I would suggest rather than trying to find what you love, try first to learn to love what you do. Almost everyone has room to do their job better. The directi

I would suggest rather than trying to find what you love, try first to learn to love what you do. Almost everyone has room to do their job better. The direction you should take your career will become more obvious after you do that. In my experience, these are the biggest obstacles to loving what you do: - Being pessimistic yourself. - Being surrounded by pessimistic people. - Working for pessimistic management. - Dealing with a poor physical work environment. - Forgetting to aggressively attempt hard problems. Sometimes, you'll hit a wall. It can't ALL come from within (though some Bhuddists may disagree). I unloaded trucks in a warehouse for a few months after college, and while it was rewarding to get stronger and satisfying to work very quickly, it was clear that there would be very little change approaching infinity, and I could not do this the rest of my life. In my last job, I was beginning to notice a similar wall, but more importantly it was fairly clear that management both did not enjoy working with technology, and did not enjoy managing employees within the framework of the company. They did not enjoy dealing with bureaucracy, yet it was forced on them often. This resulted in consistently poor morale. Even when we thought morale was good, it was bad by the standards of the company I work fow now. It happened so gradually that all of a sudden one day I noticed that the thought of going to work made me sick to me stomach. But I knew it wasn't the work, because just a month or so earlier I'd happily immersed myself in a project and learned a lot, and I'd been making consistent progress. If you need inspiration, Paul Graham's essays are good, although the one I would recommend first is Fred Brooks "The Tar Pit" (part of The Mythical Man-Month collection). In particular, in the section called "Joys of the Craft" he lists five reasons: The joy of making things, the pleasure of making them for other people, the fascination of the puzzle-like nature of the problems, the joy of always learning, and the delight of working in such a "tractible medium" that nevertheless produces real measurable results.