How the ‘Five Fingers Test’ Will Help You Discover What to Do With Life

Our best work is discovered by knowing what we don’t want

“I’m lost.”

“What do I do with my life?”

“I have no idea what I should be doing.”

“I’m passionate about a lot of things. I can’t make a decision.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“I wish I knew what my calling should be.”

I get renditions of these statements from readers a lot. In a previous life I had a coaching business where I helped people uncover exactly that — their work that matters most.

While these statements might sound like they’d come from the mouths of twenty-somethings, it’s just as common to hear these from people over 40.

For most people — most people, there’s a gap between what they do for money and the work that matters most to them. While we must earn money, and our vocation is the best place to earn said money, choosing a job only for the cash is a bad mistake for your well-being.

Our job is what we do, but our work is who we are.

Today, I want to help you uncover your work.

You can earn money doing almost anything, so this isn’t about the money anymore. This is about your purpose, the people you wish to serve with your work, and the work you’d like to do the rest of your life — potentially.

While the discovery process can be as complicated as you wish, I’ve got a super-simple way to uncover your work, so you’ll feel more purpose in every day and your output will help more people.

As creators we owe it to the people we serve.

If we’re meant to do a certain kind of work, isn’t the world a better place with us doing it, instead of us sitting in a cubicle picking our nose and waiting for the weekend?

The five-finger test

Imagine a hand. Might as we be your hand (if you’ve got five fingers). On each finger, you’ve the top five things you’d love to do, or would rather do — whether or not you got paid for them.

Be realistic.

But you don’t have to be practical. If you really love collecting things, learning about obscure topics, or painting weird portraits on bottle caps — so be it.

Instead of making a list of five things you love, and choosing the top thing, we’ll work backwards. This is a very successful method marketers use while surveying an audience.

We uncover what people want, not by asking them what they want, but what they don’t want.

Start with the top five things you’d love to do as your work that matters most.

In this example, we’ll use me:

1. Custom woodworker
2. Writer/teacher
3. Graphic designer
4. Used book store owner
5. Tattoo artist

Next, we ask the first round of questioning — which of these five do you want the least?

I choose book store owner.

Now I’m down to four.

We ask the question again — which of these four do you want the least?

I choose tattoo artist.

Now I’m down to three.

We ask the question again.

I choose graphic designer (you probably can see where this is heading, I hope)

Now I’m down to two — the final face-off.

We ask the question one last time — which of these two do you want the least?

I choose woodworker.

This is how I came to writer/teacher. Now my process took me a little longer, because I was more-stubborn and thought I could do a lot of things all at once, but that’s now how we find mastery.

Once we uncover our work that matters most we do our best to ignore the rest.

This process is similar to (supposedly, but not really) Warren Buffet’s 25–5 method. I wrote a story about that here:

OK, so I found ‘my thing.’ Now what?

Once you uncover your work that matters most, you begin your story. For most, there will be a disconnect between your job and your work. As in, you’ve got to keep the job so you can eat.

Our work won’t always pay us from the start.

Remember, money is a yardstick not a goal. We’ll earn the money for our work eventually, but first we’ve got to become the best at what we do.

Go all in.

I used to be a dabbler. I’ll always have a few side hobbies (the other four fingers), but writing is my work that matters most. I stopped chasing the others.

I tossed the spare tire and back-up parachute.

It’s very freeing to have a single purpose. You eliminate thousands of daily decisions, like “what should I do right now?” You know what to do. Get better at your work.

Give each day 20 minutes of dedication to your work. Be better today than you were yesterday. Then dedicate an hour. Maybe two. Or eight.

The more time and energy you invest in mastery, the faster you’ll speed-up the timeline to doing it full-time.

Find some time to do a little research or practice your craft while your at work. The time is there. You must decide how bad you want it. Every waking moment is a choice.

The way you spend those moments effects the rate you reach your goal.

We need you to do your best work. If you’re doing a job you hate, we all suffer. You don’t put out your best quality. You don’t live to your highest self. We miss-out on all the greatness you could be placing into the world.

We’re waiting for you.

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August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.