#11 - Your zone of genius
You can't outwork someone who is having fun!
“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Whenever I share the concept of “Zone of Genius” with my friends/colleagues/clients, majority of the times the other party is pleasantly surprised. While I thought that this concept had become ubiquotous, it appears that deep understanding of this is still relatively rare.
There are a million things you could do with your time, million - X can even make you a living, million - X - Y can even make you money more than others and energize you, and then there are million - X - Y - Z things that you are amazingly great at. You not only thrive doing these things but it’s extremely hard for someone to compete with you on these.
Where
Million things = countless opportunities that are available to you where you are as good as anyone else doing those things or maybe even worse than the most people doing the same activities. This is your zone of incompetence.
X = Things you can do relatively better than some but not the majority. You may also not be energized doing these activities. This is your zone of competence.
Y = Things you do very well and also feel energized with. It’s relatively hard for people to compete with you on these activities. This is your zone of excellence. People love it when you are here.
Z = Things you thrive and excel at. You are in nirvana when you do these activities, it feels like play to you so it becomes really hard for people to compete with you on these. This my friend, is your ZONE OF GENIUS.
ZONE OF GENIUS is where you thrive, you are in a flow state, you don’t want these activities to end. This is where you feel on top of your game and it’s hard for others to compete with you cause you are literally enjoying them. These activities draw upon your strengths and interests. You find yourself in a virtuous cycle with these activities as you are good at it so you want to do more of it. And since you do more of it, you keep getting better at it. It takes work to find your zone of genius as you have to try several things to find if you are passionate about them or not. The presence of unlimited information on any topic now makes this easy as one can deliberate if being an accountant, lawyer, or engineer will tap into their natural interests and strengths or not.
Ideally, we all get to find out and operate from our zone of genius but in all reality the zone of excellence has a seductive side to it cause you are rewarded handsomely from the world for being consistently excellent at these activities. This zone feels cozy and it’s hard to think that something better exists. From my own observations, a lot of successful folks operate from their zone of excellence. Self-awareness plays a key role in the jump from zone of excellence to zone of genius as you have to tap into your gut instincts to find what truly motivates you, energizes you.
So go ahead and do the work to find the things that are energizing and rewarding!
Recommended reading - The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks. You can read the summary of the book here.
I love you all, keep going!
- Aakash
@aakashpathak_