Born for This by Chris Guillebeau [Book Summary – Review]


We all want to be lucky when choosing our jobs. Everybody desires to gain their money while doing something that they love.  

But you have either to be an extraordinarily skilled artist or a scientist who conducts revolutionary experiments, right? Well, not necessarily. Anyone can live a life with an excellent occupation, including you –the greatest job for you is the one that you are meant to do in this life. What you should perform is finding out what it is. However, old-fashioned career advice might hinder you from finding your dream job.

This summary is exactly what you need to find your destined job. The chapters will aid you in the professional path and show you the point to begin.


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Chapter 1 – The path to your destined job is not a straightforward one, what works for others may not work for you.


Some people are lucky enough to follow a pre-established path for their careers. But the majority of people will have to try harder to find their path to the career that they were destined to do.

If you have no idea what you would like to do in this life, it is perfectly fine. You just need to start experimenting. Experimenting will help you tremendously as careers may develop in unimaginable ways. Any occupation or task that attracts you might take you closer to your purpose.

Suppose that you decide to do what you wish to do and attended a carnival. But within months, you understand that washing up animals is not appealing to you at all. You change to a ticket seller. But then you realize that selling tickets, despite being pleasurable and clean, is too boring for you.

After the tedious box office job, you land yourself an occupation as a white-collar, away from the turbulent life of the circus. Soon enough, you start getting annoyed by your office job. One day you stumble upon a customer that operates a fashion company. Instantly you found what you were looking for: your destiny was to make carnival-related T-shirts!



An important point here is that you don’t have to conform to a defined professional route. Some may believe that careers should be chosen based on a strict set of rules, but these are just assumptions from their distinct experiences.

A well-known principle is, when you come across a new opportunity, you should give it a chance. You might not find another chance like that, after all. But being stuck to a strict set of notions will hinder your sense of creativity and distract you from your journey to finding the ideal occupation for you. What worked for others might not work for you, as career paths are not one-size-fits-all.

That is why you should pull the strings and recreate the traditional career paths to be compatible with whatever you require. You can cross out the principle of seizing the chance in your initial job opportunity and create a new rule for yourself that advises you to pass the job if you do not feel like it is the one for you. After all, you can always find other options.


Chapter 2 – The recipe for your dream occupation has to be a harmonious blend of delight, cash, and flow, including desirable working conditions.


Suppose that you were granted one wish to choose anything you want, and you decided to use it for the occupation lotto. However, you still need to specify what you want. How does your perfect occupation look like?

First off, your ideal job should be a perfect combination of delight, cash, and flow. It makes sense since the perfect occupation means that you get paid for doing something you love. Let’s say you love being with children along with explaining things to others. Your ideal job would be an educator in this case.

Of course, there is one more thing to keep in mind when choosing your job: money. You might not desire to become super-rich, but you need to earn enough to live a stress-free life.

Lastly, you need to experience flow with the perfect occupation for you. What is meant by flow is the cognitive condition that you feel thoroughly interested in one activity. You start not considering the time that has passed begin doing your best. These three elements are essential for everybody, however, the distinction is how much you prioritize one against another. 

Delight, cash, and flow constitute the fundamentals when choosing the perfect professional path, however, you need to think about working conditions as well. Despite being in love with your work, you might end up getting stressed and unhappy if the working conditions are lower than what you would have wanted.



To prevent such a situation, you must first decide on the state that, for you, would be perfect. Ask questions like, would I like to be in charge of my working program? Or would I be happy with an occupation that starts at 9 and ends at 5?

The next step is deciding on which social environment feels better for you—do you prefer working solo or with a group? Would you like to find an office job or work from home?

And finally, comes informing and liability. Would you like to be your boss or would you prefer to be directed? Do you feel good when you are monitored?

After finding your answers to these questions, you will more or less have an idea of the type of occupation you want to do. Now, the next step is applying a tactic to aid you on your journey to your ideal job.


Chapter 3 – Get over your fear, take risks, and construct backup master plans.


Fear might be what is preventing you from chasing what you have dreamt of.

Considering that is true for you? Then you can be sure that getting over your fears will help you to feel more confident and eventually help you take more chances. To overcome your fears, list everything that might cause a problem and think about how likely they are to happen. You will soon find out that most of what you have feared are harmless or improbable. So you should not be anxious, you can continue your plans without feeling stressed about improbable chances.

The following step is to be sure that FOMO will not affect your career plans. It is a misleading feeling which will disturb you in reaching your actual desires.

Suppose that you will be interviewed at the main office of a company. After arriving at the company, you notice people looking stressed and unhappy. Your interview, however, went amazing and you are offered a job.



When feeling like you have no other options, you may end up feeling obligated to accept the offer. It might start to feel like the company is your only choice, despite its gloomy environment. If you give in to FOMO and accept the offer, you may end up feeling miserable with your job.

The last step is being ready to take risks, planning backup master plans, and creating a security web.

The way to do this?

While deciding on something important, create a list of all potential outcomes, and make backup master plans for each one, in case they become real. Imagine that you are a marketing specialist and wish to send bold e-mails to promote your company. You may create a potential outcome list, which is similar to the following:

When the initial people to receive your advertisements accept your offer, then just celebrate your success! If they are hesitant, to the following recipients, write an email with a voucher for print attached. Your backup master plans should be specific enough to aid you when implementing them.

Besides, the three measures which save your professional life are going to aid you to overcome potential negative outcomes, like losing the occupation.

In the beginning, make sure that you have people that support you, meaning that you have individuals who would aid during the construction of your professional life, or connect with clients for you. Second, have another place where you earn money to feel secure that failing in one will not make your life miserable. And lastly, never overspend so that you retain a monetary wall.


Chapter 4 – Find your abilities and weak points, think about the ways they would fulfill demand, and show what you have in your mind to people.


While thinking about which jobs suit them, people become inclined to only focus on whatever they have had a diploma on. For example, a person with a data science diploma may only search jobs that are focused on statistical computations. To expand your range of options, list all of your abilities and weak points.

For starters, you need to create two different listings. The first should be focused on anything you are skilled at – which is all of them, not only the ones regarding the college degree. The other one needs to detail things that you dislike. This part is essential to find your biggest weaknesses which you will avoid. 

Upon finishing these lists, you will be able to differentiate what kinds of jobs were made for you. Now what you have to do is to find out the ways you could earn your living by putting your skills out there in a way that meets the demand, and to search for your prospective clients.

This step may be easier than you might consider. If your acquaintances were always trying to explain to you what you should do to help them, you can be sure that you walk on the correct path. You might have some friends coming to you for relationship advice or to repair their laptops, you can use these things as a guide to determine if you would provide value in those areas and if people would want to purchase your services.



After identifying this, you can now start the project of “Hundred People” that goes roughly like this:

Imagine that you are praised for giving weight loss tips. The next step for you is to find 100 acquaintances and contact them to provide free 15-minute consultations. You can improve your skills in addition to gathering potential clients for your future job.

Keep in mind to polish your abilities on speech and composition as you go. No matter what talents you have, these two will always come in handy when offering your services or products to your potential clients in a way that will attract them.


Chapter 5 – Create your business while maintaining your regular occupation.


Beginning a fresh company may be thrilling, especially when you feel as if it encompasses your interests and skills completely. What’s more, you can start the company you have dreamt of while keeping the regular occupation. You can start building a small-scale company when you are free if you put a schedule for it.

Indeed, most of the people that earn money from the areas of interest started by creating their business plans whenever they are free. One hour each day for a couple of weeks will be more than sufficient to start a small-scale company. Of course, you should still be cautious about spending your time on useless things.

Trying to find a great business idea is futile and you do not need it. Try to find answers to those questions instead: What will you provide? Will it be a product or a service? What is your target customer profile? What problems will you solve with your business? What is your budget? What are your marketing strategies?



You can start by answering these questions in the first weeks. After the planning sessions, you may begin putting your plans into practice, step by step. For example, you can start with simple advertisements for the product you have created on social networking platforms.

Following this strategy will be safer for you. You can use the money you obtain from your regular occupation while building your business and you will always have an option in case your business fails. Therefore, you will be free to experiment and learn from your mistakes while being able to pay your bills.

When your company becomes successful, you would get another place for money which would help you to feel more stable. But if you wish to leave your office job and start working on the company you are creating at all times, then do it. Just be sure that your business helps you get enough income to pay your bills. 


Chapter 6 – Start your company and be your employer.


Many good job-finding plans appear to be good ideas at first but turn out as useless spending of precious time later. Indeed, the majority of those are futile. Thus, if pre-established ways of finding a job don’t provide you the success you deserve, construct your company.

Think about all the time and effort you may put into renewing your Linkedin site or participating in career events just to turn back with nothing. These tactics just are not too useful since a lot of intelligent, competent people are doing the same things as well. In other words, you have a lot of rivals that might even be more suitable for any occupation you were looking for.

Therefore, a greater thing to do is to originate the occupation that would be suitable for your abilities and discover a company that would be happy to originate it. People may even invent their tags. For example, Tony Bacigalupo assigned himself as the Provost of the company, NY Cities, the area that he worked with others. Only recall, this tactic is utilized when looking for occupation at a corporation.

However, you might be willing to earn money from your inventive position. If this is the case, be your director and marketer.

If you stay inside your cellar at all times, people would not identify the person you are, although your output is excellent. This does not mean that you should not use your motivation to construct a convincing work structure; however, the artistic life is different now and currently, you should do a lot more than this.



Authors, composers, and artists, in the past, were trusting publishing houses, music companies, or sponsors to spread their pieces and give them money according to what they have earned. However, currently, anybody can present their piece simply.

Begin by connecting to your supporters and constructing a follower network. Make it via the most suitable platform for connecting with the audience who would like your pieces; this involves participating in talks, being present in social media, or anything you would select as the tool to place yourself in that place.

The last point to mention is that it is vital to understand the way to obtain money from that place. You may earn money in different ways such as with the people who purchase your art, through investors or website advertisements.


Chapter 7 – It is not false to go after more than one ambition.


Do you have a hard time with the question mark in your mind about the thing to do in this life? If yes, the reason might be your thought that a person should pursue only one aim from the first time to forever.

However, you are not required to select a unique idea and continue with that forever; rather, you can transform your professional life according to your transforming wants and requirements.

Anyways, you will never agree with someone that you will stay on the same thing for your entire life. This is great since our lives are changing – your wants and requirements will transform as you transform. If you grow a kid, you may like routine work and secure salary that you may obtain from an office job which you would work from 9 to 5. However, in other seasons of your life, you may desire the wandering life of a voyage author.

A delighted life comes with the option to select, however, you may desire to concentrate on multiple abilities in your professional life as well. It is not significantly a disadvantage to your professional life if you would follow more than one ability.



The best way to move from one occupation to the other?

A great means is to utilize task changing, in other words, it is intentionally changing your whole concentration from and to distinct tasks. For example, somebody will concentrate on his floriculture task in the summer and spring seasons and concentrate on authoring scenarios in the winter. A different individual may train boxers in the afternoon and advise couples on their relationships afterward in the day.

These blends are not hard to reach; those individuals only added transformation into their ordinary programs, enabling them to change rapidly and productively from one occupation to the other one.

Only recall that, there are many paths to have a satisfying life, therefore, discover your ambitions and dedicate yourself to each of those ambitions.


Born for This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do by Chris Guillebeau Book Review


Discovering the occupation you meant to spend your life with is always a hard task. Therefore, maintain a fresh mind, utilize every ability you have, and pursue each of your ambitions regardless of the point they may put you.


Make a difference.

The following moment you develop a goal on New Year’s Eve, commit to yourself that, just only for once annually, you will stay away from ordinary schedule and make another thing. This may be having a trainer for yoga you were desiring or opening a stand for selling your exclusive dessert at a park. No matter if it is a start for a new company or not, you will probably get to know new individuals, learn new things and develop your self-trust – everything along with the enjoyment you have doing these.


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Savaş Ateş

I'm a software engineer. I like reading books and writing summaries. I like to play soccer too :) Good Reads Profile: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/106467014-sava-ate

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