How to find (and operate in) your Zone of Genius

Your Zone of Genius is where your interests, passions and skills align. Sounds genius right?

Sahil Bloom shared his 4 step framework for finding and operating in it:

(1) Experiment & Collect
Try different things. Different jobs, skills, side hustles, anything.
The goal is to build a wide base of experiences from which you can assess your competencies and passions.

Then ask yourself and others what they think you’re really great/bad at and how passionate you are about it.

(2) Build Your Matrix
Take all of the data collected and build a skill map:

With this matrix as a guide, you can place each skill in one of the four quadrants.

• High Competency, High Passion
• High Competency, Low Passion
• Low Competency, High Passion
• Low Competency, Low Passion

(3) Identify Your Zones
The 4 key zones to identify on your matrix:

• Zone of Incompetence: you are bad at these things; outsource to others who are good at them.

• Zone of Neutrality: you are ok at these things; outsource to others who are as good or better at them.

• Zone of Excellence: you are excellent at these things, but you don’t love them (This is the "danger zone”: you will be asked - and tempted - to work here given your competency, but it can be a trap)

• Zone of Genius: you are excellent at these things, and you love to do them (gimme gimme gimme 😮)

  

(4) Execute
As I was writing this email, I became overly excited about completing the matrix myself. Therefore, rather than explaining how to execute on it, I will fill out the matrix myself. Read how to execute in Sahil his Twitter thread ✌️

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