do the Jim Collins' Three Circles exercise

Last Monday I decided not to sign an employment/training contract with a call center company which I’ve waited for for about 2 months. Since that night, I’ve been feeling lost and confused about where I wanted to be in the world.

I’ve always tried to plan ahead ever since I was young (or at least get an idea of what I wanted for myself in the future) because I’ve always feared not knowing where to go. My biggest fear, after all, is failure, and the best prevention I did to avoid it was plan. I’ve been doing that since junior year in high school when I filled out the space provided for “course” of the first college application form I held in my hands. Over the years, those plans changed a lot depending on whatever I discovered about myself. Now I realize that it might have only been because I never really knew what I wanted. Or maybe I wanted to be too many things.

In order to find out what I really wanted to do in life and what would really lead me to success, I decided to do Jim Collins’ Three Circles Exercise from his book, Good to Great.

First Circle: What are you passionate about?
Second Circle: What can you be best at?
Third Circle: What makes economic sense?

...and it all boiled down to event planning.

And in every exercise such as this that I do the same thing turns up. Writing. Using my creative skills in writing. Writing for TV, writing for film, being a copywriter in the ad industry, being a travel writer, writing a novel or a non-fiction book. So I guess I know which paths I need to follow… :)

But that isn’t to say that I want to let my acting dreams go. At least not yet.

I just realized Jim Collins lists them in a different order. Well I probably picked the passion circle to do first either because it is featured at the top of the chart or because it was the easiest (and most fun) for me to answer.

...which is “What are you passionate about?”

So far I came up with five solid things that I am passionate about.

Two in science, one in travel, one in entertainment, and one in history.

I am sure there are more to be found…

1. What you can be the best in the world at (and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at). This discerning standard goes far beyond core competence. Just because you possess a core competence doesn’t necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it. Conversely, what you can be the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.

Let’s see, I’m very good at reading things, picking up random information, putting trends together occasionally, I’m so much on the money that it scares me silly.

I know more things than most people – I’m an excellent generalist and know too many things across too many fields.

...and didn’t know what it was. So, I looked it up, and it looked worthwhile, so I added it as one of my goals:

http://www.jimcollins.com/lab/hedgehog/p2.html