If you ever wanted to do something completely different, this is it.

If you’re like most people, you’ve wondered what your life would be like if you’d taken a completely different path.

But for a jeweler, what would that mean? A New York Times feature helps to answer that question.

The newspaper looked at various jobs and determined what their “polar opposite” would be. It based its analysis on U.S. Labor Department data outlining the tasks and skills associated with each job.

As it turns out, the opposite of a jeweler is a physicist.

Many people in the jewelry industry fall into the Labor Department’s category of “Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers.” Among the top skills for that work are finger dexterity, visual color discrimination and “judging the quantifiable characteristics of things, services or people.”

That’s apparently very different from the role of a physicist, who needs skills such as mathematical reasoning, information ordering and “ability to organize groups in different ways.”

Others in the jewelry business fit into the Labor Department category of “Retail Salespersons.” Some of their top skills include service orientation, persuasion and sales and marketing.

Once again, that’s apparently the exact opposite of what a physicist does; the jobs are deemed to be opposites.

The focus on physicists is not as random as it may sound. It’s the job that, along with “model,” appeared most often as an opposite in the New York Times’ feature. That means it’s highly distinctive in terms of the skills it uses and doesn’t use.

Read more at The New York Times