Every now and then I see people around me say things like,
“I’m not really sure if this path I’m on is actually my path,”
or “What should I do with my life from here?”
I still ask myself those same questions.
So I’m hardly in a position to give anyone a definitive answer.
The truth is, no one can really answer questions like these for you.
It’s not even clear that there is a single right answer.
They’re not questions you find an answer to.
They’re questions you have to build your own answer to.
Still, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing at all that can help.
In January this year, I gave a seminar for members of a women developers’ community.
The title was “The Road Not Taken by Others.”
It was a very meaningful talk for me personally.
It gave me a chance to step back, look over, and organize the things I’ve been thinking and practicing in my own life.
In that talk, I shared a kind of guideline for people who struggle with questions like
“What am I going to do with my life?” or
“Is this really the right path for me?”
I want to revisit that story today, partly because lately I’ve been hearing those questions a lot again from people around me.
First, a basic principle
“The key to greatness is to look for people’s potential and spend your time developing it.”
— Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker says: Don’t focus on your weaknesses. Focus on your strengths.
Most people and most companies focus on their weaknesses.
If you do that, at best you end up at “loss prevention” level. You avoid disaster, but you don’t create much.
He says you have to focus on strengths to spot opportunities and produce real results.
The core of my guideline is:
- focus on your strengths,
- do what you love, and
- live in a way that gives value to others.
A lot of people agonize over this as if it’s a three-way choice:
“Should I do what I like?”
“Should I do what I’m good at?”
“Or should I do what’s good for others?”
But there’s no need to make the problem that hard.
On this principle, I suggest three gates to think through.
1. Do you like it?
This is the most basic element. You should be doing something you actually like.
If not, you’ll be unhappy.
If you’re the kind of person who can endure long periods of unhappiness in the belief that “one day a brilliant happiness will come,” and you can keep that belief without much trouble, then you probably don’t need my guideline.
So how do you know if you really like something?
Think about this:
When you’re tired from other work and want a break,
when you want to relieve stress,
when you’re feeling strangely down,
when you’re fed up doing something you hate—
What do you choose to do, of your own free will?
Trace back your recent behavior carefully.
But there’s something you need to be careful about.
Just because you spend the most time on programming, for example, doesn’t automatically mean you like programming.
Maybe programming is like homework to you.
When you get even a short break from it, what do you run to?
Do you grab a comic book? dance? go see people?
That is what you like.
Regardless of whether it “succeeds” or not,
do you feel good, alive, and refreshed after doing it?
Do you get deeply absorbed while you’re doing it?
Would you still want to do it even if no one paid you—
or even to the point you’d pay your own money just to do it?
If so, that’s it. You’ve found it.
That’s something you truly like.
You should think of concrete, real examples.
There is often a big gap between what you think you like and what you actually like.
Do you think you like programming?
How many hours a week do you spend programming voluntarily, on your own?
None?
Then you probably don’t really like it.
You just like the idea of liking it.
We also make the mistake of asking “Do I like this?” way too early.
We decide we hate something before we’ve ever really given it a proper try.
So to answer “yes” or “no” to this first question,
you need to have at least once run at it with your best effort.
Sometimes people are wrestling with the 2nd and 3rd gates
without ever having passed the first one.
But if there’s at least one thing that makes your chest burn inside,
something that makes your heart race and makes you happy just thinking about it,
something that keeps you up at night when it crosses your mind—
Then the second and third gates won’t be very hard.
If there’s nothing like that, then the second and third gates are hard to cross,
and even if you do cross them, it won’t feel like you really have.
2. Are you good at it?
This is the second gate.
Usually, once you’ve passed the first gate, it doesn’t take too long to pass the second.
If you truly like something, you almost can’t help but get better at it.
You can check whether you’re good at something by asking:
- Did you start at about the same time as others,
but find that you progressed faster and with less effort? - Have you ever been praised or complimented by others specifically for that thing?
If yes, that’s a good sign it’s something you’re good at.
If you really have no idea what you’re good at, you can try this:
(or, if that feels too awkward, bring it up lightly in conversation or send a casual email).
Ask them:
“What do you think I’m good at?
What do you think my strengths are?
Could you describe them with real examples?”
The key part is: “with real examples.”
Another method is what Peter Drucker called “feedback analysis.”
He recommended it as the best method for discovering your strengths.
The process is simple:
- Before doing something, write down your prediction of how you’ll perform.
- After you’ve actually done it, take out that note and compare your prediction with the outcome.
If you repeat this, you start to discover your real strengths.
People generally don’t know their own strengths well.
They tend to overestimate or underestimate themselves,
and that tendency doesn’t fix itself easily.
There are people who think, “I’m great at basketball.”
So they play a game—and get completely crushed.
Yet they think:
“Hmm, I just had bad luck today. I’m actually good.”
In the end, they never really learn their true skill level.
In reality, most people have several things that pass the first and second gates separately—
if they look hard enough.
The intersection of the two—things you both like and are good at—
is not huge, but almost everyone has at least one.
(If you feel like you have absolutely nothing there, odds are you’re still very young.)
The critical point comes next.
If you don’t pass the third gate, it remains a hobby.
3. Is it sustainable?
If you’ve passed the second gate, there’s one last step:
Is it sustainable?
Put simply:
Can you make a living from it?
Said in a more refined way:
“Can you provide value to others with it?”
Among the things you like and are good at,
which of them also produce real value for other people?
If you’ve made it through the first two gates,
even if the third one looks difficult at first,
with a small adjustment you can usually find a way through its cracks.
We’re not asking, “Will this make me fabulously rich?”
So it’s actually not that hard.
If you’re still single, the third gate becomes much easier to cross.
That’s why I tell my single friends:
For now, only consider things that have passed gates one and two.
Don’t skip those and jump straight to gate three.
To answer whether something is sustainable, you first need to define what “sustainable” means for you.
Figure out how much you really need per month.
Look at your past spending.
Then add an estimate for sudden expenses during the year (illness, travel, etc.).
But don’t yet include money for buying a house or getting married.
Divide by 12.
How much do you need per month to live?
It’s probably less than you think.
If you can cover that, then you can at least live doing something you enjoy and are good at.
To answer “Is it sustainable?”, ask yourself:
- Among the things you like and do well, which ones actually create value for others?
- Have you ever been thanked by others for doing that thing?
- Can you translate that thing into a form that is clearly valuable to others?
If you can’t yet translate it into a valuable form,
what would you need in order to make that translation possible?
Let me stress this again:
Before you even step into this third gate,
you need to check whether you’ve truly passed gates one and two.
If you start with gate three, you’re very likely to fail.
In the beginning, it’s actually better not to worry too much about gate three.
How I use these three questions
Whenever my mind wavers, doubt creeps in, or I feel the urge to look for a new direction,
I come back to these three questions.
So far, they’ve been a reliable lighthouse in the important decision points of my life.
For example, when deciding whether to change jobs, I asked:
- Will I be able to enjoy working there?
- Will I be able to enjoy that kind of work?
- Can I be good at it? Do I have that potential?
- Does it match my strengths?
- How much value can I provide to other people there?
- And who exactly are those “other people”?
After asking those questions to myself (and to people around me),
I was able to make decisions that were more confident and less shaky.
People who live doing something that passes all three gates
are, I think, truly fortunate.
But I don’t think that’s the end of it.
The world changes, and so do we.
That’s why we sometimes end up changing careers entirely.
Many predict that in the near future, most people will go through two or three different professions over a lifetime.
So we need to keep paying attention to what we like and what we’re good at—
water them, graft things onto them, cross-fertilize them.
Of course, in the middle of doing that,
we shouldn’t miss out on opportunities for sustainability.
From a social point of view, I think this third gate is especially important:
“What value does my work provide to others?”
I believe this is a crucial question for keeping our society healthy.
Over the long term, doing work that has no value for others
turns out to be unsatisfying anyway.
Positive psychology research suggests that connection with others,
giving and receiving gratitude,
play a huge role in our sense of happiness.
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