Welcome to the Lucky Approach!
Here are the goals of this post
Maximize your opportunities…
- Build your opportunity feed
- Make your resume more remarkable & differentiated
- Gain new skills and network
…While minimizing risks:
- Test out your own interest level
- Test out the market – Do people want this? If so, who?
The Lucky Approach consists of one core activity: pursue a micro-passion. You’re probably wondering what a micro-passion is. It is a non-traditional way to test career paths through hands-on experience.A micro-passion is a project that satisfies 3 criteria:
- It can be executed in under a month
- You are excited by it
- It can be shared widely
I will illustrate a micro-passion through the story of Stuart. Stuart was the leader of an indie band. When that ended, he worked at whatever jobs he could find including one in retail and another one as entry level administrator — all of which he found uninspiring. At this point, he has no clue what he wants to do long term and his resume doesn’t exactly attract the attention of any employers.
Stuart did a micro-passion that changed everything.
Knowing that he loved the arts, Stuart volunteered as an organizer for an arts festival. A few weeks of investment in something he loves eventually turned into a huge win.
Part of Stuart’s responsibilities involved speaking with the media about the festival and sharing it with his network. His leadership skills—and love for this community-run festival—were on full display. After his micro-passion, Stuart was courted to run as a candidate for a political party. Even though he didn’t win, the exposure to government and politics opened new doors. It led to him applying for a job as the Executive Director for an arts council. This is his job today and he feels really lucky to have found his way into it.
If you go talk to some who is really happy doing what they do. There is a good chance they will tell you the story along the lines of “I did this thing, then someone ask me to do this, and then this happened, and then this happened, and here I am now.” A stream of what looks like lucky coincidences but the seed of it all is them creating something they love and sharing it with others — which is at the core of a micro-passion.
The one month limit is to designed to help you come with something manageable so you don’t get overwhelmed. To illustrate, how many people talk about writing a novel but never do so because the task is too daunting. The National Novel Writing Month has single handedly solved this problem by challenging participants to write a little over 1,600 words a day everyday in the month of November to complete a draft of their 50,000 word novel. Over the last twenty years, this challenge has helped several hundred thousand people complete their first novel.
Micro-passions are magical because they simultaneously maximize opportunities and minimize risk. What do I mean by that? First of all, by excitedly sharing your final product, you transform everyone in your network into your champion and recruiter. They see how passionate you are and if they are impressed with the result, they will remember it. You’ve effectively crowd-sourced your job search to them – and created what I call “opportunity feeds”. If they hear relevant opportunities, they’d channel them to you. You can talk about your micro-passion during your job interview as an example of you taking initiative and how your natural passion led you to where you are today. Employers are always asking why you want the job, the micro-passion help you demonstrate your interest. This is especially true if you are changing fields.
Even if the final product isn’t as good as you hoped it to be, chances are you would have picked up some new skills and made some new contacts along the way — both would serve you in the future.
On the risk-minimization side, micro-passions can help you test out the market before you make bigger investments. I did one back when I was still in school, trying to turn my hobby of making lotions and creams into a small business. I wrote a business plan and started handing out samples to family and friends. I found out their enthusiasm for the lotion was polite and luke warm at best.
I was also able to test out my own interest level. While I enjoy it as a hobby, I just don’t love making lotions and creams enough to do what it takes to make a successful business out of it. But I did find out that I love entrepreneurship. From that experience, I was on a mission to figure out an area that I did love and obsess over enough to make a business out of — which turned out to career development. That came into focus as a result of doing another micro-passion.
One more word of caution about picking your micro-passion because if you are here, chances are you are ambitious, and ambitious people are prong to this pitfall. Remember the excitement criteria? If Stuart had picked a project that he thought would look good instead of what felt good and intrinsically excited him, even if he succeeded, he may have set himself up to attract opportunities he didn’t really want. If that opportunity is prestigious or high paying, that’s a recipe for building a career trap that eventually get you into a mid-life crisis. I’m only saying this because I’ve fallen into the ambition trap before and I want to gently warn you of that danger of letting your ambition dictating everything, rather than listen to your inherent excitement. I’m not saying you should choose one of the two. When you combine your natural interest and ambition, you multiply your drive and don’t have to solely rely on your discipline to get things done.
Micro-passion is underlying mechanism to create your own luck, and organically grow into a career you would love. I can’t wait to hear all about the micro-passions you take on. And best of luck!