Wednesday, January 14, 2009 by Dave Blum

When I showed my list of touchstones to Scott later that week, he said, “Say, didn’t you once attend a treasure hunt in San Francisco?  Why don’t you do that?  It seems to fit the bill.”

“Hmm,” I mulled.  “Running treasure hunts and scavenger hunts would certainly allow me to travel around and explore cool places.  I’d really enjoy creating the game element. It sure would be fun to write those puzzles.  AND, if we could incorporate some team building ideas into the mix, that really would be interesting!”

The rest, as they say, is clue history. Thirteen years later, I’m still loving my “day job”: thinking up treasure hunt ideas, creating scavenger hunt lists, and running corporate team building activities. And best of all, pretty much every day I get to do one of my “touchstone” activities: traveling, leading programs or creating word puzzles!

Are YOU struggling to find the right career? It may be that what you’re looking for is simply not out there yet; you might just have to bring that career into the world yourself!  To get started, try the following steps:

1) Make a list of all your favorite jobs and activities, the ones that make you giddy with excitement just thinking about them.

2) See if you can determine what features or values characterize those jobs or activities.

3) Narrow your list to down to three or four “touchstones” — the core of what turns you on.

Making the list can take as little as a weekend, but the results can be profound!  Try it out and see what happens; you might just stumble into your next career.  At the least, you’ll learn a little bit more about yourself and what drives you.