How to find a job you love: 21 questions to ask

The ... mistake people make in a workquake is to look too quickly for a new job. The reason: You'll succeed! You'll find a new job — but soon enough you'll be back where you started, asking the wrong questions and getting the wrong answers.

...the smartest people realize that the biggest impediment to finding meaningful work is not what you don't know about work. It's what you don't know about yourself. You can bounce from job to job; but if you don't tap into the earliest tensions, frustrations, and longings of your life—the personal work scripture unique only to you — you'll never be happy. 

The biggest mistake people make in a workquake is to look too quickly for a new job. The reason: You'll succeed! You'll find a new job — but soon enough you'll be back where you started, asking the wrong questions and getting the wrong answers.

Instead, the smartest people realize that the biggest impediment to finding meaningful work is not what you don't know about work. It's what you don't know about yourself. You can bounce from job to job ; but if you don't tap into the earliest tensions, frustrations, and longings of your life — the personal work scripture unique only to you — you'll never be happy. 

As Mark Savickas, a professor at Kent State University and the dean of modern career studies, told me, "The answer is not in society. It's not in test scores. It's already inside you."

He calls this untapped internal wisdom your "unknown known" and says any successful job search requires giving the searcher "the tools and the confidence to unlock the story they've already been writing for years — even decades."

1. What are the prominent values or virtues of work you learned from your parents?
2. What are the prominent downsides or shadows of work you learned from your parents?
3. Who is the most influential person in your work choices right now? 
4. I want to be the kind of person who ___________.

1. Other than family, who were your role models as a child? What qualities did you most admire in them?
2. What's the best thing about your work today? The worst thing?
3. Do you have a hope job like writing a screenplay or selling pickles at the farmer's market?
4. Do you have a ghost job like confronting self-doubts, staying sober, or battling discrimination?
5. I want to do work that ___________.

1. What environments were you most drawn to as a child?
2. What environments are you drawn to today? 
3. I want to work in a place where _________.

1. Are you starting a new work story or continuing an ongoing one? 
2. Which do you fear most: staying in your current position or leaving?
3. I'm at a moment in my life when _________.

1. Did you have a toothache as a child — a problem you wanted to solve or a dilemma you wanted to resolve?
2. What kinds of stories do you like? 
3. My purpose right now is ___________.

1. What's the best advice you ever received about work?
2. If you could do one thing to be happier at work today, what would it be?
3. The best advice I have for myself right now is ____________.