I don’t want to regurgitate New York Times articles every week. But once in a while I’ll discover a new person who motivates me, or an idea that seems worth implementing, and I figure it’s worth sharing here for those who don’t get/read the Sunday Times.

I used to once skip over the Business section, as someone who thought they had nothing to learn from stock market figures and tech talk.

Now, it’s the section I go to second, after Styles.

This Sunday I came across an article on testing out new careers via mentoring.

I found the following excerpt amusing for several reasons:

BRIAN KURTH got the idea for what became PivotPlanet in 2001, when he was 34 and a freshly downsized telecom executive, trying to figure out what to do with his life. “I wanted to test my own waters, and I thought of being a doggy day-care owner,” Mr. Kurth said. So he shadowed a local doggy day-care owner for three days. It was a useful exercise: “I realized I didn’t want to pick up poop all day long,” Mr. Kurth said. And it gave him the idea “that there is value in test-driving your dream job before you do it.”

Would I have started my own pet care business had I shadowed someone for a week? The jury’s out. But perhaps this mentoring thing could be useful as I try to figure out what’s next.

What career would you consider shadowing to see if it’d be worth pursuing full-time?