Here I share a “SMP model” to help you find your own career direction. It
sounds simple, but there are many things to pay attention to when doing it. Let’s demonstrate how to do it according to this SMP mode?
I have summarized four steps.
The first step is to get ready. I suggest that you find a quiet environment, such as no one’s coffee shop, tea room, study, etc., turn off all electronic intelligent devices, shield other people’s interference, and let the brain in an empty state. Then take out a pen, a blank sheet of paper, or a notepad and get ready.
If you can’t find this kind of environment and state for the time being, then pause first, and then start when you are ready. Because if your mind is not calm and there is a lot of noise in your head, it will be difficult for you to hear the real voice in your heart when you take the following steps.
The second step, according to the SMP model, write down three words on the paper in turn: Strengths, Meaning, Pleasure, and then ask yourself three questions in turn: First, what can I do to make myself feel that I have an advantage?
Second, What do I do that makes sense to me? Third, what can I do to make me happy? Note that the order of these three questions should not be disturbed.
In order to facilitate your understanding, I also drew a picture in the manuscript. If you want to see the demonstration of SMP mode intuitively, you can listen to the audio of this lesson according to the manuscript. After
we write down the words “advantage, meaning, and happiness,” some people may feel that these words are too abstract to write their own answers. It doesn’t matter. I’ll explain these three words a little bit.
“Things that have an advantage,” I think, are things that may be difficult for others to do, but are relatively easy for me to do, easy to grasp, very good at, and very creative. For example, for me, I think my advantage is mainly good at analysis and summary, I am also good at integration and micro-innovation on the basis of previous achievements, in addition, my creative ability is good, aesthetic is also good;
“Meaningful things” are things that I am willing to do without pay, and when I do them, I feel inspired. For example, for me, things that I find meaningful include solving difficult problems, personally creating a theoretical system, sharing my knowledge and experience, and so on. These things make me feel very meaningful, even if I don’t make money. I would even like to spend money to do it.
“Happy things” means that when you do something, there is no pressure, you are happy, you enjoy it, and you feel that time passes very quickly. For example, for me, the things that make me happy are writing calligraphy, painting, helping young people grow up, being with my family, creating and so on. When I do these things, there is no pressure, I am relaxed, focused and enjoy the process.
All right, after writing the answers to these three questions, let’s go to the third step: find out the intersection of these three items.
Tell you a quick way to find the intersection, that is, according to the order of “advantage, meaning, happiness”, starting from each of your advantages, see if you can do something meaningful with this advantage, and finally let you feel a kind of happiness?
For example, the first intersection I found is the part circled in red. Through my own advantages of summarizing and micro-innovation, sharing the knowledge I have learned and the case experience I have accumulated, I can get the joy of helping young people grow up. At the intersection of these three, I think of the career direction of teachers, professional trainers, consultants and other jobs. Therefore, I am now developing in the direction of professional trainers. I am cooperating with several well-known knowledge payment platforms to develop online and offline training courses to help young people solve the complex and inefficient problems they encounter in their work and life, combining my research results in the field of concise thinking over the years. In addition, I also studied for a doctor’s degree after work to prepare for becoming a more professional teacher. The second intersection
I found is the part circled in blue. I am good at business analysis and have strong creative ability. By integrating
these two advantages and creating a system by myself, I can get the joy of creation. At the intersection of these three, the career direction I think of is writing books. So I combined my research on concise thinking with my years of entrepreneurial experience and business observation to write a book, The Power of Simplicity. After the book was officially published in 2016, it also reached the top three of the new edition of Jingdong in the month of its release, and then it was reprinted four times in a row.
By the way, if you can’t find the intersection between them after you finish writing, I suggest you find a mentor and do the above steps again with him. As long as the tutor is more experienced than you and knows you better. His main role is to provide an external perspective to help you understand yourself, analyze what advantages you have, and give you some advice appropriately. After
finding a happy career direction, the fourth step is to put it into action. This is a very important step after using the SMP pattern to find a career direction. Why is that? Because after finding a career direction that makes you excited, only action will bring about real change.
For example, after I planned to write a book, I made an action plan for myself: first, I began to do the material accumulation, reading and training of writing a book. In my spare time, I read a lot of reference books on how to write, and even took some courses to teach writing, which can help me better master writing skills. Secondly, I also initiated the formation of many associations and alliances among entrepreneurs. In this process, I can communicate with many executives of well-known entrepreneurs in China face to face, accumulate and expand many business cases, and make full preparations for me to write a book on how to use concise thinking in the business field, that is, the book The Power of Simplicity.
Moreover, after deciding to cooperate with several well-known knowledge payment platforms in online courses, I also quickly launched the next step. For example, I first opened some online
classes and small classes to accumulate materials and cases for myself, and then prepared high-quality content through a large number of reading summaries.
In addition, have you noticed that even when I decide on my career direction, I don’t immediately reject anything that has nothing to do with my career direction. To be honest, I can’t do it now. The role of career direction is not to make us say no to all the things we have to do, but to slowly adjust the proportion of “have to do” and “want to do” in our life. For example, I can gradually reduce the things I have to do, or improve the efficiency of doing things, and invest the time saved in the things I want to do. Reduce the proportion of
“have to do” and slowly increase the proportion of “want to do”. In the long run, it will naturally be rewarded from quantitative change to qualitative change. A classmate
once left me a message: Mr. Wang, I have worked for five years, changed six jobs, and tried many industries. But every time I try, I feel that the current job is not suitable for me. I also agree with you that we should simplify our life with concise thinking, choose a suitable career direction for me, and then concentrate on this direction. However, I simply do not know how to find their own career direction?
This question is very good and particularly representative. Over the years, the job-hopping rate and turnover rate in the workplace are getting higher and higher, which shows that most people are constantly trying and making mistakes. These people are not afraid to make choices, but they just don’t know what the purpose of their work is? Naturally, there is no way to determine the direction of career choice.
It’s all about happiness, and so is work. What is the purpose of
our work?
Gallup once conducted a survey on the job satisfaction of Chinese people, and the results showed that more than half of Chinese people were not satisfied with their jobs. Do you know the reason why these people are not satisfied? Not because they really have no choice, but because when they choose their career, they put the pursuit of material and wealth above happiness. That’s why most people in the workplace cherish the dreams of painters, musicians and travelers, but dare not start to realize them. After all, busy or even tired work now provides them with a relatively good standard of living and a stable future.
But from my point of view, I have done business, and I know that money is really the best measure of a business’s business success. For example, we use money to estimate its assets and liabilities, profits and losses. But for people, it’s a little different. Almost no one will deny that the greatest criterion to measure a person’s life is happiness. Money can sometimes bring us some happiness, but in the final analysis, it is only a means to achieve happiness.
SMP Mode: Find the Most Happy Career Direction
After understanding the importance of happiness in determining career direction, you can answer the question in the student’s message just now: How to find this happy career direction? The method
I share with you today is the MPS model proposed by Professor Tyler Ben Shahar, the father of happiness at Harvard University, and it is also the method I use to find my own position in life. M means meaning; P means pleasure; S stands for strengths. According to my own practice and thinking, I have adjusted the order of use of this mode, and converted MPS mode into SMP mode. The conversion method is very simple. You just need to answer three questions:
1) What is my advantage? 2) What makes sense to me?
3) What makes me happy?
Then write down the answers to these three questions and find out their intersection.