What should I do with my life?

By No Rush · Updated October 20, 2026

The short answer

You find out mostly by trying things. First, notice what matters to you on an ordinary day, like deciding your own hours or knowing what next year looks like. Then pick two options that fit, look at each one closely, and try one of them in a small way. What it's like in real life tells you more than another month of thinking.

Make the question smaller

“What should I do with my life?” is too big to answer in one go. Career researchers Itamar Gati and Itay Asher split a choice like this into three stages. First you narrow it down to a few options, using what matters most to you. Then you look closely at those few. Only then do you choose, and you keep a second option ready in case the first doesn't work out.

If you try to pick a whole life at once, you start at the last stage and skip the two before it. No Rush works in the same order as the model. In Steps, you first say what you don't want anymore and what matters to you. Then you look at directions and keep two. You choose what to try first only after you've tried things in real life.

Start with what matters to you

What you want from an ordinary week says more than a job title. Psychologist Shalom Schwartz describes ten basic values that come back in dozens of countries, such as deciding things for yourself, security, adventure and caring for the people close to you.

In large samples from more than 50 countries, the average order was much the same. Caring for the people close to you came out on top, and power came last. That's an average across groups. Your own order can look quite different, and your order is the one that helps you choose.

In No Rush, you see two things side by side, like Deciding when you work and Knowing what you'll be doing next year. You pick one, without explaining why. After enough rounds, the app shows what you chose most often.

Picture an ordinary Tuesday

People tend to overestimate how much one thing will shape their days, because they forget everything else that fills them. In studies by Timothy Wilson and colleagues, football fans predicted how happy they would be in the days after a game. Fans who first wrote down what else they'd be doing on those days expected the game to matter less.

So when you think about a job or a course, ask what you'd do there on a normal Tuesday at four in the afternoon. Think about who's around you, and what's in your hands or on your screen.

Asking someone who does it helps as well. In two small experiments by Daniel Gilbert and colleagues, people guessed better how much they'd enjoy something when they heard how another person liked it than when they read about the thing itself. Most of them had expected the opposite.

In No Rush, Directions has a few ways to look, like Look at an ordinary day and Ask someone who does it. A step outside can be a talk of about twenty minutes with someone who does the work you're curious about.

Good enough to try

Holding out for the perfect answer can leave you feeling worse. A study followed about 500 final-year students while they looked for their first job. Those who kept searching for the best possible job got higher starting salaries. They were also less satisfied with the job they took, and felt worse during the search.

So aim for something that fits well enough to test. In No Rush, you choose what you try first, for now. After a month, the app asks how it's going.

One thing for today

Write down one thing you want in an ordinary week, and one thing you don't want anymore. For example: Working with my hands. No more night shifts.

Then think of one person whose work comes close, and ask them for twenty minutes. Tie it to a moment, like After dinner tonight, I'll send that message.

No Rush app

An iPhone app for people who feel stuck. It sets out one small next step at a time and tells you why that one. It is not therapy.

Sign up free Take the test For iPhone. Coming soon to the App Store. The first seven days are free in the app. After that, you choose whether to subscribe. Sign up now and the app stays free for you, for life.

Sources

Gati & Asher (2001). Prescreening, in-depth exploration, and choice: from decision theory to career counseling practice. The Career Development Quarterly, 50(2), 140-157. doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-0045.2001.tb00979.x
Schwartz & Bardi (2001). Value hierarchies across cultures: taking a similarities perspective. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32(3), 268-290. doi.org/10.1177/0022022101032003002
Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert & Axsom (2000). Focalism: a source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(5), 821-836. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.5.821
Gilbert, Killingsworth, Eyre & Wilson (2009). The surprising power of neighborly advice. Science, 323(5921), 1617-1619. doi.org/10.1126/science.1166632
Iyengar, Wells & Schwartz (2006). Doing better but feeling worse: looking for the ‘best’ job undermines satisfaction. Psychological Science, 17(2), 143-150. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01677.x