SDS 138: Zone of Genius

Hello and welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast.

And today we’re talking about the Zone of Genius. Last year in 2017 Hadelin and I went on a European road trip to visit our students in Europe and we actually visited quite a lot of students through this trip. And while we’re on the trip we listened to an amazing audio book which is called “The Big Leap” and which was written by Gay Hendricks. So if you haven’t read the book then I highly highly recommend checking it out. It’s an amazing framework on how to live a fulfilled life, how to really achieve true success in any spectrum of your life and create abundance of happiness and everything that you want in your life.

The ideas conserves philosophies and frameworks that Gay Hendricks shares in this book can be applied to practically any sphere of real life whether it’s your personal life, whether it’s your career, it’s your business, it’s your hobbies, it’s sports, whatever it is, these ideas can really really help. And that’s why we like the book so much. And one of the concepts that Hendricks talks about is the different zones that you could be operating in in any part of your life and he identifies four different Zones.

So, the Zones are as follows. Zone of incompetence, zone of competence, zone of excellence and zone of genius. Let’s go through them one by one and we’ll use me as a guinea pig. So zone of incompetence. What is that all about. Well zone of incompetence it comprises of things that you are generally not good at doing and that you therefore don’t want to do. So what’s an example. What’s an example of something for instance that I am not good at doing and I just generally don’t want to do. A good example who would be pulling apart my motorbike and installing something on my motorbike like a new pipe. That was that was a classic example and I needed to install a new pipe on my motorbike and my brothers and I got together and we pull that apart put the pipe in and put in the screws and bolts. It took us like six hours to do that. And then on the next day I took it to the service station to get it serviced and I said hey by the way I put on a new pipe can you just check everything is okay. When I got back they said we had to put in all the wrong bolts and they’re all in the wrong place. We had to pull it apart and put it back in for you like by ourselves. And it took them like half an hour and so from there and learnt very clearly that I’m not I’m completely incompetent at that. Like I can top up the oil on my motorbike but anything more above than that I need to go through the training I need to actually learn these things and do them more frequently in order to be competent but in general I prefer to just ride my motorbike. I have no interest in pulling it apart and getting competent at that. So that’s a clear example of something I’m incompetent at and it’s better to have somebody else do that and can identify these zones as an example of a zone of incompetence and hobbies or in a sport you can totally identify these at work at you know like me personal relationships and things like that and then we move onto zone of competence. These are things that you were good at, but you don’t really enjoy doing them.

For instance, a good example in the space of data science for me personally is data preparation. I consider myself to be competent. I’m probably not the best at data preparation but I’m competent at data preparation and at the same time I don’t enjoy doing the operation. If somebody else can do it for me or if I can get the data already prepared or somewhat prepared. I will always opt for that option. I’ll do my checks afterwards I’ll make sure of things adds up but it just takes so much time in this even better and more interesting things to be doing in the space of that sense. It’s not to say that the preparation is completely unnecessary. It is necessary. It is important to be competent in that space. But as I imagine most people would not say that they love doing the preparation.

The next zone is called the zone of excellence and this is where things start to get interesting. The zone of excellence is the zone where you’re doing things that you’re good at and some of the time you enjoy doing those things. However, ultimately those things don’t leave you fulfilled and the way to imagine it is when you have this feeling or thought that. Well you know like I’m doing something that I’m good and I’m getting paid money for it and everything is fine everything’s okay.

Like I’ve set up my life pretty well like I can be comfortable doing this. This is okay. This is fine. As soon as you hear that fine or that word okay in your mind that means you’re most likely in the zone of excellence. You’re settling that’s the key word as well you’re settling for something that is comfortable that you’re good at but it’s not something that you ultimately desire is something that you’re extremely passionate about and you just want to do. A good way of describing it that I found interesting is the phrase you live in this sea of tolerance basically if you feel you’re successful but at the same time you’re not making that impact that you would ultimately want to make. And a lot of people actually get stuck in this zone of excellence simply because they have never felt the zone of genius which is rare. I think everybody has been in their zone of genius which we’re talking about in a second person at least once or twice or a couple times throughout their life. But more often than not, it’s because of that feeling of being comfortable you will get comfortable in their zone of excellence and they’re afraid to push themselves further or there they don’t have the willpower to push themselves further. But most of the most frequently is because they’re afraid to step out of their comfort zone because to find his on an extra genius and to be in it, you need to make that big leap that’s why the book is called The Big Leap. You need to make the jump step, scary risky step into the unknown to be eventually in your zone of genius. Which brings us to the zone of genius. So, the zone of genius is comprised of things that you love to do. You’re good at and you love to do and you get good at them anyway because like you might not be good at them at the start but because you’ll love to do them so much you get good at them inevitably.

And so you know these things are activities that you just love doing in a great way in terms of career, of putting it, is its activities that you would pay to do not get paid but you would pay other as in order for you to do these things. That’s what the zone of genius comprises of and it’s just when we’re in a zone of genius we are extremely happy fulfilled.

Time flies we feel excited we feel alive. And wouldn’t it be great to always be like that to always be in that state to build your life around just doing what is in your zone of genius. But again, the thing about the zone of genius is that it’s not easy to get there it takes that big leap and a big leap could be something like leaving a career or leaving a person or leaving a mentality that’s been guiding your life up until now. And it’s very scary to take that big leap but at the same time it’s very rewarding once you get to your zone of genius and once you feel if you do put an effort to build your life around and live in your zone of genius then your life will be ultimately fulfilled and happy. And I think this works for all of us because there are definitely people and most people are I would say stuck in the zone of excellence but there are definitely people who already the zone of genius.

But even if you’re in your zone of genius and one thing you might not be there and everything you might not be in a zone of genius in your relationship and in your career and in your business and in your sports all the time so if you think you’re heading the zone of genius then look around and where else can you be in a zone of genius and if you think you’re not in your zone of genius then what zone are you in now and what’s the big leap that you can take in order to get in to your zone of genius. There you go. That’s something to ponder on for the weekend. I hope you have a fantastic Saturday Sunday and I’ll see you back here next time. Until then. Happy analyzing.