Transform your life with one vital question
Can a single question truly transform your life? Let me answer that with a short story.
When I started my coaching business, I tried all kinds of things to attract clients. I got a few here and there but not at the rate I wanted. I was passionate about helping people overcome barriers to being productive and also barriers to communicating their value effectively. But passion alone was not enough.
It was further complicated by the fact that I still had my day job and a growing family. At one point, I was on the verge of a breakdown when my wife and I decided to take a vacation to cool off and regroup. When I returned from the trip, I was refreshed but not much had changed. On top of that we discovered my wife was pregnant. It was exciting and also, a bit scary. I could foresee that life was about to get even busier. Clearly, I could not continue to do everything I was already doing trying to grow my business. There just weren’t enough hours in the day. I had to do a few things—the right few. The Vital Few. But what few?
This is article is adapted from a chapter from my upcoming book on The Vital Few. Receive updates on the book as well as offers by signing up for my free updates. Now, on with the article!
Finding my vital few
How I chose the few things that I focused on is what I want to share with you today. Though I have introduced these ideas from my own experience, you will find them to be easily transferable. As they did for me, the questions we will explore in this series will set you on your path to isolating the most powerful pursuits worthy of your precious time and energy.
These questions apply as much to organizations as they do to individuals. Onceyou start asking these questions, you will discover that you already have most of the answers—you just never asked.
The question to transform your life -What am I good at?
Everyone is good at something. Same goes for companies. Based on our unique combination of nature and nurture, we are able to do certain things better than others. Our nature might be a result of our genes buzzing away quietly in the background. And our nurture might be how we were raised, our accumulated experiences and, in general, what our environment has been like over the course of our lives. These two forces greatly influence what is often referred to as “talent”.
Are you built to win?
Some people seem just built to win at what they do. Take Michael Phelps—legendary swimmer’s—rather odd physical form of having freakishly large hands (makes for great paddles), long and broad torso (flotation device anyone?), nearly perfect 50/50 length of upper and lower body and relatively small head (less drag and less strain on the neck).
In short, Michael Phelps was built to swim.
Nature endowed him with these clearly advantageous features—maybe not advantageous for a computer programmer—he might need custom keyboards—but certainly for a swimmer.
Nature, you could say, was good to him. But then there is nurture.
Nurture is all the encouragement,support and investments his parents made from his childhood as well as all the coaching, education and swim meets and competitions. Phelps worked very hard often training for hours and hours daily. In his biography—Michael Phelps speaks about how nurture enhanced his natural talent:
In some sports, you can excel if you have natural talent. Not in swimming. You can have all the talent in the world, be built just the right way, but you can’t be good or get good without hard work. In swimming, there’s a direct connection between what you put in and what you get out of it…
…with hard work, with belief, with confidence and in trust in yourself and those around you, there are no limits.
Michael Phelps
All these factors built up to Phelps phenomenal career as a pro swimmer.
What does this have to do with you?
Now you might have average hands and a moderately sized head and likely have not won gold medals in swimming like Phelps, but there are probably natural abilities you have—call them talents—things you are capable of doing, things that come more easily to you than to others. Things that you see others struggling with and wonder why. It is so easy for you after all.
You might have a facility with words, numbers, patterns, colours, music or Plasticine. Maybe there were subjects you found easier in school—subjects for which you did not have to study as hard for as others but that you just “got”. You simply understood the concepts and could apply them with little effort. And then there are your hobbies.
We tend to get good at our hobbies because we are not under the pressure of earning a living from them. In fact, we often spend the living we earn at our jobs on our hobbies and interests. It is not surprising to find that we spend more money on our hobbies—especially inherently expensive ones—than we do sometimes on our “professional development”. Often in the course of our hobbies, we amass great skill and knowledge in specialized fields.
All these abilities and experiences accumulate to give us a unique set of abilities that, more often than not, indicate areas of strength and worthy of investigation as candidates for this part of your vital few.
Transform your life—Leverage your nature and nurture
Exploring what you are good at is important for a few reasons. For one, it reduces how much work you have to do get the point of producing value (more on value in the next section). In fact you might already have produced significant value from these abilities at present. You might already even be feeling the tension of wanting more from these abilities and “taking things to the next level”.
For example, one of the factors that led to me coaching clients in persuasive presentation skills was how relatively easy and intuitively I was able to present. I say relatively because I still had to work hard but I got the sense that I was not working as hard as many around me and I was achieving good results.
What I found for myself
In terms of nature and nurture, I chock it off to my personality and the exposure from an early age to being on stage a lot whether I was acting, singing in a choir or being part of hip-hop dance group. I realized that the main hindrance to performing well in public-speaking situations—the fear of public speaking itself—was something I had unwittingly overcome. Or, more accurately, never even learned because I started performing too early in my life to have become self-conscious. In that sense, I was ahead of most people who struggle with speaking in public and I knew I could help them. I felt especially drawn to people who are good in their fields and otherwise very capable people but who just needed help communicating their value to those who could benefit from it.
What followed was a lot of work studying myself and others, deconstructing what was working and what wasn’t and then distilling all that into a system that has delivered great results for myself and my clients over the years. But it began by homing in on something I found myself to be good at—public speaking. In some ways, my abilities were what some would call blind luck—I did not join a choir in my early teens with the hopes of one day becoming a corporate coach specializing in persuasive speaking. But here I am.
Likewise, you too might find that the abilities that hold the most value for you might not be the ones you have consciously and intentionally acquired. They might have just happened. And that is ok. Turning them into valuable pieces of your vital few though may require work but it will be relatively easy because, well, you are good at it already 😊
Transform your life—Stop the waste
So many people spend countless hours, months and even years trying to develop a skill for which they have little or no natural ability. They enroll in long, rigorous courses and programs in fields they have little talent. Often, they struggle. But sometimes, through hard work, grit and an obsessive level of commitment, these people may eventually attain a level of skill that produces significant value. And that is admirable, to be sure. People do this for different reasons—from the pressures of earning a living, to the desire to prove a point.
Fair enough.
However, imagine for a minute what they may have achieved if they had applied that same degree of commitment and motivation to a pursuit they already possessed a natural ability in. Imagine how much more value they would have created and derived.
Transform your life—Work to get better at the good
There is a magic in taking the things you are good at seriously. It is a huge labour-saving strategy. Your natural ability puts you on the fast lane. You almost certainly will need the help and support of others. And there is, of course, no avoiding work.You will likely still do a lot of it. But much less than you would have to do if you are working in something that is not a strength.
This goes for the people helping and supporting you as well. It is easier to support someone working in their strength. And, in general, the people who will help open important doors for you especially in terms of your career or business, are more likely to do so if they feel you will do a good job once you get into the room.
Overall, the positive upshot of working in your strength is that, given the same amount of work, you will likely derive a lot more value working in your strength than in your weakness.
But there’s more…
It’s fun too!
Another fortunate consequence of working in our strength is that, usually, things we are good at, especially things we got good at free of financial, professional or social pressures, are things we also likely enjoy. And because we enjoy them, we are more likely to spend time getting even better at them. Combine this with our inherent abilities and advantages in these areas, and what we have is a potentially game-changing skill.
For these reasons, the question—what am I good at is a powerful question whose answers can unearth a big piece of your vital few. Take some time right now and make a list of things you are good at.
Use these as a guide
Subjects I understand easily
Hobbies I have
Things people compliment me on often
Things I just do easily
Things I am just better than most other people at
Activities I enjoy (even if they are not hobbies)
What I spend most of my disposable income on
Clubs I belong to
Where do I volunteer my time
What sports do I play (if any)
What things do I collect
You might start to see a pattern. And you might not. But going through this exercise will give you insight into some aspects of yourself you had not considered seriously before. You don’t have to become a professional in all of these areas. In fact, some things are best left as hobbies we only use to play.
The value in doing this exercise is that it provides insight and clarity. It shows you how much you could be doing, how much interests and abilities you have but might have never thought seriously about.
You may find, for example, that you are working the hardest, perhaps even built your career, in areas where your interest or abilities are middling—good enough to get you by to the exclusion of areas where you could truly be great. Interestingly, it might also reveal to you how much your attention might be skewed in the direction of activities and pursuits for which you care very little.
Feel free to add to the list above. They are meant as a starting point and not an exhaustive questionnaire.
Transform your life—Don’t stop yourself
At this point, let me add that for some,this exercise might prove a bit troubling. Especially if you find a large gap between your abilities and interests and what you find yourself doing the most or maybe even how you earn your living. Don’t fret. Instead, let this insight excite you, not scare or sadden you.
You have gained a powerful insight that can help you design a more fulfilling life for yourself.Changing directions can be hard—there are various internal and external hurdles to overcome. But with some wisdom and planning, you can begin to move in the new direction with no whiplash. Don’t stop you.
This one question—what am I good at? Can set you on a path to change everything for the better. When it does, don’t stop yourself.
Until the next post, be your best.
