As we mentioned, you will spend 90,000 hours, a third of your life, at your job, so it is very important that you are doing a job that you enjoy doing. There are 3 basic aspects to a rewarding job: what you are doing, where you are doing it, and who you are while you are doing it. Today we are going to discuss what you are doing, and we will get to the where and who in the next posts.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Choosing the type of work you are going to do is a critically important decision. The pressure to pick a career path early in life is real, and the complex set of considerations can be overwhelming. Do you want to make money, save the world, get out of your small town, join the family business?
We at Geigsen understand that all decisions should happen on 3 layers: 1. the transaction, what am I going to do? 2. The emotion and psychology under the transaction, how will I feel about what I am doing? And 3. your awareness about why am I picking this in the first place? Many of us choose our careers from layer 1 considerations only. I’m going to be a lawyer to make money, and then when we get into the actual work we hate it and we feel stuck.
What are your aptitudes?
Your aptitudes are the natural ways your brain is wired to think, solve problems, and process information. They are not skills you learned or personality traits that describe how you relate to others. They are the specific natural abilities you were born with, things like the ability to learn languages quickly, spatial reasoning, musical ability, mathematical intuition, or the capacity to draw what you see with precision. These are the things that you can do that people without the aptitude will never be as good at, no matter how much they practice.
It is worth distinguishing aptitudes from personality assessments, because most people have taken one and called it an aptitude test. Tools like Myers Briggs, DISC, and Enneagram measure how, in a given moment, you relate to others and how you tend to show up in the world. But they tell you nothing about your natural abilities. Knowing that you are an introvert, or a Type A does not tell you whether you have the spatial reasoning to be an architect or the verbal fluency to be a writer. Aptitude tests measure something different and more fundamental — what your brain can actually do naturally, before training or effort enters the picture.
When you work within your aptitudes, you are working with your wiring rather than against it. When you work outside them consistently, you can still perform, but you feel like you are working hard and the work never feels natural. Now it is also true that many of our jobs are a mixed bag. We have things we do within our aptitudes and things we do that are not. You may be a creative thinker and terrible at turning those ideas into a PowerPoint. The great thing about knowing your aptitudes is that you can find teammates who have the ones you don’t, and partner to create great things.
If you want to understand your aptitudes, there are two assessments worth knowing about. The Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation has been measuring aptitudes since 1922 and is the gold standard. You go to one of their centers in person, the testing is thorough, and the results are genuinely illuminating. If you don’t have access to a center near you, the Highlands Ability Battery is a rigorous online alternative built directly on Johnson O’Connor’s research. It takes about three hours, measures 19 distinct aptitudes, and includes a debrief with a certified consultant who walks you through what the results mean. Both are worth the investment.
Becoming aware of your aptitudes and how yours make you good at some things and not so good at others is one of the most enlightening and rewarding insights you can have about yourself. You may find out you are at a job that is a terrible fit for your aptitudes, or you may find out that the places where you feel frustrated are where you don’t have the aptitude and need to partner with someone who does.