How to find your zone of genius

Imagine you are standing in front of a bank of slot machines.

Each of these slot machines has a futuristic scanner on the handle. When you put your hand on it, it scans your genes, cultural heritage and past experiences.

This means that the odds for each machine are not consistent. A slot machine that pays out 3 to 1 in my favor may pay out 1 to 3 against you.

This is what your career is like.

You read Forbes and hear about all these slot machines other people are playing.

Mark Zuckerberg did really well pulling the lever on the social media slot machine.

Those odds don’t hold for everyone though. Warren Buffett did really bad whenever he pulled the internet company slot machine. That’s fine though, he did pretty well with the value investing slot machine.

There is not an objectively “right” slot machine. There is a different slot machine for everyone at every phase of their life.

The goal is to figure out which slot machine pays the best odds at this point in your career.

In Kevin Kelly’s words, this is trying to find the work only you can do.

The popular quote “If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” is true.

But the typical advice is to change your tool. If you’re dealing with a screw, you should pick up a screwdriver.

This is the exact opposite of what the most successful people actually do. In Adam Robinson’s words "Geniuses have very limited toolsets — they have a hammer and their genius is in looking for nails.”

In our metaphor geniuses are not looking for the “right” slot machine, they are looking for the right one for them, right now.

Just because a slot machine pays out for someone you know or someone you read about does not mean it will pay out for you.

You have to start by putting a few coins in each slot machine to see which one pays off.

What you are looking for is to find the one that pays off better for you than for other people. The one where you have a sustainable competitive advantage.

You will know it’s the right slot machine when you put your time in and you get better at it fast and with less effort than other people putting money in the same machine.

People ask me how I read so much and I’ve got some tips (https://taylorpearson.me/reading/), but the truth is that it seems to be much easier for me than other people.

The reading slot machine pays off better for me than for most people.

I did software sales for a year. I learned a lot, but after a year I realized that lots of other people were getting bette at it faster than me.

That wasn’t my slot machine.

If you’re pulling on a slot machine and your payouts aren’t improving faster than other people, find another slot machine.

This process is more art than science, there is always a tradeoff between exploration (trying new slot machines) and exploitation (putting more into slot machines you already know have good odds).

Early on in your career, you should be heavily focused on trying out new slot machines and over time shift towards exploitation.

However, it’s important to always keep exploring to some degree because you are changing and the environment is changing so the rewards the scanner gives you will change.

Early in his career, Warren Buffett’s investing philosophy was all about buying “cigar butts,” companies that were valued below the price of their physical assets. There wasn’t much profit left in them, but they were so cheap you couldn’t lose.

Over time, the market got more transparent and the amount of capital Buffett had under management grew. Combined, these meant that it was harder to find cigar butts.

He shifted to the “Great company at a good price” philosophy.

In his words, "It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”

The way this often plays out in practice is using the Stairstep Method.

You start in pure exploration mode and throw money into a few machines. You see which one pays out the best for you and put most of your resources into that one. But, you always keep some in reserve to explore other machines.

My first slot machine was SEO. I was pretty good at it and so I put some money in there. But I kept working on other skills like writing. For a couple of years, I wrote on the weekends. I realized that even though I still wasn’t that good, I was getting better faster than other people. It was also easier for me than most people. Compared to others, it wasn’t hard for me to make myself sit down and write.

There is more nuance here as there are an effectively infinite number slot machines. Michael Lewis and Salman Rushdie are both great writers, but they have very different styles and approaches. Michael Lewis probably wouldn’t get nearly the same payoff trying to pull the magic realism books about India slot machine as he does the nonfiction thrillers slot machine. I am still testing different slot machines within the writing corner to see what works best for me.

Generally the best way to figure out what slot machines to test out is to see where the intersection of external trends and your interests meet. If you’re really interested in AI, now is probably a pretty good time to do more with it.

Your interest is an internal, intuitive compass that you have better odds on that machine than someone else.