Career-Purpose Fit — Step 2: Be a Sponge
Let your mind wander
Have you ever had a song you just can’t get out of your head? It rattles around in there for weeks, and just when you think you’re free of it, *Bam* you drive by the wrong street corner, and there it is again. This is so nerdy, but for me that meme is a question I once had to answer in an application essay (you guys know the one): What matters to you and why?
But really, what does matter to you right now? And seriously, why? The trouble is, the answer to both those questions is always shifting. Time, age, Philz coffee, post-brunch food comas, breakups — all of these influence our answers to what seems like life’s most simple and essential question.
Be a mindful sponge
As type-A world-smashers, we’re trained to hyper-analyze every detail of our lives. Thankfully, I’ve noticed a hack for logging data on this topic that doesn’t have to involve hours of gazing off into the ocean, or making elaborate spreadsheets.
Instead, I’ve noticed the best filter for this question sits at the intersection of attention and emotion. Attention is the input — what am I drawn to do? I see attention as a spectrum from compulsion to aversion, that is, do I notice myself seeking or avoiding this behavior? Emotion is the output — when I do this, particularly over long periods of time, do I feel awesome or icky? Some examples:
You can take a stab at making the above for your life, but what’s useful here is (you guessed it) the upper right quadrant. I’ve opted to make a Tumblr for logging all the stuff I find myself (healthily) drawn to. For me these tend to be articles, books, videos, movies, and concepts that evoke that sense of “yum.”
Be a curious sponge
Another tool I’ve found for spotting patterns of “yuck” and “yum” is staring at an ecosystem map. In the case of tech startups, these take the form of industry landscapes that VCs often put together to explain their investment thesis. But this can also include the output of academic or political summits, such as the sustainable development goals.
Many entrepreneurs wait until they have decided on an idea and are developing their pitch decks to take a look at these maps. These leads to two types of uh-oh moments. First, the realization that there are (many) other people working on your problem. But second, and worse, is the realization that there are other even more interesting things to work on.
Mathematician Richard Hamming was renowned for wandering the halls of Bell Laboratories and stopping young scientists to ask them, “What is the most important question in your field?” Enthusiastic that he had taken an interest, the young scientists would describe the many exciting researchers and studies that were leading the frontier. Inevitably, Hamming would always come back with “Well why aren’t you working on that?”
I have found landscape maps to be a helpful emotional tool for examining what aspects of a field I’m drawn to, or comparing one industry to another. If I’m really passionate about a company or idea, but it’s the only thing I like about the space, odds are with time and pivoting, I’m going to get bored.
Be a psychic sponge
The last step I use in this process is to study investment/grant portfolios, not to find meaningful differentiation or opportunities, but to pick my favorite companies and imagine myself in their shoes. What would it be like to myopically care about that one thing for several years? What are their central challenges? What types of people work there? What would make you stick with it when things got rough?
Too often, we develop a clear vision of success and spend so long selling others (investors, journalists, recruiters, recruits) on that vision, that we sell ourselves in the process. While it’s great for morale to be excited by that vision, when things don’t go according to plan it’s not only disheartening, it’s surprising.
As I began to explore the social venture space I went through a list of the top foundations and fellowships in my space: Gates, Packard, Skoll, Mulago, Draper Richards, Echoing Green, etc. and highlighted the top grantees that I found the most compelling. I used this list as fodder for the “negative visioning” questions above.
Next Steps.
By combining the three sponge-like behaviors above, I was able to sharpen my point of view, realizing that I’m deeply interested working at the intersection of mobile technology and poverty alleviation in East Africa. I think. Next step is doing a deep dive into putting my hypothesis into action.
What matters to you and why? Were any of the above helpful to figuring it out? What else has worked?
