Sunday, November 27, 2011
Work Smart: How To Find Your Sweet Spot
Fast Company: Imagine a Venn diagram of three overlapping circles, one for your genuine interests, one for your skills, and one for the stream of opportunities available to you. Just two overlaps won't do it--a love for basketball and a connection to an NBA scout isn't enough--you've got to find your trifecta.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
19 comments:
This is an interesting way to find out if you are where you should be or to figure out what you want to do. Interests, skills, and opportunities are seemingly obviously connected after watching this. If you love what you do and are good at it, it makes some sense to try going after that, but if you also have the opportunities to make your job a reality. I think I will try making my own vend diagram to see where my interests and skills overlap so I can more easily look and create opportunities for myself.
Okay I buy it. I want to "kill it" in my career. (Hard to say what he means by this or if I'd be an interesting person that he's talking about.) But I think he means have a healthy attitude and relationship with their career. We all want that.
But the Opportunity circle doesn't always present itself, sometimes that is an effect of the other two circles. Let's say I have an interest in the theater, I'm good at acting, where's my opportunity circle? It may be really small. Or let's say I'm a woman and I love sports. I can also throw a football 100 yards. There's no opportunity for that. He might suggest I switch to managing a team. Well that's not what I want. Why should I compromise my drive to fit into the trifecta?
Perhaps missing the trifecta is not "settling." Perhaps it's the best I can do. Or perhaps it's not and I make my own trifecta. Maybe we should make our own Opportunity circle. If everyone aimed for the trifecta and ensured that trifecta existed, I think people would be much happier attitude towards work. Labor would look completely different, but we'd all be killing it. That's good, right?
The idea of a sweet spot in life through the use of this three-way venn diagram makes a lot of sense to me. I definitely want to analyze my own interests and life to figure out where I fall in my own diagram. I think it is very important that we all find the right balance of skills, interests, and opportunities we have to live a successful life. Now more than ever it is important that we know we are seeking the right place in our future careers.
This reminds me of where I am right now in life. We all have skills, interests, and need to find opportunities in order to get work. If what you love is theatre, and have the skills or learn the skills, find an opportunity. Placing yourself in a certain area on this venn diagram to find your sweet spot is the key. We all know and have this in our life. But I feel finding a combination of interest and opportunity is the hardest. You can learn new skills or apply what you have, but finding a thing for what interests you is a thing I feel we lack in the circle.
This is a very interesting approach to finding out if you are in the right career. I never thought of a career being the trifecta of these two things. This gives me some reassurance that I am in the right industry I seem to have at least a start in all three areas. This also knocks out some other areas that I have considered pursuing as a potential career. There are also a handful of areas where I fulfill two of these venn diagrams but Theatre is really my trifecta.
This is a pretty good way to sit down and break down what you should be doing. It's a helpful way to look at things, that I hadn't thought of before. It may be helpful on a basic level, but I'm not sure how helpful it is on a more complex level. It can present some options, and can help direct someone, but it's no exact science. As many ways as people try to come up with a formula, nothing can account for personal situations. I don't doubt that this is useful, but I think it doesn't deserve any sort of heavy investment.
This seems logical enough. It's a neat way to think about success. I wonder how often you have to force one of the criteria out of determination rather than just find what seems to line up properly for you. Like if I have a knack for one thing and my family is well connected, if I really wanted success could I fake the love? Or if I love one thing and seem to have the opportunity could I build the necessary skills to make it happen? It seems like you could. Which means that while this is a tidy way to think about success, there is more decision involved rather than just figuring out what works.
As much as I agree that this is a neat idea and while it certainly indicates that I am in the realm of the right career, Matt and Hannah both hint at the question of what to do if you cannot find the trifecta of skills and interests with opportunity. As Matt pointed out there are other jobs that may have more opportunity but not fully fit one's skill set and granted, skills can be learned, but to what extent? I know I have stronger skills that are not managementy but I want t do project management. Do I just resign to a purely heady job since what I am good at is the logic puzzle aspect of a set? It is a good jumping off point, but I think at some point you have to do what you love despite not having the greatest skill set or the most opportunity.
This article inspired the SM Seminar class to discuss how to achieve happiness. I think that while common sense, the 3 circles is sometimes lost of people. I like that he used the example of someone enjoying something but not utilizing their opportunities. I think that sometimes we can become doe-eyed and naive about the futures of our career and what we would consider "successful". Overtime people change their careers for many reasons, each of the circles.
Sometimes people are successful in their careers without an immense amount of skills, but you should at least be familiar with your field.
This is a really different approach to finding out what you should do. I'm not sure if it works though. I agree with Matt that the opportunity circle doesn't always work out for everyone. It's rare to find a good opportunity sometimes. I think that one applies to certain cases only. But it is an interesting way of looking at my career that I hadn't ever thought of before. But I am glad that when I tried it my career choice is still theater and it works out well for me.
This short article had a surprisingly profound affect on me. You can summarize the article in a sentence: some of the greatest careers can come from pursuing the overlap between your genuine interests, your skills, and your opportunities. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my professional future and the possibility of pursuing a career in production design, despite that I am pursuing (and plan to keep pursuing) architecture. I'm starting to realize, especially in regards to this article, that production design may be that overlap in my life, and that is a scary but exhilarating possibility. Regardless of my story, I think there is great merit to listening to this particular lesson from Scott Belsky.
I like the over arching idea behind this article but I do think that it is a bit limiting. I find that if people are good at something they will generally like it even though they don't enjoy it. This can lead to a false scene of fulfillment and can lead unhappiness in life. Also I find especially in theater there are a lot of people who just get lucky and were in the right place at the right time to get the opportunity that they do. There is no way to asses if you are in the right place because anything can lead to something. In addition, I know plenty of people who hate what they do and despise it and are wealthy and successful. I think you do need to have oppertunitys and I think that you need to have some skill but I don't think that you need to like the thing you do. I think you just need that to be happy.
I like the over arching idea behind this article but I do think that it is a bit limiting. I find that if people are good at something they will generally like it even though they don't enjoy it. This can lead to a false scene of fulfillment and can lead unhappiness in life. Also I find especially in theater there are a lot of people who just get lucky and were in the right place at the right time to get the opportunity that they do. There is no way to asses if you are in the right place because anything can lead to something. In addition, I know plenty of people who hate what they do and despise it and are wealthy and successful. I think you do need to have oppertunitys and I think that you need to have some skill but I don't think that you need to like the thing you do. I think you just need that to be happy.
This certainly hits the nail on the head for people I know who have found success. The guys and gals that I know are rockstars in the field all love to do what they do, they're all damn good at it, and they have enough opportunity to capitalize on that. Matt does bring to bear an interesting question about "settling." But I think that that idea can fit into this question. So if you're interest is "playing sports" and not "sports generally" then switching from wanting to play football to managing doesn't fit into the trifecta mould. I can see how finding your perfect mesh of all three can be difficult.
This is a concept that I personally have never thought of in this way. Of course I have thought about how you need the right skills to pursue your interest and how one should be interested in what you are working in. I have also thought about how more opportunities for certain jobs are in certain areas but I have never really thought about putting all three things into such a concise thought. It is interesting to reflect on this and think am I working in my overlap? Is there something I can do to push me more into my overlap?
Finding out where you fit is half the battle. This ven diagram is a interesting way to think about how you will reach your highest potential, but it is a little vague. These ideas are like most self help books that I have read. The words are very general and don't have much solid content. I have never walked away from a self help book and thought "I know what I need to do now." To many generalizations.
I really like the thought of the three things, interest, skill, and opportunity. But I think the thing that I struggle with the most, as do many people in our industry, is finding the opportunity to best showcase our skills and exercise our interests. That might be due to the job market, or might be due to the nature of the business. I think the other tough thing for people in our business is having the skills to be successful. I think the easiest part is the interest, and maybe that is true for other industries as well, but I really feel this is an industry of passion and you have to love what you are doing in order to be able to do it everyday. And since we are working in tough conditions for not a great amount of compensation (typically), its really an industry of people doing things because they love doing them.
The concept is so interesting--and actually pretty spot on. Life doesn't always work out how we want it to. Just because we planned our lives one way doesn't mean that it will happen that way. The best thing to do is to know what you are capable of and to believe in yourself. When an opportunity comes, even if it is not what you have dreamed of, really consider taking it, because opportunities lead to other opportunities as well as discoveries about oneself.
Great video.
While this is the beat approximation I have seen so far, I still am not convinced that any life choice can (or should) be boiled down to a generic "system". So many of our choices in life have so many other repercussions that to try and boil it down to three circles, would be more work than the job itself. These tools are only useful if they are useful.
Post a Comment