Find Your Zone of Genius: Break Free from burnout, Reduce Career Anxiety, and Make the Work Your Doing Matter by Making Your Job The Right Job for You

By Laura Garnett

Imagine feeling challenged, fulfilled, and happily engaged in the work you're doing. Boost your career courage by spending more time in your Zone of Genius.

In Find Your Zone of Genius, a career self-help book on performance improvement, you will learn how to find yourself by identifying what author Laura Garnett calls your Zone of Genius—that sweet spot between what you're great at and what fulfills you at work.

Both aspirational and practical, Laura introduces a methodology based on a performance tracker tool that has helped Laura's high-profile clients at Linkedin, Capital One, and Verizon transform their careers and lives—and will help do the same for you!

In this book, you'll learn:

• Why it's so hard to be yourself at work
• How using your genius makes hard work more energizing
• How society steers you wrong in determining what kind of success is right for you
• How to identify how you like to think at work and how your personality helps inform your genius
• The different kinds of genius: process creator, visionary, strategist, synthesizer, catalyst, builder
• How to quit following your passion and instead find your purpose
• How to keep an eye out for common roadblocks to operating in your Zone of Genius

If you do the work that is outlined in this book, it will change how you feel about yourself and your career, allowing you to experience more joy, build confidence, and inspire others just by being who you are and doing the work you were meant to do.

Whether you're looking for a men's inspirational gift, a new job gift for women, or career motivation for yourself, Find Your Zone of Genius is sure to inspire. And if you liked The Big Leap book, you'll love this quick, one-hour read.

Praise for Find Your Zone of Genius:

"Work doesn't have to feel like, well, work. With Laura's advice, you can find your Zone of Genius, accomplish more, and stop counting the minutes until quitting time."

—LAURA VANDERKAM, author of Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781492675235

Laura Garnett

LAURA GARNETT is a performance strategist, speaker, and the creator of the Zone of Genius methodology. She has helped hundreds of executives and entrepreneurs define what they do better than anyone else and why. She is a regular contributor to Forbes, Success, Time, and others. She lives in New York.

Book preview

Front CoverTitle Page

Copyright © 2019, 2020 by Laura Garnett

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Cover design by Lindsey Cleworth

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Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Part 1

1

2

Part 2

3

4

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Back Cover

For Zoe,

thank you for giving me the gift of witnessing you cultivate your own Zone of Genius

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

—Joseph Campbell

Introduction

I was watching yet another documentary about a super successful person (my favorite genre). This time, it was about Bill Gates, in the documentary called Inside Bill’s Brain. During the interview, Bill talked about how he knew as a kid that he had the ability to rapidly digest lots of information and synthesize it to come up with ways to solve really complex problems. The more complex, the more energized he seemed to be. He started doing this when he was eight. He was solving complex problems for schools and for other companies.

I watch documentaries like this all the time, and this was probably one of the most obvious examples of someone knowing what their genius is—the thinking or problem solving they’re best at—valuing it, and then using it all the time. In fact, he described being really obstinate and against rules. He fought regularly with his mother, and as he matured, he opted out of environments that prevented him from working in the way he wanted to, such as college. This way of operating is usually not considered good behavior, nor would it ever be suggested as the right path to success. Yet Bill is a multibillionaire; by our society’s measuring system, he’s one of the most successful men in the United States. Following society’s direction was clearly not the right path for Bill, and it’s often not the right path for anyone who creates success that is aligned with who they really are. But what was more apparent to me in listening to him was that he’s also successful in other ways most of us crave. He’s continually challenged by his work, so much so that he would do it for free. He also seems to be intrinsically motivated by the impact he is creating. Solving some of the world’s most notable problems, such as eradicating polio worldwide, creating a way to cut carbon emissions by 50 percent, and providing clean water for those who don’t have it, are clearly linked to a rewarding feeling that he’s helping people who can’t help themselves. There is no doubt in my mind that Bill is fully operating in his Zone of Genius every day.

What I observed in the documentary was that Bill wasn’t motivated by money or power; he was just doing the kind of thinking and problem solving that he wants to do every day while having an impact that is meaningful to him. This is what creates real success. You have to wake up wanting to do the work that you do because it’s fun, exciting, and rewarding, not because of the accolades, pay, or power.

It took me thirty-five years before I learned what it was like to have work that I loved in the same way I see in Bill. In fact, I don’t just love my job; my work is an extension of who I am, and it pushes me to be who I want to be. It is my constant source of energy. When I was experiencing overwhelming sickness during my first trimester of pregnancy, my work gave me strength to carry on. I don’t daydream about what I could be doing with my career or life because I’m already doing it. I never thought it would be possible to feel this way about my job, but I do.

While what I just described may sound idyllic, it did not come easily. Creating a job I’m intellectually challenged by and emotionally attached to required a lot of work. I’ve always been ambitious,

Reviews for Find Your Zone of Genius

[Victor Vicus Casillas · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Genius to inspire readers to find their own genius, as we make way to a better world.