An inventory of skills

Here’s a simple exercise that might help you realize what you’d most like to do, pursue, or spend time in.

Open a blank document on your laptop, and write down your top 10-15 skills. Not necessarily the skills you use at work, but the one’s you most enjoy using.

If it helps, write down anecdotes alongside them; bite-sized stories of a time you used your skill to solve a problem. Here’s one of mine: “I once gave a speech about balloons at a party, and everyone was on the edge of their seat” (skill: presenting).

Once you have your 10-15 skills, you’ll find that some of them will go well together, so group like with like, if you can. For example: ‘reading, writing, synthesizing, critical thinking, and explaining,’ all sorta go together.

With your list and your groups, write down a few jobs that would employ you to make abundant use of those skills. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know much about the fields themselves, just that you get them written down.

Now you have a list of jobs you might be good at, based on a list of skills of which you most certainly have, and enjoy. I can’t think of better record to have when making decisions about what opportunities to seek out, and what not to.

I wish I’d done this sooner.