I’ve summarized a list of doable jobs for you so that you will know how to be down-to-earth after arriving in Ukraine.
- If you decide to live in Ukraine for a while, please clarify your goals in detail.
Your goals shouldn’t be something like “I’ll make a lot of money this year” because that’s not concrete enough. Instead, your goals should be “I’ll make $100,000 by 31st December, 2021” because this is a very specific goal. Only specific goals can be measured!
Go through daily rituals that help you achieve your goals. There is a book called Daily Rituals. Although that book is not very well-written, I highly recommend the concept of daily rituals. A daily ritual is something that you do consistently so that you are constantly moving towards your goal. For instance, maybe your goal is to change your career by the end of the year. So, your daily ritual can be sending out your resumes to three companies every day. You can contact companies that don’t advertise their positions online and you’ll be surprised to see many more opportunities that most people aren’t aware of. Usually, when you send your resume to a company that has no online job advertisement, you are probably reaching out before the fierce competition even starts.
Find an accountability buddy. If you’re not sure whether you will stick to your daily rituals, you can find an accountability buddy who can hold you accountable. Or maybe you can hold each other accountable if your accountability buddy also has goals and daily rituals. This is a great way to get some external support.
- Inspiration is actually overrated – my conclusion after living in Ukraine for a while.
Certainly, there are many masterpieces that were created because of inspiration. However, the truth is: if you wait for inspiration, maybe you’ll need to wait for a very long time. But time wouldn’t wait for you.
Let’s say you are a writer working for a blog, and you are expected to write articles regularly. If you wait until inspiration comes and then you’ll write the article, chances are you’ll only be able to write an article every six months or so. That’s definitely not productive in this day and age.
Therefore, a better approach should be: You just give yourself a deadline regularly. For instance, you simply write an article each week. This will definitely help you, because oftentimes, people actually write in order to find out what they are thinking about, instead of perfectly planning everything before writing the content. That’s a great way to avoid stagnation.
When the spark will arrive is out of your control, but you can make progress by yourself as long as you have the discipline. After living in Ukraine for quite a while, that is my conclusion.
So, don’t wait for inspiration. Just get started now and see what happens.
You often hear this: “Find your passion. That’s your calling! That’s what hugely successful people do!”
Yet, after teaching career strategies for ten years, I have solid evidence to tell you that passion is overrated.
Many people have more than one passion. If you are one of them, maybe you are passionate about movies, music, sports, reading, and so forth. We are all multidimensional individuals.
In Cal Newport’s book So Good, They Can’t Ignore You, he talks about why simply doing something is better than spending a lot of time looking for your passion. And I agree with Cal.
You may wonder, “But Steve Jobs emphasized the importance of passion in his speech, didn’t he? He found his passion. That’s why he was so successful.”
However, the suggestion is: Don’t listen to what Steve Jobs said; look at what he actually did.
“Your co-workers indirectly affect your pay checks. Make sure you treat your co-workers well because: 1) you would benefit from the cooperative dynamics; 2) you don’t really know who is catching up with who after work.”
