Evan Carmichael says your thing is hiding in plain sight: the questions people keep asking you. Pay attention to what favors they request, what articles they send, what advice they seek. Those repeated requests are a market test showing which of your skills others actually value.
Chapters
Find your thing. When you're trying to win the career lottery, sometimes the winning ticket is right in front of you. The answer to your most pressing questions and the path to the work you were born to do may come from the people you interact with every day. Everyone's an expert at something is a good principle to keep in mind, and often the something comes as a surprise. But even if you know what your skills are, a skill is only as valuable as the extent to which people will pay you to use it. How do you figure out which of your skills are most valuable and marketable? Here's the core principle: when you're not sure what your thing is, when you don't know quite where to look to find that job or career that brings you joy, flow, and a good income, the people you talk to every day can help you find it. The answer may come from your inbox, whether that inbox consists of the actual emails you receive with the same questions over and over, your social media feeds, or just the conversations you have with friends. In other words, the people in your network may actually have a better sense of what your most marketable skills are than you do. The key is looking to the questions they ask you, the favors they request of you, and maybe even the books or articles they send you simply because they think you'd be interested. When someone says, "Hey, can I ask you for a favor?" and you already know what that person is going to ask you, you have your answer. Think about it. If you have trouble updating your phone, Whom do you ask for help? If you've been going to the gym but not seeing results, whom do you ask for workout advice? When you're planning a trip abroad and need to find a hotel, whom do you ask for recommendations? Now think about it from the other perspective. Does everyone ask you for help updating a phone, or improving a workout, or recommending a place to stay while traveling? If you look closely, you'll probably find that there are certain types of advice that people ask you for over and over. Whether it's recommendations for books and movies, investing tips, or your thoughts on the latest gadget to hit the market, the advice people solicit from you is a huge clue as to which of your skills and expertise is most in demand, and therefore, probably the most marketable. Find your thing.
