What to do in life? At the exam of the life’s meaning each one of us faces the same question. If you are a teenager, you might go and ask your parents. Candid parents might surprise you saying they had no idea if their current activities made any sense. Hence how could they know what you should be doing with your life?

That’s the point. Maybe you are reading it as forty years old and once again crashed into the question what to do in life? In your case no need to bother your parents, so you can just do what I suggest below.

Think for a moment and write down what you can be very good at. Keep thinking for as long as you know what you can be best in the world at.

Then take another sheet of paper and write down what you are passionate about. List what you love doing and what you could be doing at any free moment. Consider the activities making you so happy that you tend to forget to go to bed or to have a meal.

After completion of the previous lists it’s time for the third page, the last one. Write down which of your skills people will pay for. List everything what can turn into money.

Now the final piece (however it might be tough): find the common ground of the three groups.

Your path goes where you have talents, where are activities you love doing and what people will pay money for.

Maybe the answer has just jumped  into your head when reading this text. Excellent!

And maybe you are staring at your three lists and could not see any connection linking them together? You are quite a typical case. E.g. it took me several months to discover my common ground.

Finding the common ground is a creative job. Your task is to put together the things that maybe nobody else could connect.

You might get some help from people around. Show the sheets to a chosen person who might advice you. That could be your family member, a friend or a professional counsellor or coach.

At the end when you find your key, you might realize  the common ground opens a new path in business or science.

At this point I want to share my special comment with teenagers. In your case the completion of the exercise may take place in ten or more years. I think, in your age, choosing a general path of life is an absolutely sufficient solution. You might stop at definition of broader areas of interest such as math, science, social or literature. Precise job and specialization could be clarified many years later.

When is the right time to choose exactly what to do? To find your answer I suggest reading a very good article of Paul Graham (here is the link). I agree with his opinion that sometimes we need experience of thirty or forty years to decide on our vocation. Before that we can gather various experiences and discover joy of finding ourselves in different new roles.

(I did not invent the Test of Three Circles. I popularize it. I know it was described by Jim Collins. Maybe he was the author of the concept, or maybe he also found it somewhere else?)

Have you completed the Test of Three Circles? How do you like your results? Maybe you share your opinion below.

Below I share with you the text written by Daniel Pink and published in eBook What Matters Now

(Click it to enlarge.)

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