Are you operating from your zone of genius?
Where is your energy coming from?
There is an undeniable connection between feeling energized by the tasks we’re good at and feeling drained by the activities we struggle with. When we feel like we are excelling, our energy hums. Conversely, spending time doing the things we’re bad at saps us. This may seem obvious, but have you ever examined your week to understand where the blips of energy and drain are coming from? These exercises will help you and your team explore more deeply to organize work for higher productivity:
Energy Audit
A very practical exercise to help you figure out what activities fall within your zone of genius is an energy audit. Most often, you perform best when you are doing things that energize you. Your goal should be to spend most of your time (75–80 percent) doing things that energize you. If you do, magic will occur.
Get two highlighters, pens, or pencils of different colors (red and green are ideal, but any will do). Print out the last two weeks of your calendar when you were working. Go through each day and weekend hour by hour and ask yourself, “Did that activity give me energy or drain my energy?” Highlight in green those that gave you energy, and highlight in red those that drained your energy. There are no neutrals; every hour must be marked one color or the other.
When finished, create two lists – everything that drains your energy and everything that energizes you. Then, for each activity that drains your energy, brainstorm ways to:
- Eliminate / reduce it from your responsibilities
- Outsource it
- Make it truly energizing
Keep doing this energy audit each month until 75 percent or more of your time is spent doing things that give you energy. If you do, you will be able to achieve far more in less time because you will perform far better. You will be in your Zone of Genius.
Energy audits are the single most powerful tool I know for creating joy and engagement in the workplace. They are meant to be an ongoing practice, not a one-shot action. Continue doing them until the results are mostly green. And then do them once a quarter as a spot check.
Zone of Genius
This exercise will help you clarify where you excel, what brings you energy, and the drains you need to solve for based on your four zones of genius:
Zone of Incompetence - are the things that other people probably do better than you and therefore you should outsource if they don’t give you joy.
Zone of Competence - are the things that you do just fine, but others are as good as you or better and therefore you should outsource if they don’t give you joy.
Zone of Excellence - are the things that you are talented and skilled at (i.e., better than others) but they don’t give you energy. This is the danger zone. Many people will want you to keep doing these things (because they gain significant value from you doing them), but this is the area that you should also look to move away from. This is the hard one!
Zone of Genius - are the things that you are uniquely good at in the world and that you love to do (so much so that time and space seem to disappear when you do them). This is where you can add most value to the world and yourself. This is where you should be driving toward spending most, if not all, of your time.
The key in any organization is for people to understand where their Zone of Genius lies, and then map all activities to the right people through an areas of responsibility list. This exercise can be especially powerful when done as a team because for every activity that feels un-fun to you, there is someone out there who not only excels at it but also loves it (yes, even the “horrible” tasks, like firing people).
Sources: Matt Mochary, Gay Hendricks