I heard this recently from one of Justin Kan's YouTube videos and it's really shaped the way I think about my career.
"Work in your zone of genius [not your zone of competence]."
Simply put, it means to work on problems that:
1. you have a natural inclination towards
2. (and perhaps more importantly) give you energy
For example, I am good at full stack web development because that is the first job I got out of college. If I want to "optimize my career", it would be best to continue down this path and apply for roles that fit my experience. But, unfortunately for me, building web apps is not something that "gives me energy".
One thing that does give me energy is thinking about/playing video games. I've always spent my evenings watching GDC talks or game dev documentaries. After watching Justin's video, I decided to take a shot at making games[0] and it's been a very different experience from making web apps. Even after a full day of coding, I continued to think about how to make the game better!
The key insight is that you get better faster when you work on stuff you have a natural inclination towards, and that gives you energy to work harder on those problems.
The hard part is making the leap to work on these problems, even if the trade-off is super high. For example, should I continue down the FAANG path and have a good life with all those perks as a full stack developer, or do I follow my "zone of genius" and enter the gaming industry which is known for some extreme practices.
Who knows, with the way gaming is shaping up (Roblox, MineCraft, Unity, Fortnite, Meta, etc.) perhaps switching to this gaming industry is actually the more optimal solution :P
"Work in your zone of genius [not your zone of competence]."
Simply put, it means to work on problems that:
1. you have a natural inclination towards
2. (and perhaps more importantly) give you energy
For example, I am good at full stack web development because that is the first job I got out of college. If I want to "optimize my career", it would be best to continue down this path and apply for roles that fit my experience. But, unfortunately for me, building web apps is not something that "gives me energy".
One thing that does give me energy is thinking about/playing video games. I've always spent my evenings watching GDC talks or game dev documentaries. After watching Justin's video, I decided to take a shot at making games[0] and it's been a very different experience from making web apps. Even after a full day of coding, I continued to think about how to make the game better!
The key insight is that you get better faster when you work on stuff you have a natural inclination towards, and that gives you energy to work harder on those problems.
The hard part is making the leap to work on these problems, even if the trade-off is super high. For example, should I continue down the FAANG path and have a good life with all those perks as a full stack developer, or do I follow my "zone of genius" and enter the gaming industry which is known for some extreme practices.
Who knows, with the way gaming is shaping up (Roblox, MineCraft, Unity, Fortnite, Meta, etc.) perhaps switching to this gaming industry is actually the more optimal solution :P
[0] https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/GameDev