For the lucky few, choosing the career that is perfect for them is a no-brainer. Some are just born knowing the direction they want to head in. For others though, it takes a bit more research to figure out what fits. As I’ve discussed before, there are various things that you can do to identify what you might be good at and what you enjoy, but something that I haven’t mentioned before is looking at how your brain works.
We all have two distinct sides to our brains. Put simply, the left side is the verbal, analytical and logical side and the right side is the visual, creative side and in most people one side is likely to be more dominant than the other. In some cases, the dominance of one hand or the other can indicate which side of the brain dominates (with left-handers being right-brained and vice versa), but this is not by any means a definitive rule. Having said this, there is evidence to suggest a predominance of left-handed people in artistic or creative occupations such as art and writing.
Knowing which side of your brain is dominant can be very useful in two quite separate ways. Firstly, it can help you to find a career which suits the way of thinking to which you are more naturally inclined, which in itself suggests less effort for greater results. Also, however, if you know how you are naturally inclined to think, when faced with a particularly tricky work or non work-related problem, you can deliberately seek novel solutions by using the opposite side of your brain.
If you want to find out whether you are left or right-brained, you can find any number of short quizzes on the Internet which will assess your natural tendency. Most only take a minute of two to complete and, you never know, it might just help you to get one step closer to identifying your perfect career.
January 5th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Great article. This was very interesting and after reading this article I’d have to say I am definitely a right brained person. When I first started college I was like most freshman, I had no idea what I wanted to do or which career path I wanted to follow. I ended up taking a business course, then taking some online personal tests. I eventually fell into advertising and haven’t looked back.
I also liked your point about how to approach problems. It is very useful to know which side of your brain you use. Just wish I would have thought of that a lot sooner.
January 6th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Many thanks for taking the time to comment Ralph and I’m delighted to hear that you finally found your niche. It’s amazing just how many people seem to drift into careers which really don’t suit them or make them happy, when in fact a little bit of self-analysis can go a long, long way.