The Pursuit Map: 3 Steps to Choose Your Life Pursuits

Metadata

• Author: Sahil Bloom’s Curiosity Chronicle
• Full Title: The Pursuit Map: 3 Steps to Choose Your Life Pursuits

Highlights

• By Sahil Bloom How to Choose Your Life Pursuits read and listen on sahilbloom.com​ ​read time 9 minutes Welcome to The Curiosity Chronicle, a weekly newsletter where I provide actionable ideas to help you build a high-performing, healthy, wealthy life.

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  Today at a Glance: • Your time here is finite, so choosing the pursuits—personal and professional—that deliver the greatest returns on that time is essential. • I use an exercise I call Pursuit Mapping to identify the pursuits that are most likely to bring joy and outsized rewards into my life. • Three steps: (1) Create Your Pursuit Map, (2) Identify Your Zones, and (3) Align Your Time.

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  How to Choose Your Life Pursuits Your time here is finite, so choosing the pursuits—personal and professional—that deliver the greatest returns on that time is essential. You’ll come across a lot of advice that says to follow your interests and passions, but I’ve always found that guidance to be a bit tricky. What do those words—interests and passions—really mean? I don’t know about you, but I tend to lie to myself and say that I have an interest in things that I’m good at, so interest can be deceiving. And passion is a heavy term, one that I’m never fully convinced I’m applying correctly when it comes to my life. My solution: I focus on energy, not interests or passion. Follow your energy, because it is a truly scarce resource. When you have energy for something, you go deep on it, you push to grow, you gain life from it. It fuels you. So, as you contemplate the grand question of your life—how should I spend my time?—energy should take center stage in your consideration. I use an exercise I call Pursuit Mapping to identify the pursuits that are most likely to bring joy and outsized rewards into my life. Here’s how it works (and how you can use it to change your life):

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  Step 1: Create Your Map The Pursuit Map is a blank 2x2 matrix, with the X-axis representing Competency Level (from low to high competency) and the Y-axis representing Energy (from energy draining to energy creating). I define the terms as follows: • Energy-Creating: A pursuit that creates energy in your life; these activities leave you feeling energized, they fill your cup. • Energy-Draining: A pursuit that drains energy from your life; these activities leave you feeling drained, they empty your cup. • High Competency: A pursuit in which you are skilled; these activities feel effortless. • Low Competency: A pursuit in which you are a novice; these activities feel challenging. The first step is to place pursuits—personal and professional—onto this matrix. For the purposes of this exercise, pursuits can be broadly-defined (e.g. strategy consulting) or specific activities (e.g. market research). This step should include both pursuits you are currently engaged in and those that you may pursue in the future. Current Pursuits For pursuits that you are currently engaged in: • Establish Energy: How do you feel while engaged in the pursuit? How do you feel after? Do you find the pursuit life-giving? • Assess Competency: What is your view on your competency level? Ask others who have worked with you on this pursuit for their honest perspectives on your competency level. Based on your responses, and those gathered from others, place each current pursuit on the 2x2 according to the Energy and Competency levels. Prospective Pursuits For pursuits that you are not currently engaged in: (View Highlight)
• Zone of Genius In his 2010 book, The Big Leap, author Gay Hendricks proposed the novel idea of the Zone of Genius as the range of pursuits where you have excellent competency and high interest or passion. In the context of my Pursuit Map matrix, I’d consider the Zone of Genius as the top-right quadrant, where your competency and energy collide. (View Highlight)
• Zone of Hobby This is the range of pursuits that create energy in your life, but on which you have a lower competency level. This is where you would ideally spend the second biggest chunk of your time. It’s ok for certain pursuits to remain in this Zone of Hobby (i.e. it’s ok to be bad at things!), but you will find that pursuits for which you feel a lot of energy tend to slowly shift to the right as you improve at them. Pursuits that start in the Zone of Hobby often end up in the Zone of Genius over time. (View Highlight)
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• Step 3: Align Your Time By placing the various pursuits on the map and identifying your core zones, you’ve developed a picture of the pursuits on which you should aim to spend your time. The changes won’t happen overnight, but the goal is to slowly work towards incremental improvements:
  1. Most of your time is spent on pursuits in your Zone of Genius.
  2. Your remaining time is spent on pursuits in your Zone of Hobby.
  3. Minimize the time spent on pursuits in your Zone of Danger.
  4. Eliminate the time spent on pursuits in the dead zone (with the exception of those that survive the test in the note above). (View Highlight)
• If you’re running into a wall—with a company or manager who fails to recognize your perspectives—it may be time for a change. The market will eventually determine which companies survive by allowing for the free flow of talent to the places that allow employees to thrive in their highest form and function. (View Highlight)