It’s your gut reaction.

When you become dissatisfied with where you are you immediately begin to look elsewhere to see what’s “out there.” The trouble is, you don’t have anything to base your decisions on. You become like a ship with no rudder, tossed about by every opportunity without having anything to anchor your instincts. The result is that you might make sweeping generalizations about jobs or industries, over-emphasize one persons opinion or an article you “once read,” or simply go with your gut and hope it works out.

There’s a better way.

Start with what you do know — you.

Stop trying to analyze the components of the options and start by clarifying you.

• Who are you?
• What do you do best?
• What do you value?
• Where do you do your best work?
• When and with whom?
• What are you passionate about?
• Where do you fit?
• What were you put on this earth to do?

Once you get clear about who you are you can make clearer decisions about where you might fit. This self-knowledge becomes a compass pointing you to true north and leading you to a more authentic career.
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The yogi Sadhguru said this: “Few people do something with their life befitting of their stature.” First, identify your “stature.” Then, find where it fits.

Parkinson’s law says that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. What does this mean for doing what you love? It means that your core job responsibilities will fill the entirety of your day if you let them, leaving little-to-no room for carving out your niche, doing more of what you love and less of what you don’t, and thinking infinitely.

The day my job changed was the day that I decided that I was going to do my core responsibilities exceptionally well in less time. In fact, I was only going to spend 60% of my week doing them instead of 100%. What that meant was that I was suddenly going to have 40% of my time to put toward something, and I chose to put that towards doing more of what I love to do.

It’s a conscious choice. Few are the jobs that are so structured that your work will fill 100% of your day. I don’t buy it. I think the majority of us can make the choice to do the same work in less time. So why don’t we?

First, I think we fear losing value. If I’m not “busy,” what does that say about my worth to the company and/or my value-add. Second, if I did have 40% more time what would I do with it? We’re often not sure how to actually do what we love more often during the workday so we default to the path of least resistance which is to continue working within the finite structure defined for us by the organization, our job description, and the managers we work for.

What’s interesting is that the 40% of what I loved to do actually expanded to take over the 60% of what I was expected to do and my job changed to be more like 80% what I love and 20% what I’m expected. Why? Because when people saw me do the 40% that I love, and because I earned credibility doing the 60% I was expected to do, I was freed up to do more of what I love because of the value-add to the organization.

By the way, lest you consider yourself too busy, here’s a statistic for you: 100% of the 300+ people I’ve coached over the last 6 years who don’t have time actually have time. And 100% of people who are too busy aren’t too busy.
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Deciding to do more of what you love is as simple as making a choice — shift your mindset now.

“He’s a talented engineer” or “she’s a talented marketer.”

You’ve heard statements like these before. It’s tempting when you see someone who’s really good at what they do to suppose they are gifted in that industry. But the reality is that industries are talents. Engineering isn’t a talent. Neither is designing, nor basketball, music, or even writing. These are allmanifestations of talents, and probably even an accumulation of several talents coming together to create an outcome.

An example:I once saw a public speaker who was adept at delivering his message. My tendency might have been to say “he’s a talented public speaker,” but instead I noticed that his true talents were 1) connecting with his audience to make a big room feel small, 2) building enthusiasm through his use of words and ability to transfer his energy, and 3) simplifying a complex idea to be easy to understand. The result, or manifestation, was effective public speaking. He likely does the same in staff meetings, classrooms, and other environments.

Likewise, talented teachers aren’t really talented teachers. Otherwise there would only be one way to do “teaching.” Rather, they are talented empathizers, connectors, ideators, planners, organizers, and/or system-builders who pull those talents together and aim them toward teaching to create an outstanding outcome.

What’s at risk?What’s the harm of referring to someone as a talented {insert industry here}?

First, if we say people are talented in an industry we leave little room for a divergent way of doing things. In other words, if he’s a talented public speaker, and I don’t do it in the same way he does, I may not believe that I, too, can be a talented public speaker because I don’t do it likethat.

Second, when developing your talents, it’s difficult to determine how best to develop your “engineering talent.” Where do you start? Read a book? Get more experience? But if you break down the talents that lead to effective engineering, you home in on something you can actually develop — ability to conceptualize a problem, talent in breaking down a system into smaller parts, or ability to move a project through various logical stages in order to achieve the ideal outcome.

Finally, if we can determine the talents at the root of our activities, we can transfer those talents across many domains in our lives. For example, an engineer I coached several years ago had a knack for being able to visualize an end product and backtrack the steps to create the product. He used this talent in both engineering and in building bikes. He could develop it by reading books about project management and developing skills in drafting and design to take these thoughts in his mind and illustrate them on paper in tangible steps and blueprints. Tapping true talent helped him maximize his gift in at least these two divergent areas of his life.

The How and an Offer to HelpHow do you figure out underlying talent? Here’s a good place to start: ask “why was I successful at that activity? What specifically did I do?”

For some, this guided self-reflection may be enough. For others, it’s more helpful to talk this through with someone who can help. One of my talents is helping individuals synthesize information that is important to their development and I’ve built a small coaching practice over the past few years to help people do more of what they love.

I’ve typically kept this group small because the amount of time I have to devote to coaching is limited. After discussing with my wife last night, I’m opening a few spots in the evenings (Mon-Wed) to coach individuals and if you are interested in learning more send me an email at dustin (at) dustinpeterson (dot) me and I can send you info.
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Here’s to doing more of what you love each day!

When your current job rubs your values wrong, consider leaving. Here’s why:
An ideal career is built on three things: your values, talents, and ideal environment. Note that those three factors are listed in that order for a reason: environment is the most malleable and flexible, meaning you are most in control of changing it. Talents are less maleable, but you could do some “job crafting” to center your work more around what you do best. But values are the least flexible. They are so core to who we are that they rarely shift.
There are really two types of values in play in any job — organizational values and personal values. You may be at an organization that shares values with yours and that’s a great start. But if your manager or your colleagues have competing or misaligned values your job can quickly become insufferable.
For example, you may work for an organization that is built on helping humans flourish. You may feel aligned with that. But your manager may not value balance, integrity, or communication and that can create a serious values rub on a daily basis that is almost impossible to change and will lead to dissatisfaction as a result of incongruence.
If you’re feeling low on energy or disengaged from your work, check your values and those of the organization or the people you work with. It may not be the nature of the work at all, but rather a values misalignment.