How to Figure Out What You Actually Want (When You Have No Idea)

Someone asks you what you want to do with your life and your brain goes completely blank. Not because you're dumb. Not because you haven't thought about it. Because you've thought about it so much that everything is tangled together and nothing sticks.

You've tried journaling. You've taken online quizzes. You've read articles titled "Find Your Purpose in 5 Easy Steps" and felt worse afterward because none of those steps worked. You might have even talked to a friend or a therapist and walked away with plenty of emotional clarity but zero direction.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: most people who feel stuck in their career don't need more inspiration. They need a better framework. They need a structured way to sort through all the noise in their head and figure out what's actually calling to them.

That's what this post is about. I'm going to walk you through an exercise that Stanford's Life Design Lab has used with thousands of students and mid-career professionals, and I'm going to show you how I use a version of it in my own coaching practice. By the end, you'll have something most stuck people don't: three possible futures to evaluate instead of zero.

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Why "What Do You Want?" Is the Wrong Question

The question "What do you want to do with your life?" is almost impossible to answer well. And here's why: it assumes there's one right answer.

Dave Evans and Bill Burnett, the Stanford professors behind the Life Design methodology, argue that there is no single right life for anyone. You contain multitudes. Seven or eight different lives' worth of interests, talents, and possibilities. The problem isn't that you don't know what you want. The problem is that you want too many things and you've been told you can only pick one.

That pressure to find "the thing" is paralyzing. So instead of choosing, you freeze. You scroll job boards at midnight. You read career change articles. You think, maybe if I just get enough information, the answer will reveal itself.

It won't. Not that way.

Information is not the same as clarity. You can have all the data in the world and still feel lost if you don't have a framework for making sense of it. That's what most people are missing: not answers, but a process for finding them.

Start Where Most People Skip: Your Childhood Signals

Before we get to the framework, I want to give you a piece of context that changes everything. It's something I call Childhood Signals, and it's the first thing I explore with every client in my coaching practice.

Think back to who you were between the ages of 8 and 14. Before anyone told you what was practical. Before you learned to perform for grades or job titles. What were you drawn to? What did you do when nobody was watching and nothing was being graded?

Maybe you organized your baseball cards by team and batting average. Maybe you wrote stories in a notebook. Maybe you took apart the VCR just to see how it worked. Maybe you were the kid who mediated fights on the playground.

Those aren't random memories. They're signals. They're the earliest evidence of your natural wiring, your strengths, your interests, your values, before the world got its hands on them.

I had a client in Phoenix who spent 18 years in financial services. Good income, respected in his field, and completely flat. When we dug into his Childhood Signals, he realized that as a kid, he'd spent every weekend building elaborate model cities out of scraps in his garage. Not playing video games. Not watching TV. Building things. He'd buried that part of himself under decades of spreadsheets.

We didn't tell him to become an architect. But we used that signal, combined with his STRONG Interest Inventory and CliftonStrengths results, to identify a pattern: he lit up when he was designing systems, creating structure from chaos, building something tangible. That insight completely shifted the direction of his career transition.

Your childhood signals won't give you a job title. But they'll give you a compass heading. And when you've been wandering without one, that's everything.

The Odyssey Plan: Three Versions of Your Next Five Years

Now here's the exercise that changes things. It comes from Stanford's Life Design Lab, and I've adapted a version of it for my coaching work because it's the single best tool I've found for helping people move from stuck to possibility.

It's called the Odyssey Plan. And it works because it does something radical: it asks you to stop looking for the one right answer and instead design three possible lives.

Plan A: Your Current Path, Done Well

Imagine your current trajectory going as well as it possibly can. You get the promotion, the raise, the project you want. Your boss becomes your biggest advocate. Everything that could go right in your current career goes right.

Write it out. What does your life look like five years from now on this path? Where do you live? What's your title? How do you spend your weekdays? Your weekends? What does a Tuesday afternoon feel like?

Be specific. Don't just write "I'm a VP." Write what being a VP actually looks like day to day. Because sometimes when you imagine your current path done well, you realize it still doesn't excite you. That's information.

Plan B: The Path If Plan A Disappeared Tomorrow

Now imagine your entire industry vanishes overnight. Your current career path simply doesn't exist anymore. What would you do instead?

This isn't a fantasy exercise. It's a constraint exercise. When you remove your default option, your brain has to work differently. It reaches for things it's been suppressing, interests and skills it classified as "impractical" years ago.

One of my clients, a marketing director in Scottsdale, did this exercise and wrote down "open a bookshop with a therapy dog and host community writing workshops." She laughed when she said it. But when we unpacked it, the core elements were real: she wanted community, creativity, and something she could build with her own hands. We didn't help her open a bookshop. But those three elements became the filter for every career option we explored.

Plan C: The Wild Card

This is the one where money doesn't matter and nobody will laugh at you. If you could do anything, knowing you'd be great at it and nobody would judge you, what would it be?

Evans and Burnett call this the "wild card" plan, and it's where the real magic happens. Not because you're going to pursue it literally, but because it reveals what you're yearning for underneath all the practical constraints.

The guy who writes "touring musician" might not quit his finance job to join a band. But he might realize he's starving for creative expression, and that realization might lead him to volunteer for the company's brand team, start a podcast, or finally sign up for those guitar lessons he's been thinking about for three years.

The woman who writes "live in Portugal and paint" might not move overseas. But she might realize she needs beauty, autonomy, and space in her daily life, and she's currently getting none of those things.

Your wild card doesn't have to become your career. It just has to teach you something about yourself.

How to Actually Do This Exercise (Step by Step)

Don't just read this and think about it. Actually do it. Here's how:

Step 1: Set aside 90 minutes. Not 15. Not "I'll think about it on my commute." Block real time. Get a notebook or open a blank document. No phone. No music. Just you and the question.

Step 2: Write Plan A first. Five years from now, current path done well. Be detailed. Include where you live, what your days look like, how you spend your energy, what your relationships look like. Notice how your body feels as you write it. Excitement? Dread? Nothing? All of that is data.

Step 3: Write Plan B. Current career disappears. What do you do instead? Let yourself be surprised. Don't censor. If it sounds weird or impractical, write it down anyway.

Step 4: Write Plan C. Money isn't an issue. Nobody laughs. What would you build? What would your days look like?

Step 5: Rate each plan. On a scale of 1 to 10, rate each plan on four dimensions: resources (do you have what you need to pursue it?), likability (does it excite you?), confidence (do you believe you could pull it off?), and coherence (does it align with who you're becoming?).

Step 6: Share your wild card with someone you trust. This is the hardest step and the most important one. Saying it out loud makes it real. And sometimes the person you tell says something you didn't expect: "That actually makes a lot of sense for you."

Where This Exercise Fits in Real Career Coaching

The Odyssey Plan is powerful on its own, but it's even more powerful when it's paired with professional assessments and guided reflection. In my coaching practice, this exercise maps to the Discover phase of my 4-Pillar Method.

Here's what that looks like in practice: before we do the Odyssey Plan, I run clients through the STRONG Interest Inventory, which maps their interest patterns against 330+ career paths. We also do CliftonStrengths and VIA Character Strengths to understand what energizes them and what they're naturally built for.

Then, when they sit down to write their three plans, they're not working from a blank page. They have data. They know their top interest themes. They know their signature strengths. They've explored their Childhood Signals. So when they write "open a bookshop with a therapy dog," we can look underneath that and say: you're drawn to community, creativity, and building things. Let's find the version of that which actually pays your mortgage and uses your 15 years of marketing experience.

That's the difference between doing this exercise alone and doing it with a coach. Alone, it's illuminating. With a coach, it's actionable.

What to Do After You've Written Your Three Plans

Most people do an exercise like this and then let it sit in a notebook. Don't do that. Here's what to do instead.

Talk to people. The Stanford Life Design approach calls these "prototype conversations," and they're one of the most powerful tools in career change. Find someone who's living a version of the life you described in your plans. Take them to coffee. Ask them what their average Tuesday looks like. Don't ask for a job. Ask for their story.

Try something small. If Plan C is "teach yoga," you don't need to quit your job and get certified tomorrow. Take a class. Volunteer to lead a session at your office. See how it feels in your body, not just in your head.

Pay attention to energy, not logic. Your brain will tell you what makes sense. Your body will tell you what's alive. Notice which conversations leave you energized and which leave you drained. Notice which plans you keep thinking about at 10 PM and which ones you forget by lunch.

Don't make a decision yet. Seriously. The whole point of this exercise is to open up possibilities, not close them down. Sit with your three plans for a week. Let them breathe. See which one keeps pulling at you.

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Ready to Transform Your Life? Start With a Free Consultation

The most successful people don't wait for perfect conditions—they take action when they recognize an opportunity. If you've read this far, you're already considering whether coaching might be the catalyst you need to reach your next level of success and fulfillment.

Take the first step today by scheduling a free 60-minute consultation call with coach Jeff. 

This is a no obligation call to see if coaching is right for you! Your future self will thank you for taking this crucial step today.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you figure out what you want to do when you feel completely lost?

Start by reframing the question. Instead of trying to find one perfect answer, design three possible futures using the Odyssey Plan exercise: your current path done well, an alternative if your current career disappeared, and a wild card with no constraints. Then pair that with professional assessments like the STRONG Interest Inventory and CliftonStrengths to identify your natural patterns. The combination of structured imagination and real data is what creates clarity.

What is the Odyssey Plan exercise?

The Odyssey Plan is a framework from Stanford's Life Design Lab developed by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett. It asks you to write out three different versions of your life over the next five years: your current path going well, an alternative path if your current career disappeared, and a wild card where money and judgment don't matter. You rate each plan on four dimensions (resources, likability, confidence, and coherence) and use the results to identify patterns and possibilities you hadn't considered.

How can a career coach help me find career clarity?

A career coach provides structure, professional assessments, and accountability that you can't get from self-help books or journaling alone. In my practice, I use tools like the STRONG Interest Inventory (which maps your interests against 240+ career paths), CliftonStrengths, and VIA Character Strengths to give you real data about your natural wiring. We combine that with exercises like the Odyssey Plan and Childhood Signals exploration to build a clear picture of what fits you. Research from the ICF shows that 62% of coaching clients report improved career opportunities and 85% report increased self-confidence.

Is it too late to change careers at 40 or 50?

No. Some of the most meaningful career transitions happen in your 40s and 50s because you have enough experience to know what doesn't work and enough self-awareness to finally pursue what does. The Stanford Life Design professors regularly work with people in their 50s and 60s who are reinventing their careers. The key is not starting over from scratch but leveraging your existing skills and experience in a new direction.

What are childhood signals and how do they help with career decisions?

Childhood signals are the interests, activities, and behaviors you were naturally drawn to between ages 8 and 14, before external pressure shaped your choices. The kid who organized everything might be a natural systems builder. The one who mediated playground fights might be a natural coach or negotiator. These signals reveal your authentic wiring and can help you understand why certain careers feel fulfilling and others feel hollow, even when they're objectively successful.

I’m Jeff Rothenberg, a personal growth and career coach helping people turn uncertainty into confidence and clarity. Whether you’re rebuilding after change, exploring your next career move, or simply ready to grow, I’ll help you create momentum that lasts.