Why does a 20-23-year-old, just about to graduate, have so much to think about what they should do next? Why are they so stressed about finding a job that pays them well, and why is that the main thing they think about when they try to identify their careers?

The question of “What do I do now?” creates great career anxiety in today’s graduates for two reasons – one, the lack of exposure to different ways of thinking about career and two, the lack of reflective conversations about exploring different career opportunities and ideas.

Minding Your Business is a collective that aims to provide both the space and a framework to facilitate career conversations that are informal, reflective and immersive. Conceptualised in collaboration with Sanath Kumar for my Post Graduate Diploma final project, our toolkit was developed through design prototyping and can be used as a base to explore different dimensions of thinking about career options. We hope to create a network that connects people in a state of career confusion with others in a similar state of mind, as well as people who have crossed that stage through careers that create social change.

Our toolkit emphasises on careers in the social sector with an understanding that in the long run, these careers provide a higher level of meaning and satisfaction to the individual, because of the variety of job roles that one can take up in this sector. Within the social sector, one can use combinations of their interests and skills to bring about noticeable impact in their society.

My take to the toolkit drew from the images of the five elements of earth, the panchabhootas. I questioned, how can we think of career through nature-based imagery? Can we reimagine career possibilities outside of pre-defined buckets, to understand how we value a career beyond money, and then combine ways of action, spaces of work and our diverse interests to form a career path that is truly our own?

Selected pages from the toolkit: