3 Cheat Codes to Find Your Ideal Career

Season 4, Episode 4

Nov 05, 2021

gm frens!

My company, Groundswell, is building tools for the growing trend of PLG (product-led growth) — software that you can start using without putting a credit card on file (think: Zoom, Loom, Slack, etc.). The tricky part with PLG is understanding if/when/how to engage with the free users. And particularly, when to have a person (sales rep) reach out. I’m going to be writing about PLG companies that have sales teams, over at ProductLedSales.substack.com. The first post went live this week: Why PLG Matters in 2021. If this is relevant to you or someone you know, check it out.

Now, on to today’s topic in the startup journey learnings: three three cheat codes to figure out your ideal career!

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Let’s get into it.

3 Cheat Codes to Find Your Ideal Career

This could probably be a tweet, but the topic is important enough to be a standalone post.

The last few posts here at “What I Learned” have been on my “Startup Journey Learnings.” And if I stack-ranked the topics relevant to this journey, from most important to least, today’s topic would be near the top. Spending time to figure out what you want to work on, what you’re good at, and what you enjoy, is highly underrated. I don’t believe in the “perfect career,” but I do believe you can optimize for your strengths and passions, and I also believe that we only get one life, so why not fight to do things that you enjoy.

These things may sound cheesy, but whatever — they’ve worked for me, so hopefully, they can help you too.

Here are the three pillars we’ll cover today (they’re all interrelated):

Zone of genius
Find work that feels like play
IKIGAI

Zone of genius

The basic reason why you should figure out your “zone of genius” is quite simple.

Most people will spend at least 90,000 hours working over the course of their career — even more for those who don't retire at age 65. Given that so much of our time is spent working, one would hope that we could make the overall experience fulfilling and maybe even a little bit enjoyable.

So what is your Zone of Genius? Here’s the simplest form:

Your Zone of Genius is comprised of two essential data points: your genius and your purpose. Your genius is the thinking or problem solving that you're best at; it's what allows you to be challenged in the best way possible. Your purpose is the impact — on the world or others — that's most meaningful to you.

This article does a great job summarizing how to find your zone of genius — if you want to explore more, start by reading it (please forgive me for linking to a Business Insider article, I’ll try not to make it a habit). You can decide if you want to buy the book later.

Take some time to do an audit of what you think you’re good at. And then, ask 3-5 people you trust, what they think you’re best at. I’ve done this exercise and it’s pretty eye-opening. I dare you to do it.

Find work that feels like play

This section is not going to be about how we should all become professional baseball players, astronauts, ballerinas, firefighters, or whatever your “dream job” was as a kid.

I build and sell enterprise software to large companies. But I LOVE it. I feel alive. I think about it all day and all night (ask my wife). It’s fun. I believe that boring things for most can be super fun for a small subset of people. Find that thing. And water it. As the wise young Justin Bieber says in one of his songs:

But the grass ain't always greener on the other side.
It's green where you water it.

I think this is right. You have to 1) figure out what you’re good at and 2) figure out what you like. Then pursue a career in something where these two intersect. And finally 3) nurture your passion in the career you chose. IMHO, the north star is the following:

Naval @naval

What feels like play to you, but looks like work to others?

Below is an excerpt from the Almanack of Naval. The entire book is free online, but this is from the chapter titled: FIND WORK THAT FEELS LIKE PLAY.

Do something you love. You enjoy it so much, it’s not about the money...
The way to get out of the competition trap is to be authentic, to find the thing you know how to do better than anybody. You know how to do it better because you love it, and no one can compete with you. If you love to do it, be authentic, and then figure out how to map that to what society actually wants. Apply some leverage and put your name on it. You take the risks, but you gain the rewards, have ownership and equity in what you’re doing, and just crank it up.

Finding your personal monopoly is something that I’ve heard Naval talk about more than once (listen to him talk about escaping authenticity here). This is also relevant in the modern era of the internet:

Naval @naval

“You can escape competition through authenticity, when you realize that no one can compete with you on being you. That would have been useless advice pre-internet. Post-internet, you can turn that into a career.”

startupboy.comThe Internet Has Massively Broadened Career PossibilitiesLet’s look at this next tweet, which I thought was cryptic, and also super interesting, about the kind of job or career that you might have. You said, “The internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven’t figured this out yet.” The fundamental property of the inter…

It’s a matter of looking at all the things you’re interested in, and mashing them together (or finding their intersection) to figure out what you should do in your career. I like solving problems, building things, learning about new subjects, and scaling businesses. One intersection of these passions/skills is to build a SaaS business. There are probably other ways I could leverage these passions/skills into a career. However, it turns out that SaaS businesses are valued by society right now, so that checks both the “what the world needs” and “what you can be paid for” boxes (see diagram below).

IKIGAI

Ikigai: The Japanese Concept of Purpose

This is one of my favorite frameworks for figuring out what to work on. I think it should be taught in schools. Knowing what you value, what you enjoy and what society values — this feels like a secret cheat code to life. And again, it’s not about the money (though money is certainly part of the equation) — it’s more about figuring out how to do something every day that you enjoy doing. What a gift that is.

Ikigai, Japanese for 'the reason of being' : r/coolguides

If you want to read more, I’d recommend this article or buy this book: Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life.

Sit. Study. And meditate on this graphic. I think it can change your trajectory for the better. But only you can find out for sure. :)

Alright. That’s it for this week!

If you enjoyed this post, I’d appreciate it if you forwarded this email along, or share it (button below) with a founder, future founder or someone who you think would enjoy reading it:

Elon offered to donate $6 billion of his personal wealth to “solve world hunger” if the UN World Food Program would be transparent around how the money is spent.
Adobe is releasing a feature to allow artists to be able to bake verification into their NFTs using Photoshop.
It’s been fun watching, in real-time, web2 folks taste web3 and start dipping their toes in — This Week In Web2—>Web3, JCal starts to get crypto curious. In this interview, Jason talks to Kyle Samani about his firm MultiCoin’s 100x fund, mostly thanks to their very early investment into Solana. The whole interview was really good (scroll ~halfway into the video to see the interview). Kyle also makes a bear case for BTC.
Some alpha (not financial advice) —> check out these DAOs for staking crypto: OHM, TIME and KLIMA.
The first-ever driverless robotaxi ride took place in San Francisco this week.
gm is a bit of a meme in the web3 (Crypto, NFTs, DeFi space) world. Someone will tweet “gm,” and you’ll see hundreds of people respond: “gm.” It’s funny, lighthearted, and silly. But it’s inclusive and almost culty. The timezone or time of day is not relevant with gm. There’s even a gallery of gm NFTs. gm is similar to when people say “looks rare” about an NFT. It tells me that crypto is a net-sum game, not a zero-sum game. Everyone’s on the same team. I love the feeling. I think the world could learn from this funny, lighthearted silliness. So, for now, I’ll keep saying gm.
6529 @punk6529
2/ GM gm means "good morning" We say good morning to each other because we are a friendly happy optimistic global community and it is nice to say good morning to your friends as you start your day
9:41 AM ∙ Sep 1, 2021
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