Useful Venn Diagram for Web of Goals

[7Wannabe5]

I came across this recently and I am finding it useful for reworking my web of goals/practices/activities. I thought it was also interesting to note that if you are free of the need to make money, you may find yourself centered in the realm of passionate mission. IOW, I think it is true that most people once they achieve FI will find themselves still concerned with What the World Needs and What You Are Good At in addition to What You Love Doing. Try running some of your daily activities through this diagram to see where they land. Might prove revealing. For instance, rare book scouting is clearly one of my core purposes and lawn maintenance falls out of all circles.


http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5 ... .37+PM.png

[Dragline]

I think the goal should be to change the dimensions and definitions of the circles, such that the lower one disappears altogether and the left one becomes "good enough at" and encompasses the other two.

Also, I think for most people there is no intersection between these four circles to start with -- and there is nothing wrong or abnormal with that. Hence, the trite advice to "do what you love" and everything else will magically fall into place -- like someone will pay you for it -- is misguided and is essentially telling people that there is something defective about them if they can't find the magic green star area in their present existence. People who can should be viewed as the exception, not the norm.

[jacob]

I think using the Venn diagrams as a 4D filter for the web of goals is a good idea. Previously I just did that implicitly. Looking for the magical intersection is a fools game in most cases.

Actually, the rational career advice comes to mind.

1) Pick what you can get paid for.
2) Out of that list pick what you're good at.
3) Out of the remainder pick what you love.
4) If there's anything less pick what the world needs.

(Of course this order of priorities reveal the complexity trap of the world, see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6775 ... a more eusocial choice would be picking in the order of 2, 4, 3, 1 sacrificing yourself for the good of the whole. Oftentimes I'm stupid like that (because introverted feeling is semi-strong) so it's not entirely unrealistic.)

[Ego]

I've been meeting tons of really enthusiastic twentysomeyhings here in Bali who seem to have internalized the message of this diagram and spend their days at one of the coworking spaces trying to build Tim Ferriss style automated income programs. But they are young, and like many of us were at their age, they are inexperienced. As far as I can tell, they do possess one skill that they believe hits the bullseye in the center of the diagram. The can talk. While the ability to talk is not particularly unique, it seems they have collectively decided to make it their area of specialization.

That's the problem with the diagram. Sometimes you've gotta do things you are bad at in order to get better. Sometimes you've gotta do things you don't at first enjoy to learn that you actually like them. Sometimes you've gotta do things for free to learn that you can get paid for it. Sometimes you gotta do things the world doesn't need to learn what the world needs.

Limiting options to only those things that fall within the diagram eliminates the possibility of growth and leaves the person believing that the only thing they can do is talk enthusiastically.

[7Wannabe5]

Interesting. I think personality type must have a lot to do with perspective on this diagram. As an ENTP, my problem is that almost every day I think of something new I would like to do, but I still find myself spending too much time on activities such as either lawn maintenance or watching yet another period drama. I am the opposite of a careerist or specialist because I do not believe there is anything I would enjoy doing for 40 hours/week for the next 20 years. It's more like the time/energy I have left to spend is like pennies in my pocket and I am at Baskin-Robbins trying to decide what would be the best possible combination of not-just-40-but-infinite flavors to scoops. My natural tendency would be to choose in the order of:

1) Love Doing
2) World Needs /I'm Good At (tie)
3) Can Get Paid (extreme frugal survival level minimum maintained)

Therefore, the filter is helpful for me in sorting through the literally hundreds of items on my possible fun or interesting projects lists, and for evaluating how I actually am freely choosing to spend my time/energy. For instance, the reasons I am spending time/energy on lawn maintenance is I am trying to avoid getting a weed ordinance fine and I don't want to be a bad neighbor, but I detest doing it so I really need to prioritize doing some projects to put something other than a lawn in place on my lots. This is essentially no different than prioritizing saving money in interest-bearing account in order to quit 40 hour/wk job that doesn't make the grade on the filter at that level of commitment of time/energy.

OTOH, I agree that the diagram is rather limited. I think it might be better if the lowest circle was something like Can Obtain a Yield rather than Can Get Paid, because that would more clearly show flow of resources. Money only naturally flows toward you if you engage in activities that other people who have money want you to do, but there are other ways to obtain a yield that do not require you to interact with other-people-who-have-money. For instance, chopping wood from your lot obtains a yield stored in the form of logs, running obtains a yield stored in the form of increased aerobic capacity, returning a lost toddler to her mother (activity I engaged in yesterday)obtains a yield in the form of social goodwill, learning to play all of Chopin's Mazurkas (project my sister has been engaged in this summer) obtains a yield in the form of advanced skill saved along brain/fingers route. etc. etc. etc.

Context also matters. For instance, I very much enjoy caring for babies and young children up to around the level of 16 hours/week at my current age. In fact, I find myself feeling unfulfilled if I am not engaged in this realm of work on some level. However, I would never choose to take a job as nanny for wealthy parents who think they have better ways to spend their time than caring for their own children (my daughter had a job like this one summer and it totally raised her level of esteem for me-lol) even if the job paid well, but I would and have taken on the job of caring for the babies of young single mothers who were trying to complete their education, my nephew when my sister had post-partum depression and the child of a criminal father and mentally-ill mother for low or no wages (my sister's husband was a butcher at Whole Foods, so they paid me in meat.) That's the beauty of choosing to have an extremely frugal lifestyle. Even if you don't have passive income flowing in, you have a great deal of leeway in pick-n-choose in terms of yield/hr if you only need to bring in around $800/month.

This might not help connect the dots for anybody other than me, but this quote from "Food Not Lawns" which I came across in a passage about building consensus in community kind of describes the stream that might flow through the above filter:

"Like fire, water, work and sex, power in many forms flows through all elements in our gardens and communities, and the more comfortable we can become with it, the better."

[GandK]

I like this diagram. Thanks for posting it!

Has anyone else run into a situation where, the moment you get paid for doing something, you completely lose your passion for that thing? That's happened to me more than once, and it's one of the reasons (maybe the biggest reason) I sought ER. I simply do not want the intersection between my actions/passions and money.

[jennypenny]

Has anyone else run into a situation where, the moment you get paid for doing something, you completely lose your passion for that thing?

Yes. I learned to hate non-profit work even after trying several different jobs. I much prefer my current volunteer work. To keep my editing work from souring, I do a fair amount of work gratis for new authors and some pro bono work for a non-profit I support.

I wonder if I would feel differently about monetizing my 'passions' in a barter or gift economy. I've starting accepting amazon gift cards for payment and I find I'm more comfortable with it, especially with the authors and bloggers I now consider friends.

[7Wannabe5]

@GandK- It has been more my experience that structuring something I previously enjoyed into a paid activity is what caused it to become less enjoyable. If I can eliminate the structure, then I can still enjoy the activity and get paid for it. Structure that kills enjoyment for me usually takes the form of either specific commitments to other people or to the use of my time/energy in a routine manner or the addition of paper-work/bureaucracy to the activity. IOW, sometimes if you get down to the nub of it, what makes anything you do for money less enjoyable is the need to spend at least two minutes doing something equivalent to operating a cash register. Like if you lived in a village of perfect trust then this wouldn't be a problem.

Also, there are clearly realms in which there may be a psychological aversion to performing a task or engaging in an activity for money rather than love or some other more noble-selfish motivation. I am rather fascinated by the topic of sexual anthropology (currently reading "Voodoo-Eros: Ethnological Studies in the Sex-Life of African Aborigines" which is also quite revealing of the prejudices/proclivities of its mid-20th century German author) so it amuses me to write in K-mart Realist manner about what I am trading for sex, but stone-cold turn-off if I really think my lover believes I function somewhat like an ATM machine. I have similar but more mediated feelings about trading other sorts of personal services for pay. For instance, I don't like jobs where I am told to smile at the customer even though I am naturally a smiley person. Obviously, this can also easily extend to any artistic or creative endeavor being commercially marketed.

[Dragline]

That's the problem with the diagram. Sometimes you've gotta do things you are bad at in order to get better. Sometimes you've gotta do things you don't at first enjoy to learn that you actually like them. Sometimes you've gotta do things for free to learn that you can get paid for it. Sometimes you gotta do things the world doesn't need to learn what the world needs.

Limiting options to only those things that fall within the diagram eliminates the possibility of growth and leaves the person believing that the only thing they can do is talk enthusiastically.

Exactly. This is what I meant by modifying the circles. Unless you are completely static, the diagram only models one point or phase in your lifetime.

I was amused by your description of the young people there trying to implement the Tim Ferriss lifestyle. Talking is one thing, but sales and marketing are the real skills that are necessary for that. Most people can get "good enough" at it with some effort, but it doesn't make it fun for most people.

[GandK]

Also, there are clearly realms in which there may be a psychological aversion to performing a task or engaging in an activity for money rather than love or some other more noble-selfish motivation.

A lot of realms, apparently. This just popped up in my reddit feed... how timely:

Rethinking Work (NYT opinion piece)

The whole piece is worth a read, but here's one part that ties back to this discussion:

The truth is that we are not money-driven by nature. Studies show that people are less likely to help load a couch into a van when you offer a small payment than when you don’t, because the offer of pay makes their task a commercial transaction rather than a favor to another human being. And people are less likely to agree to have a nuclear waste site in their community when you offer to pay them, because the offer of compensation undermines their sense of civic duty.

As far as goal/personal development goes, I've always used the Wheel of Life. It's better than anything else at making sure I'm not neglecting any area of my life that I want to improve in. I'm awesome at focusing on one area and letting 5 or 6 other areas go to pot. WoL also helps me feel better about my life in general because when one area of my life sucks, it's easy for me to feel like I suck at everything. It's great to see a visual representation of why that internal script is false.

[Ego]

I was amused by your description of the young people there trying to implement the Tim Ferriss lifestyle. Talking is one thing, but sales and marketing are the real skills that are necessary for that. Most people can get "good enough" at it with some effort, but it doesn't make it fun for most people.

I know they would drive most people crazy.... sometimes I find I need to get away for a while.... but I like to be around them because they are directing so much energy at finding the unicorn. It's good to be around people who are excited about that sort of quest. Yesterday at the gym I eavesdropped as one guy tried to "close" another on his online personal development program. I admired his chutzpah.

[George the original one]

You love doing it, you're good at it, you can get paid doing it, and then you discover that the money transaction turns it into something ugly because it allows the payer to control your life: deadlines, not done the way they want it, the customer is an idiot, etc.

[IlliniDave]

I'm in the more pragmatic camp. That might be because I am the product of a time/culture/circumstance where families maintained close multi-generational ties, and my grandparents came of age during or just after the Great Depression. They were born on farms but forced into the city as to take low-wage blue collar jobs due to economic circumstances. Work and the ability to earn money was a privilege to them, a responsibility they had to their families, and hence a priority. Responsibility came before enjoyment without a second thought.

So I went about it the other way around relative to the the type of approach espoused in the diagram. I learned to enjoy my work rather than try to get someone to pay me to enjoy myself. I see enjoyment as something I carry with me rather than something I find only here or there. I suppose it is sort of a Zen thing. The easiest way to be unhappy is to spend your time wishing you were somewhere else doing something different. Without really understanding what I was doing I learned how to both interlace my overarching life goals with the present, and to accept the present in that context and make to best of each immediate circumstance.

I've only lived one life so I can't say if I've achieved something extraordinary, or if I've been extraordinarily lucky. I know my efforts to convey that "wisdom" to my daughters has largely fallen on deaf ears. If I have any regrets on my deathbed it will be that I'm afraid.

Mike Rowe had a nice statement on this topic which I refer to from time to time, especially his conclusion that more often than not it's best to say, "Don't follow your passion, but always bring it with you." The whole letter is at the link below.

http://yellowhammernews.com/faithandcul ... irty-jobs/

Despite what I said above I think the application of Venn Diagrams shown is a useful thing, although I'd suggest as a complementary approach eliminating the "what you love doing" circle and exploring ways you can employ it like a crayon to color in the promising regions the others suggest. And if that's impossible, I'd suggest one can find a true purpose in their life that is disjoint from their source of income.

[Dragline]

Thanks for that link -- I have the same reaction whenever I hear that bromide. It's very bad advice for most people, who do not possess exceptional abilities, unless they just happen to have a passion for something that is also lucrative with average or reasonably easily acquired ability. Most people intuitively understand this when it comes to physical tasks -- i.e., they know they are not exceptional runners or swimmers, so don't try to make a career out of it -- but seemingly forget that its probably true with respect to most other things as well.

The people who spout this bromide are invariably the "winners" in a selection bias lottery -- hence, why it frequently comes out of the mouths of people giving commencement addresses. There is no accounting for the vast majorities who took this advice and were not able to make a living off that passion -- except you can see it statistically in the vast debt loads carried by so many young people these days.

The reason I think I hate it the most is that it consigns most people to a de facto "loser" category when to be a "winner" you have to both be following a personal passion and making a career/living out of it. It's a very self-limiting an debilitating way to look at the world.

[GandK]

The people who spout this bromide are invariably the "winners" in a selection bias lottery -- hence, why it frequently comes out of the mouths of people giving commencement addresses. There is no accounting for the vast majorities who took this advice and were not able to make a living off that passion -- except you can see it statistically in the vast debt loads carried by so many young people these days.

The reason I think I hate it the most is that it consigns most people to a de facto "loser" category when to be a "winner" you have to both be following a personal passion and making a career/living out of it. It's a very self-limiting an debilitating way to look at the world.

You're right. We've had the "define success yourself; don't let others define it for you" conversation with our teenagers more than once. We also talk about the need to find fulfillment outside of work, and not to expect your job, your spouse, or any other external force to "make" you happy. I so wish someone had said this stuff to me in my late teens... although whether I would have listened and acted upon it at 18 is another matter.

[7Wannabe5]

The key for me is regarding the diagram as a channel-like filter, not a puzzle to be solved. Maybe this is because I don't believe that a person can have only one purposeful activity in which they are engaging their energy. You wake up on any given morning with a full tank of energy to spend on or along with the next 16 hours of your limited lifespan. Wouldn't it be better if you were able to direct most of your energy through some of the more inner areas of this diagram, rather than allowing all of it to spill over into the blank white space that surrounds? Also, I did note that I thought it would be better if the lower circle was "Obtain a Yield" rather than "Make Money." I agree that it doesn't matter where you start as you attempt to move towards the center or whether your approach is more active-directed or Zen-like.

I think the diagram can serve as a pretty good rough guide for what will prove to be a very personal evaluation. For instance, I was discussing the diagram with my sister and I suggested that her current project of "Learning to play all of Chopin's Mazurkas" was probably in the Passion realm, and she informed me that it was actually a Purpose, because it was something that the world needs because popular music written in 3/4 time is rare, and she also intended to perform the music for groups of Polish-heritage senior citizens for a fee once she had mastered it. Obviously, very few people can completely support themselves on fees earned from performance of Mazurkas, but let's say my sister rounds up a few regular gigs on the Senior Center Circuit in Detroit and Chicago, and nets $500/year from this activity. $500/.04 = $12,500 she doesn't have to earn and invest by working at a job she despises. Which brings me to the other point I wanted to make which is that I think there might be more people who are "afraid or feel otherwise too inhibited to perform or parade their purpose in front of an audience" as there are people who don't have a purpose. IOW, sometimes a person will only engage in their purpose in social isolation and that is why nobody yells "Hurrah" and/or throws some money their way. Emily Dickinson developed a passionate mission that created a yield during her life, but her purpose was only discovered after her death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2kDsqGeoLU

[7Wannabe5]

@ffj: I absolutely agree with the analogy in the Mike Rowe article you posted. It's way more fun to just go ahead and date anybody (everybody!) reasonably attractive who asks you out than it is to "Stay home every night and wait around for Mr. Right." I think the notion that there is just one soulmate out there for you is as ridiculous as the notion that you only have one possible purpose. Weird coincidence would be that I have dates lined up this week with 3 different engineers who are all named Mike. Of course, I still will have to "pay my dues" before "the goodies will roll in" if I choose to take on any (or all?) of these "jobs." Luckily, I have already mastered the art of coloring my hair yellow and ironing it flat.

[7Wannabe5]

@ffj

I really do have dates with 3 engineers named Mike and also 1 named Mohammed this week, but I was attempting a bit of reductio ad absurdum on the Mike Rowe piece. Seems to me it's a bit like the adage that "Ugly men make the best husbands." Anyways, 2 M's down and 2 to go. Pretty much you are only lucky to be named Mike in my area if you enjoy trying to convince an extremely nerdy woman that she shouldn't date at least 12 men before making a decision based on a Venn diagram similar to the one above, but yet to be thoroughly constructed. Mike2 told me that he thinks my protocol should just be to have sex with any man I meet for coffee, but he was joking. The likelihood of getting 3 or 4 engineers over the age of 50 to form a happy polyamorous circle with me is approximately equivalent to the likelihood of getting Ford, GM and Chrysler to all simultaneously offer me 10 hour/wk permanent positions with benefits. Mike1 is retiring next year and he has a yacht and has been sailing since he was 12, so that's kind of tempting, but the financial planner/permaculturist I am still dating from last month plans to grow orchards and raise hogs on 50 acres, so that is very tempting too, except for the fact that he also wants children, and I would almost certainly have to go buy some expensive eggs in the Ukraine and spend some more of my life energy hanging raggedy gray cloth diapers on a line again. I felt like I had to let the biker/construction manager go because he didn't have any real books in his house, so something like that should probably be one of my circles, reasonably buff/fit /healthy would obviously have to be another, courteous behavior towards me and waitstaff...what else?

[IlliniDave]

@IlliniDave

I like Mike Rowe. I had no idea he had so much sense until I read this one day:

http://www.lifebuzz.com/mike-rowe/

It seems like an awful amount of people have forgotten that one has to "pay their dues" before the goodies start rolling in. That and the fact that nobody cares about your enlightenment until you provide something of value to them first. Pick something, become good at it, take advantage of the opportunities that your competence provides, write your own ticket. It works.

Thanks for that link. I like that one even better than the on I linked above. It's rare to see "credible" people state some of the things that I believe. It took me a while to learn that how we feel about things, specifically whether or not we are happy, is largely up to us--many years of being accused of being my ex-'s source of unhappiness before I assembled it all together. That's not exactly the point you were making, but it is what stood out in the statement to me. But it leads naturally to the idea you emphasized. It seems like too many people want to provide value after they have been compensated, or want to be compensated without adding any value. I get the appeal of that, but for the most part it won't work so well.

[7Wannabe5]

@IlliniDave

I think that there is a radical and very important difference between the concept that we "are responsible for how we feel about things" vs. "we are responsible for our own happiness." I do not at all agree with the first but I totally agree with the second. For instance, I am not responsible for how I feel about being served burnt scrambled eggs with ketchup for breakfast or because I was snarled at by somebody who chose to drink one too many beers or because it is hailing on my picnic. What I am responsible for is changing my own behavior in thoughtful response to "things" or "situations" or "behaviors of others" in accordance with best seeing to my own happiness. I am also responsible for communicating my feelings and preferences to others with whom I am in relationship. IOW, it is my belief that it is proper and functional to communicate "This behavior you are exhibiting in relationship to me seems to be causing me to experience this unpleasant emotion. Here is what I intend to do about that." or, for instance, "I really feel hurt and disrespected when you snarl at me like you did last night. Therefore, the next time I observe that you are drinking too much and in an ugly mood, I am going to go visit my sister." but it is improper and dysfunctional to communicate "I am unhappy because you are a mean drunk. Fix that." and even worse to actually believe it. IOW, own and accept and communicate your feelings whatever they are without internal judgment or censor or shame, but take responsibility for your own behavior and offer others the respect inherent in allowing them to take full responsibility for their own behavior by making them fully aware when it concerns you.