Buzz Lightyear crossed with Jimmy Hendrix

If you ask my four year old nephew what he wants to be when he grows up he’ll tell you an Astronaut and a guitar player. So it was fitting that for his pre-school graduation he got Buzz Lightyear wings and a guitar. The interesting thing is those wings say not meant for flying and doesn’t quite know how to play a cord. Maybe that’s the great thing about being a kid, their audacity to dream big. Unfortunately as we grow older reality tells us just how crazy some of our dreams have been. If we’re lucky, like I was, then we’ll have parents telling us we can have or do anything we want in our lives. Nobody has proven my parents wrong yet.

I speak a lot about finding your sweet spot and today I want to help you determine your own. My worry is those of us who have what I like to call American Idol Syndrome (AIS). You love to do something with all your heart, but at the end of the day you suck at it – like most on American Idol it may be singing. AIS, as I’ll refer to it, is typically based on poor self awareness. However, it may also be based on lack of self control. It is easy to get caught up with the concept of doing something we love, or what sounds like something great, when the fact is we’re not very good or qualified for it. Singing is a great example, but in all the career advice I’ve given I see it in a variety of other areas as well.
Your sweet spot is where your abilities are at their best and your passions are flowing to the max. I see people who are put in roles they are great at, but the tasks don’t excite them at all. I experienced this when I was a corporate recruiter. Don’t get me wrong parts of the job had me very passionate, but the basics of recruiting didn’t do it for me. Sound surprising? Even the fun tasks may not be things that excite us.

So how do we find our sweet spot? A little exercise, help from our friends and being honest with ourselves. Take out a piece of paper and draw a line down the center. On the left list out at least 20 things you are truly good if not great at doing. These should be things people complement you on all the time, items noted in your performance review. These could be the classes you excelled in with relative ease. On the right hand side list out the things you love to do (at least 20 items again). These are the things you find yourself doing naturally. Items that you volunteer to do or can’t believe how time flies by when you’re doing them. Now find the overlap. The hard part for some is finding employment in the overlap zone. It takes work, but as I’ll talk about in future blog posts it will be worth it. You may also want to get feedback from your peers, friends, and colleagues on what you put on the left side and ask them if you have any blind spots – things listed that you are not so strong at doing. Again it goes back to being honest and accurate otherwise this activity gets you nowhere fast.

Be prepared, this exercise could tell you that you’re not working in your sweet spot.

The Upgrade Delimma

As you may have seen, this past weekend I got engaged. Many asked me if I was nervous and the answer was a simple “not at all.” Sure I got anxious as it got closer, but only because I couldn’t wait. The one interesting thing that surprised me most about this relationship was how early on I knew Kim could be “the one.” We’ve only known each other for 13 months. Sure, other engagements may be more drastic, but we were discussing marriage after only eight months of dating. We both knew what we wanted in a partner and we knew we found it in each other. Both of us being planners definitely fueled the speed of our relationship.

Over the past month, while I was sorting out the proposal details, I received a lot of questions about career decisions. One common theme evolved: How can I accept an offer if something better out there exists? This reminded me of the “How I Met Your Mother” episode (“Rabbit or Duck”) where Barney leaves one girl after another because he thinks each one is better than the last.

I tie all of these topics together to make one point: Know what you want. In a job or career you need to find a sweet spot – that role where you rely on both your greatest abilities and the things you enjoy the most. Yes you can have both and you should. The same is true in a relationship. You’ve got to know what you’re looking for in a partner. In both a career and a relationship you should be coupled with something that fills in for your weaknesses. To sum up what Jerry McGuire said, you need someone who completes you.

Now if you follow those guidelines, you shouldn’t have to worry about upgrading to a better partner or job. We’re obsessed with comparing our options, whether it be a website that lets us click three products to compare or a friend asking where we want to go to dinner. Most of our decisions in life are made after doing a comparison. The sad news is this ruins us for the big decisions. It keeps us from committing to the right partner or makes us decline a great job offer. Your ability to analyze a standalone opportunity is going to keep you moving forward in life. Don’t ever think of it as settling. Consider lining up your offer with what you want. If you determine what you want in a non-bias state (e.g. before the offer or decision point comes along) and it allows you to operate in your sweet spot, then I promise you’ll be able to make the right decision.