More Thoughts on Finding Your Purpose and Your Genius

Most of us struggle to ‘move’ work that is currently in Area 5 on the graphic above (stuff we’re good at, and which has a market, but which doesn’t really fulfill us) to Area 3. Or we try to ‘create’ a market, through promotion, for work we love and are good at, and hence move a thankless and unprofitable business (Area 2 on the graphic above) to Area 3. I have argued that both of these efforts are somewhat futile, and that the work in the ‘sweet spot’ (Area 3) exists (for each of us) and needs to be discovered rather than manufactured. Most of us simply don’t know enough to know how to discover it, or even how to go about beginning to discover it. I confess I am still searching myself.

There is no silver bullet approach to this discovery process. I have suggested that one approach is to start with who you want to work with, and then work with them to discover work that is needed, which the collective group is good at, and which each member of the group can work within, doing work that they love. Another approach is to start by asking the question Who needs your gift now? And as part of my writing on The Natural Enterprise I have suggested a way to discover What’s Needed, as a starting point to finding or creating Area 3 work. For those (like me) who know what’s needed (goods and services that are recognized as needed and affordable by those who need it), but are not at all excited about making a living filling that need, I have no suggestion other than — keep looking.

Jeremy Heigh has received a lot of ideas from other people on Dick Richards’ Google group on what his Genius and Purpose might be. He ended up with a host of possible candidates for his Genius, and a host of different views on which of them best reflects his Gift and Passion, and was looking to understand how I managed to identify my Genius and Purpose so quickly (though not, alas, their intersect). I responded that what helped me most was looking first for the Gift/Passion overlap. To do this I considered each candidate for my Genius in turn and asked:

1. What kinds of things should I best be doing if this is my Genius? and
2. Do I really want to do those things more than anything else?

So I started by identifying the Gift implicit in each possible candidate for my Genius, and asked myself What kinds of work would give expression to that Gift, that ability. And then I asked myself if I would genuinely enjoy spending a large part of my time and energy doing such work. This enabled me to whittle down the list of Genius candidates quickly. Because (I think) I have a pretty good imagination, this might be easier for me than for others, however.

I also found that deciding on my Purpose also focused my Genius. Finding that sweet spot in Area 3 really requires approaching it from all three angles, using a large amount of imagination, iteration, soul searching, and exploring and researching each possibility until you find one that intersects your Gift (what you’re good at), your Passion (what you love doing) and your Purpose (what the market recognizes it needs and will pay for. Several times I’ve thought I’d found some Area 3 opportunities, only to find, on further consideration and research, that I’d overestimated the market, or my interest or skill in doing them. But the process works. I’m convinced I need to explore the Area 4 opportunities more closely — perhaps by partnering with others who have skills I lack, together we can make a living each doing what we love using our Gift, producing a collective product that is needed. Trying to make a living alone makes the task unnecessarily difficult.

Two things will often prevent us, or at least delay us, from finding those intersects. The first is unawareness of markets and opportunities, i.e. not knowing what is needed, by whom. This is doubly difficult because quite often the people who have a need that we could fill don’t realize they have it. We may need to imagine it, surface it, explore it with those who may need it, co-develop the solution to that need with them. And if they still don’t recognize that they need it, then they don’t need it yet, and we are too far ahead. The second blocker is not knowing ourselves. If our work and life experience is limited or unvaried, we may not really know what our Gift, or even our Passion, is, and can’t be expected to until we have broadened our experience. Volunteering, travel, research, and exchange programs can speed up this process, but to some extent we have to give ourself time for our Gift and our Passion, and hence our Genius, to emerge.

If you think you’ve found work at the intersect of your Gift, Passion and Purpose, i.e. genuine Area 3 work, I’d love to hear your story, and the process (deliberate or accidental) that helped you find it.