to think about getting your life “right.”

Make a Decision With the Information You Have Today

Eventually, you have to stop trying to know the future.

You can research. You can think. You can ask for advice. You can make a pros-and-cons list and imagine every possible version of what happens next.

But there’s a point where you’ve learned everything you realistically can.

Then you have to choose.

“There's really no right answer of what you do with your life or what you decide or what decision you make. There really only ever is what you do with that decision.”

I think that might be the most important thing I’ve realized through this entire process.

Maybe figuring out what to do with your life isn’t about discovering one correct path.

Maybe you choose a direction and then build something from it.

And Here’s The Thing

I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do with my life.

And I’m starting to think that’s normal.

I know what matters to me right now. I know what I’m trying to build. I know what excites me, what scares me, and which possibilities I keep coming back to.

Maybe that’s enough information to make the next decision.

You don’t need a 40-year plan. You don’t need to know exactly where you’ll live, what your career will look like, who you’ll be with, or whether the decision you’re making today will turn out exactly how you hope.

Figure out what matters to you now. Pay attention to what you keep coming back to. Try things before deciding they’re your forever path, and stop assuming that changing direction means you failed.

Then make the best decision you can with the information you have.

Your job isn’t to figure out your entire life today.

It’s to figure out what you want to do next.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I figure out what I want to do with my life?

Start by focusing on what you want your life to look like right now rather than trying to map out your entire future. Think about what matters to you, what kind of daily life you want, what you keep feeling drawn toward, and what you can try before making a long-term commitment.

Is it normal to not know what to do with your life in your 20s?

Yes. Your 20s can involve major changes in career, relationships, location, priorities, and what you want from your life. Not having everything figured out doesn't prevent you from making a thoughtful decision about what to do next.

How do I choose a career when I don’t know what I want?

Instead of searching for one perfect career, identify a few directions that interest you and find small ways to test them. Talk to people doing the work, apply for opportunities, take classes, or try projects that give you real information about whether you enjoy it.

What should I do if I feel completely lost in life?

Shrink the timeframe. Instead of asking what you're supposed to do with your entire life, decide what you want to explore, change, or accomplish over the next few months. A smaller next step can give you information that makes the larger direction clearer.

What if I choose the wrong path in life?

You can change direction. A choice that doesn't work out can still give you experience and information about what you want. You don't have to make one perfect decision that determines the rest of your life.