The Art of Work

The 7 characteristics of a calling. Each gets its own chapter.

Let’s take a super quick look:

1. Awareness. The essence of this idea is the fact that we need to be aware that *something* is missing in our lives—that we’re capable of more than we’re currently being. Without that awareness, we’ll miss the opportunities that present themselves.

2. Apprenticeship. In the good ol’ days, one mastered a craft via an extended apprenticeship phase in which the young student apprenticed with the Master (usually for around 7 years) before heading out as a “Journeyman” honing the craft before submitting a Masterpiece to the guild for acceptance as a Master. These days a 3 month internship (!) is often the depth of an apprenticeship. We need to lean in just a tad more.

3. Practice. Jeff references the usual suspects (Dan Coyle, Geoff Colvin, Carol Dweck) to describe the importance of practice. 10 years (like the Apprentice)/10,000 hours of what is often described as “deliberate practice” or “deep practice.” Jeff calls it “painful practice” as it forces you to stretch outside of your comfort zone and if you’re not feeling at least a little pain you’re doing it wrong. :)

4. Discovery. Jeff makes the important distinction between “making a leap” and “building a bridge.” We want to let go of the naïve idea that we suddenly discover our purpose and, rather, get to work on incrementally revealing it a little more. Think shovel rather than map. Build the bridge one insight/learning opportunity at a time kinda thing.

5. Profession. Now it’s time to embrace failure. There’s no such thing as a straight line to greatness. Plan B isn’t a detour. It IS the path. We need to get good at pivoting and gracefully learn from mistakes and failures as we get deeper clarity and power.

6. Mastery. Jeff makes the case that mastery isn’t just about one thing and describes a “portfolio” approach in which we embrace multiple facets of our lives and optimize each.

7. Legacy. Ultimately, our calling isn’t just about what we do but who we ARE and how we give our greatest gifts in greatest service to the world.

With that, let’s dive in to a few of my favorite Big Ideas on how to bring that wisdom to life!

Awareness. It’s Step 1.

If you already know your calling, awesome. (Seriously. Incredibly awesome.)

If not, let’s focus on the most essential aspect of this first quality of a calling: Do you believe that you are called to SOMETHING?

It doesn’t matter whether or not you know the details right now. It DOES matter whether or not you believe in the idea that you are called to do something meaningful with your life.

That sense of “Really? There has to be more to my life than this!” is a GOOD thing.

As Goins advises, “That’s what awareness is: a sense that something more is possible.”

That sense of possibility is a prerequisite to being open to discovery. Without it, we remain stuck in mediocrity and mired in victim-thinking—attributing other people’s success to sheer luck, etc.

Let’s remember Maslow’s admonition that what one *can* be, one must be. You have potential waiting to be expressed. Let’s shine a bright light of Awareness on that as we take the next steps in discovering what we are meant to do.

Two things I’d like to cover here.

First, that’s from the chapter called “Painful Practice.” K. Anders Ericsson, the Swedish psychologist whose research revealed the root of elite performance had less to do with inborn talent than hard work, calls it “deliberate practice.” Dan Coyle calls it “deep practice.” Matthew Syed calls it “purposeful practice.” Goins calls it “painful practice.”

The point? You need to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone if you want to truly master yourself and your craft.

I love the practical way Dan Coyle frames it in The Little Book of Talent (see Notes) to help us find what he calls “the sweet spot.” He tells us: “There is a place, right on the edge of your ability, where you learn best and fastest. It’s called the sweet spot. Here’s how to find it.

Comfort Zone
Sensations: Ease, effortlessness. You’re working, but not reaching or struggling.
Percentage of Successful Attempts: 80 percent and above

Sweet Spot
Sensations: Frustration, difficulty, alertness to errors. You’re fully engaged in an intense struggle—as if you’re stretching with all your might for a nearly unreachable goal, brushing it with your fingertips, then reaching again.
Percentage of Successful Attempts: 50-80 percent.

Survival Zone
Sensations: Confusion, desperation. You’re overmatched: scrambling, thrashing, and guessing. You guess right sometimes, but it’s mostly luck.
Percentage of Successful Attempts: Below 50 percent.”

That’s part 1 of this Idea. We need to stretch ourselves out of our comfort zone but not so far that we snap. We want to find the sweet spot. Thank you, Dan.

The second part is about the fact that our training doesn’t stop once we hit the 10 year/10,000/whatever mark. For the best, it’s just the beginning.

I can’t think of anyone who captures this idea better than Itzhak Perlman. He practices 9 hours a day. EVERY DAY. Unless he’s performing. Then it’s 4.5 hours of practice + the performance.

Here’s how Matthew Kelly captures his commitment in The Rhythm of Life (see Notes): “Itzhak Perlman is one of the finest violinists alive today. Several years ago, Perlman agreed to attend a charity reception after one of his concerts in Vienna. Tickets for the champagne reception were sold for the equivalent of five hundred American dollars per guest.

At the reception, while the guests mingled, Itzhak Perlman stood in a roped-off area flanked by security guards. One by one the guests were led into the roped-off area and introduced to Perlman. As one man entered the roped-off area, he stretched out his hand, shook hands with the violinist, and said, ‘Mr. Perlman, you were phenomenal tonight. Absolutely amazing.’ Perlman smiled and thanked the man graciously for the compliment. The man continued, ‘All my life I have had a great love of the violin, and I have heard every great living violinist, but I have never heard anyone play the violin as brilliantly as you did tonight.’ Perlman smiled again but said nothing, and the man continued, ‘You know, Mr. Perlman, I would give my whole life to be able to play the violin like you did tonight.’

Perlman smiled once more and said, ‘I have.’”

The fruits of that lifetime of commitment? Watch this.

So, back to you: What is it you aspire to master? Most importantly: How’s your practice?

That’s from a great chapter called “Building Bridges.” The primary theme there is the fact that we don’t need to “make leaps” as much as we need to “build bridges.”

Again, many of us get stymied when we think we should a) already know our purpose with absolute clarity or b) receive that clarity in a lightning bolt of inspiration delivered via a choir of angels hovering over a burning bush.

We want a clear map that spells it all out. But Goins tells us what we *really* need is a shovel. And a willingness to dig. To make decisions, to take action, to test different ideas. To embrace mistakes and failures and wrong turns as we gain a little more clarity with each step/misstep.

We build bridges from our dream to our reality with each one of those steps—rather than try to cross some huge chasm in a giant leap.

Peter Sims describes all the “Little Bets” (see Notes) great people make in the discovery and expression of their callings. He says we “do things to discover what to do.”

Gregg Krech describes it as incrementalism or gradualism and likens it to the millions-year-long process of evolution in The Art of Taking Action (see Notes).

Here’s to using that shovel (+ other necessary tools) to build our bridges one tiny piece at a time!

Pivots. Every great hero’s journey/project/etc. features at least one. :)

You pour your heart and soul into a project—so confident that you’ve got it figured out. And… then… it doesn’t quite work the way you planned.

D’oh. Oops. Eek. Gah!

I’ve had a significant, painful pivot in each of the three businesses I’ve helped create. The first, eteamz, was originally designed to serve sports leagues (think Little League Baseball, AYSO soccer, etc.). But it was almost impossible to sell the vision to leagues. So, we scrapped that plan and focused on teams. Might not sound big but (laughing) it was. Now eteamz serves 3m teams.

Then, in my second biz, we spent 18 months and hundreds of thousands of dollars building a web platform for small entrepreneurs. Tons of momentum but the product never really came together. We threw away all that work and code in what I imagined was one big ball of tinfoily ick and started from scratch—not knowing what was next. I can still remember my dear friend’s face when we had a board meeting to discuss. He had invested everything he had and simultaneously wanted to remain super supportive while doing the math in his head on how much he just lost. (I can laugh as I type that now but OMG that sucked. Thankfully, we wound up nearly tripling his money not long thereafter.)

Finally, most recently, we raised $2m to finance a huge vision for en*theos. Investors include some REALLY cool humans—from the former CEO of AOL to my brother who put in his entire 401k. Long story short, our idea(s) + vision were pretty good and we got up to $1m+ of rev, but it became clear we were on the wrong path and trying to do too many things. We re-booted the entire biz—bringing our rev back to $0 (gasp) as we simplified and re-started. Again, freaked some people out (including myself—hah!).

At that stage, I KNEW all great projects involve a pivot or three from my own experience and studies (see Google, PayPal, etc.) and via mentorship from my wise advisors but it was still scary. (Good news there: We profitably doubled our membership numbers in the first 12 months with the new, focused model and our business is WAY (!!!) better.)

Pivots. They’re part of the process.

At the most challenging moments we need to KNOW this, maintain intense trust in our abilities (see Confidence 101!) to handle whatever life throws at us, lock down our fundamentals so we’re stabilized, and take the next step in discovery.

Here’s to many more heroic pivots—each navigated with more grace and trust and power!

True mastery.

It’s all about approaching our entire lives as our creative work—our masterpiece. From how we show up in our craft to how we show up with our family and communities.

“It’s about understanding your potential and then dedicating your life to pursuing that ideal.”

Let’s do that.