Speaker: Scott Dinsmore
TEDxGoldenGatePark 2012
Date: October 2012
Location: San Francisco, California
Description from TED website:
Scott Dinsmore quit a job that made him miserable and spent the next four years wondering how to find work that was joyful and meaningful. He shares what he learned in this deceptively simple talk about finding out what matters to you — and then getting started doing it.
My Review / Notes / Thoughts
Over 80% of the people around don’t enjoy their work.
That quote made me go “Wow” … he’s right, and it makes you think that you should have known that. It feels like common sense, but perhaps we are too focused on ourselves and our discontent to notice the others around us who are struggling.
Scott really dug into the topic to find out the formula for finding work that you love. He states that he interviewed people who do inspiring work and read 300 books on purpose and career – that’s a lot of books!
Through this process, he managed to distill the information down into three steps to form a “framework”. He states that the first part is to become a “self-expert” – in that you need to understand yourself.
If we don’t know what we’re looking for, we’re never going to find it.
So, in order to become a self-expert, we need to find out what our unique strengths are – and he recommended StrengthsFinder 2.0 (both the book and the online tool). The second step is to determine what are your values, and the third step is our experiences. These steps certainly require reflection, possibly through the use of journaling. Scott mentions that he spends time every day, week, and month to reflect “on what went right, what went wrong, and what … to repeat, and what [to] apply more to [his] life.”
I don’t want to spoil the video for you though, so please go watch it and hear all that Scott has to say. There is a lot more to glean from the talk!
However, just in case you don’t have the time to watch the 18 minute video, I do want to reiterate the question he left his audience with:
What is the work that you can’t not do?
I hope you all have a great day, and keep learning!