How to find what I am really good at?

My advice is to not focus. At least not yet.

I'm in the 40-45 year old range and assuming you are much younger. Apologies if we are closer in age, since this advice will carry less value.

I have often been envious of people who were more focused than I am. I feel they have been able to make more progress in a given amount of time. I worked as a mover in Boston into my mid twenties, spent a bunch of time trying to become an elite athlete, climbed big mountains, eventually learned to code, got involved in some early ecommerce businesses, eventually video gaming industry, and finally a principle engineer for the playback technology we use on Disney+.

I was complaining about my lack of focus to an old college mate, and he posed an extremely relevant question: "Do you regret your experiences?"

No, I don't. Not one bit. The experiences I've gathered are assets which build on each other, leading to more and more valuable experiences.

I have an objective of starting my own company, even at this ripe old age, and I am more confident than ever that I'll be successful at it. I have the experiences I need to pursue just about any dream.

Go out and get experiences. If your personality is such that you get a varied scope of experience, it will serve you well. Don't fight it.

Separate comment: this question is framed with a fixed mindset and an unhealthy sense of what self-discovery is.l

You "are" "good at" nothing.

You are not a block of marble with David inside, something to be chipped away at until it is apparent for all to see.

You are a ball of clay, malleable, reshapable and shapeless, fluid and formed, able to absorb new bits and grow into something wildly different, day by day if needed.

Try some growth mindset handbooks and techniques to reframe your thinking.

You don't "find what you are good at" - that is backwards.

Instead, you do what you are interested in, and initially you are not good at it, and with enough time, effort, working at learning and practicing, you will become good at it.

Hi there,

This might be an off beat chance, but have you had a history of or ever looked into the topic of adult ADHD?

Changing several jobs, jumping between hobbies or projects is textbook ADHD, especially if you don't feel like you can get out of it and describe it as a "huge live hurdle".

That is the same for me. Got diagnosed at 30 two months ago.

If you have a suspicion you might have it, I highly recommend doing a quick online test and listening to podcasts around getting an ADHD diagnosis as well as personal tales from people who have it.

Especially the latter were a real eye opener for me and pushed me to get a diagnosis.

The point is, no amount of effort, book reading, motivational speeches or the like will get you out of this pattern.

ADHD is a neurological dysfunction, hence medication is most effective.

Do you ever find yourself wondering why people find it so hard to do a particular thing that seems, to you, trivial - possibly to the point of frustration? Alternatively, do you sometimes get confused when people praise your work on something that you think of as not having taken any real effort to produce? Is there any particular domain or skill where you occasionally hear people (e.g. coworkers) discussing their realizations or achievements, and you think to yourself, "oh, but is that not obvious?" or "hunh, I thought everyone knew that"?

If any of those apply, that's something you're good at, even if it doesn't feel it. Sometimes being good at something just means feeling like something isn't a challenge for you, when it is a challenge for most other people around you.

I have one suggestion! Try to find one thing you are deeply interested since your childhood. It means that you have some subconscious goals you want to achieve. Now invest all your time on it, no matter how hard it is. It will be very rewarding at the end.

If you are working on software and your interest lies in physical world, start building hardware/software for it. You will suck at it. It won't make an impact. But it will free you from your lack of focus. It is just about chasing dreams! No one is stopping you from doing that. Also, take job as job and not as passion. The whole idea, if you work on what you love, then you never have to work in your life is bullshit. Once you start working on what you love, it is still work. Only difference is motivation. You will get motivation if you follow your deep desires.

Also make promise to yourself to not abandon this one desire in middle of the way. And stick with it to the end. Whatever pops up in your head after you decide on it, add it to your someday list. And keep pursuing things slowly while you are enjoying. Never forget to enjoy what you are doing!

The most helpful things I've seen in quick summary are journaling around work: 1. What gives you energy 2. What feels like work/takes away energy

Use that list to double check against any opportunity you're deciding to pursue, aiming for things that primarily give you energy.

To figure out what you may want to pursue, another helpful exercise is listing 3 people you'd like to be like, and 3 companies/roles you'd like to do for work.

Lastly the Ikigai framework can be used as well to double check your decision.

With the combination of these, I think that's one of the fastest ways to discovery (for your current abilities), since it will help you find what you like and what is sustainable which usually leads to inevitable mastery

Do you have bursts of creativity and motivation that let you invest superhuman amounts of time and energy into a new project only to fizzle out and not turn into anything long term, only to repeat the cycle days/weeks/months down the line?

If that sounds relatable then this may help: Creative energy and motivation works like a finite resource. Instead of spending every waking minute working on your new hobby/project because a) it's fun and b) you fear that the motivation is going to fade again, you need to force yourself to only use up a little bit of that energy each day, so that you have enough time to build a habit.

It's very counterintuitive, and I had a lot of difficulties doing it. But it has worked quite well for me. Discovering a new hobby and doing nothing else for the next few days is actually one of the worst things you can do. It will almost certainly result in you losing interest.

(Also what you're describing is very common in people with ADHD. I'm not suggesting or implying anything here, but it might be a worthwhile idea to check out some of the other common symptoms and see if you heavily relate to them as well. There's a very high chance that you don't have adhd, but I thought I'd still mention it.)

When writing my thesis, I was very prone to procrastination. Many times, I found that some "great idea" (tm) popped into my head, and I would be all to happy to drop everything to start working on that. I think it's in no small parts because starting something new is exciting, while continuing something you've already worked on for a long time has often long lost that early magic.

Needless to say that these ideas usually didn't lead to anything and in a lot of cases where replaced by "the next great idea", leaving me with tons of projects that had received as much attention as a single day in some cases. But ostensibly, that didn't feel like a problem, because by then I had already moved on to something else that excited me... for a little while.

What never happened was actual progress, neither in any of these "project" not on my "thesis" which I was always more than happy to put on the back burner.

But then (much too late), I realized the pattern I had falled prone to. What helped me in the end to finish my thesis was the following: instead of starting any new project head of heels the day it popped into my head, I started writing new ideas down on "for later"-list. I really wanted to finish my thesis, and although I found it very hard at first, I forced myself to not implement anything new until I after I submitted.

When I was finally done with my thesis, I had probably somewhere between 20 and 30 items on my list, and I was excited to be finally "allowed" to go back to them.

Well, as you may have guessed, it turned out that none of these "great ideas" interested me any more by then. So I never actually picked any of them up. But had I started on any of them right away as it had been my earlier habit, countless hours would have been burned, and I would inevitably reached the same lack of interest.

So, my recommendation is not to jump from project to project too quickly. The problem is not dropping a stalled effort, but too eagerly starting something new. The biggest project had been my thesis all this time, and I really had to learn to stick it out.

And I'm glad I did it.

You don’t stumble across a thing you’re good at unless it’s trivial, and you may not be particularly good at anything. You can work and practice at stuff and see how it goes. But turning your hobbies into this sort of a grind seems self defeating. If the motivation for asking the question is that you want to feel special and reassure yourself that you’re the protagonist of reality, you’d do much better giving yourself a break and finding what makes you happy (which still takes work but much less).

Sticking to one thing is overrated :)

“I believe in bumbling around long enough to not give up at things. And eventually success comes your way, because you tried to fail in every possible way, the only way that’s left is the one successful way, and always, for entrepreneurs, seems to come last." - Vinod Khosla, cofounder, SUN Microsystems

Just a couple of feel good books disguised as pop science to quickly read through ..

* Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You on the value of skills over passion and identifying what makes you valuable to others (instead of what you think), he defines "competence" as "feeling that you are good at what you do." It's a good overview of skill acquisition.

* Little Bets by Peter Sims will give you the grace to reframe your "jumping around" as a series of "little bets" of "discovery" and "inquisitiveness", not based on a particular skill or talent but on problem solving and interest, a curious, restless displeasure with how things are. A great book for wandering professional souls.

So my vote is keep jumping around, find interesting problems to you and work on them, develop some methods of having your competence evaluated by others, join (or lead!) "professional communities" to find and commune with likeminded folks, stay restless and hungry.

If on the other hand you really want to focus on one thing, sign up for a modestly expensive professional exam in the not too far future and an obligation to teach or share what you have learned for that exam publicly. I find it's a great motivator to be beholden to others to understand something well enough to motivate others to learn what you have.

This may be relevant: To find work you love, don’t (always) follow your passion

https://80000hours.org/articles/dont-follow-your-passion/

80,000 Hours is a nonprofit organization providing free resources to people to find best opportunities to have a positive impact on the world. I think that if one's occupation has a clear positive impact on others, it is easier to get excited about doing it (and doing it well).

One of three important aspects to life/work satisfaction (and motivation), according to the well-researched Self Determination Theory is "relatedness" - feeling like you're contributing to welfare of others (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory ).

Optimize for what excites you, not necessarily what you may be naturally talented in. Work hard at what you find fun, and the skill will follow.

Cautionary tale: I am a data scientist and love working with numbers. I fell into a job that required me to create educational videos about data science. I discovered that I am very good at narrating and creating educational videos.

People loved these videos! I was even told I should offer my services as a part-time voice actor due to my narration skills. More and more requests for videos kept piling in.

Meanwhile, all I wanted to do was get back to writing code. I didn't mind creating the videos but I found them draining. Analytics is truly what makes me happy and excited to start work in the morning. A career is a marathon and if you're not optimizing for what fills your cup every day, you will quickly burn out.

Do what makes you happy!

How do you find what you're really good at? I don't know. Here's what I did. I started doing a thing I considered intriguing. I tried figuring out how to tell if I'm making a good progress. In the beginning, I was terrible at it. After some time, I was still terrible, but there were I had some "data" about making progress. Only after years did I become good. And yet, the more years I put in, the more ways of being terrible I discover. Having written that, I'd suggest 1) picking something that seems at least mildly interesting to you 2) don't expect much 3) don't be afraid to start all over again multiple times

I found the gallup strength finder test very helpful when trying to find a role that was a good fit for me.

https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/

Edit: It's a paid service the product links are here:

https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/253868/popular-cl...

I've bought both, but 99% of the value for me was in the top 5.

I've had my fair share of switching stuff around and delving _hard_ into a subject that interests me, only after months (years) of practice to abandon it because I got bored found something new. I would call that just "life" and "being a normal curious human". I think the people who do one thing and stick with it are the weird people that need help :-D

But jokes aside I've recently found this gem of a channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/HowtoADHD I don't think I have ADHD myself, maybe "a little" whatever that means, but it has some very good advice for people that struggle with this a lot, and if it helps them, I guess it will be effective for people with less severe conditions too!

Aside from that I think the iconic essay from Paul Graham has stayed with me and helped me guide direction decisions, when I've been conscious enough to think about big picture stuff - http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html Moral of the story for me was not to "find the one true thing" as I'm sure there would be plenty in my life - its not "short" as people say. It's more "does this thing open more doors / options for me" or "does this things narrow my options" ... and choose accordingly.

Many years ago I dropped out of a Computer Science university program for a variety of reasons, but primarily because I was too disinterested to try all that hard. After a lifetime of computering, having started tinkering at 8, I simply had no alternative plan.

I took an aptitude test administered by the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation[0] and the results were interesting and somewhat new to me. Of the many different potential career paths it indicated I would be good at, I chose design, and a few years later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design/Visual Communication.

I was pretty OK as a design student, with a definite natural knack for it and learned skills that built on top of that foundation, so I tried my best to get a design job. With my web background, however, I got two contract gigs to write code instead, and then dove in after realizing I could succeed even without a CS degree. It’s been a decade now and I’m a reasonably senior software engineer who’s worked on a bunch of different stuff, and I love it.

My design background still comes in handy from time to time, especially the general problem solving skills I learned. It’s also a nice complementary set of skills for someone working on the web. And I probably wouldn’t have had that experience without the aptitude test that suggested I might be good at design.

Sure, I’m merely my own sample size of one, but that’s made me a big believer in aptitude testing results as useful information.

[0]: https://www.jocrf.org/

Books:

- Deep Work, and anything by Cal Newport (You can get a taste of most of his ideas for free on his blog and podcast)

- The Art of Learning. Note that he “jumped around“ at the peak of his original career, but ended up finding a common thread. To your dilemma, a major take away is that single domain can have nearly infinite novelty if you keep looking deeper

- moonwalking with Einstein: this will seem unrelated, but really listen for how The author ends up falling in love with this weird hobby. Can you find that love for anything in your life?

- Misbehaving (Richard Thaler): A young economist bumbles around for years until it starts to come together into a coherent research direction.

- The age of Wonder (Holmes): biographies of romantic scientists, know how different they all are, and also how many different phases of life they each have. I guarantee you you will see yourself in one of them, I just don’t know which

Though I do not have a book for it, my final piece of advice is to except that even the “right“ path will have some boring or even painful stretches. I don’t have a clear cut decision rule for when to stick with it, but it’s definitely not “quit immediately”. I think there’s a book called The Dip about that. Also like Adam Savage YouTube channel where you can see essentially endless hours of the sky who is definitely doing what he is passionate about, but also gets frustrated all the time when things break and such. He’s making physical things, even successful projects take many tedious hours. But there’s no question in his mind that he is going to power through.

Your curious nature is really an asset which might not be apparent if you are on your 20s or even 30s.

I'm in a similar boat and for me the issue with switching activities/hobbies/jobs is that I feel unsatisfied with the lack of results that focused people achieve.

A couple of years ago (I'm 43 now) I found a way to balance focus with curiosity. I made a deal with myself that when I embark on a project, whatever it is, I will finish it. I will permit myself to do something else (if I feel like it) once I'm done with that thing, but I won't let my curiosity prevent me from finishing stuff.

I've found that all projects I embark on only satisfy my curiosity in the first say 30% of the project. After that it's just boring work which I have force myself to do. The interesting thing is that when I'm reaching the end of the project I get excited again. And when I finish, I honestly feel all the effort and grinding has been worth it. Understanding these phases I go through really helps me push through the grinding phase.

Have fun.

Seriously, stop trying to be focused and give yourself permission to enjoy life. This is key, giving yourself permission. Right now you are trying to hustle, you are trying to optimize, but you need to give yourself permission to just stop trying to optimize everything.

Explore, try new things, and don't settle on anything. Just live.

Most importantly, go out and try new things. Even things you might not otherwise have wanted to try. There are countless free classes out there where you can go spend a couple hours after work and learn something new. You don't have to stick it out, but this gets you out of the house and trying new things without any expectation. You'll meet new people, and while you might not make new friends, you might as well.

This is from personal experience. I believe you need to give yourself permission to just exist. Taking time off is pointless if you don't give yourself permission to just relax and enjoy.

Anyways, that's what helped me.

What if you aren't good at anything? You might find it helpful to consider this possibility and make peace with it, since you have no real control over it. Most people are average at most things, and the willpower to change ones stars is also scarcely distributed. Realizing that it's overwhelmingly likely that you are "only" average might help you relax and enjoy the ride. If you can attain this kind of equanimity, you may find yourself better able to appreciate things as they are, along with the serendipity of life. You may then realize that life is full of possibilities which were hidden from you by a fixation with linear progression.

So I'll use my personal life as a guide:

I met my wife, we fell head over heels for each other, and she's been my girlfriend or wife for 25+ years now.

Lesson: Find something you are passionate about and chase it.

In my professional career, I've worked in many places, I've been a systems programmer working in the kernel, I've been a UI guy. I've worked in React, I've been C coder.

My specialization is: Having been there and done that. Being able to do many things is a strength. You can adapt as your role changes, which is essential. Because if I've learned anything in 25+ years of software development: You job will change. You will change. Be ready to change with them.

I'm going to echo others - who says you need to find one thing and stick with it? What if that one thing is no longer worth pursuing? Things change constantly.

Rather than focusing on 1 thing or a couple of things, develop skills for learning and exploring. If you aren't good at reading, do more of that. Learn to love it. Having good skills for reading and comprehension are probably the most important skills you can develop and will pay you dividends hand over fist. It may seem trivial, but I think people tend to underestimate the importance of having good reading skills! Hot on the heals of reading is developing strong problem solving skills. They will help you develop crucial critical thinking skills. Root cause analysis - conditioning yourself to immediately strip any problem/subject down to it's component parts - and being familiar enough with a subject to deconstruct it fully. Whenever there is a new subject, or especially with technology or a new thing to learn I hang out in support forums and try to answer other people's questions about said technology/subject. I have found no faster way to develop expertise in something than forcing myself to learn it inside-out than by trying to support others in answering their questions.

If you develop the skills to adapt/learn/grow then whether or not you are good at one thing is irrelevant. You can be good at adapting and rapidly learning new things, which is far more important in the long run.

I also switched entire careers (twice), that led me to be 'professional' at 3 things, which means I'm not as good as someone who 'stuck with it' in any of the 3, but I have an extremely unique skillset. So when you say you're "diluted", I hear you say you're in that very special overlapping part of the venndiagram! Congratulations!

Also, while it doesn't answer your question of how, this reinforces that trying to do is a very good idea. It's a podcast episode of Tim Ferris interviewing Adam Robinson (he was friends with Bobby Fischer, the chess player). The entire episode is very much worth listening to, but a key quote:

> I think the American psychologist Maslow said if your only tool is a hammer, you view every problem as a nail. I would flip that and say that the geniuses have very limited toolsets. They have a hammer and they’re geniuses in looking for nails. That’s their genius. They have a very limited skill set but they master it and apply it incredibly well. I’m reminded of the movie Karate Kid. Where it’s wax on, wax off, sand the floor and then he had that crane kicky move, and he won the California State Championship on the base of those three.

Full quote/episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSyMmleisQM&t=31m06s

I jump from hobbies all the time. I've started and stopped more hobbies than I can count. There are a few I return to time and again though. I like math and programming. I think this is a good measure to find things you're "good at". Or at least have the potential to be "good at". Maybe it's not true for everyone but it is certainly true for a lot of people - something you always return to, even after an extended break, is probably what you should be doing. You can have a wide breadth of experience (and that's a good thing) but in general you'll probably find you return to a few things always. If you don't - that's great! Keep paying attention. If you do then you have a direction to head in. A book can't teach you this, neither can some self-help guru. Maybe you aren't keen to be "really good" at programming. Maybe your hobby that you constantly return to is something you haven't even tried yet.

Then again I also have some form of ADHD (diagnosed). I can generally hyperfocus on things like programming, but for other things (like outdoor hobbies) I become obsessive, then burned out, and then I just always return to programming. My entire life is biased through this lens so take it with a grain of salt.

I think you are not asking the right questions. Most people don’t really know what they are really good at. Very few people end up where they are because they decided “I’m good at this particular thing, so I should pursue it” even if it looks like so. You can get better at that “thing” that you regularly do. You should find what motivates you to work more - is that lots of money, or social prestige or relaxing lifestyle? Would you rather be working in solitary or be talking to lots of people? What time of the day do you feel like working? Find answers to a numerous questions about the ideal lifestyle/career you would want. Then it will be easier for you to narrow down to a few options. When you’re motivated and productive, you will automatically start getting better at what you pursue. Before hopping from one project to another, ask yourself if really need to build it. Let go of some unfinished products, and only work on the ones that you are sure you don’t need external help. If you can buy something (a tool, template, design) with money you have, buy it instead of building it. Free yourself. Don’t occupy yourself with tasks that you can delegate (eg freelancers in other countries, etc.). Then at the end you’re left with only the work that you’re good at.

(Armchair shrink advice so place as much worth on it as you have paid for it).

Perhaps try to nail down what the underlying issue is?

From the sounds of it you have tried various things and each has failed to click for one reason or another.

From personal experience when in those situations there has usually been something lacking or that needed changing that I tried to 'fix' by constantly changing external factors which of course failed to resolve anything since the underlying cause wasn't addressed.

I believe one typically doesn't just happen to be good at something - like inherently good.

There's always first a phase of getting good at something - which took time and effort, regardless of whether it was conscious effort or not.

When people think they simply are good at something, that usually means, that they did NOT have to put in conscious effort to get started. But they still put in some effort, even if they didn't really notice it.

How much effort (conscious or not) any individual is going to need to get good at anything, can vary a lot. But more importantly, for most people the amount of effort does not really matter, when they enjoy something and are passionate about it.

The important thing to note here is, that there's a positive feedback loop. If you enjoy doing something, you will get better at it - and getting better at doing something makes you enjoy it more.

When it comes to work and jobs though, the whole setup surrounding the actual work (the hamster wheel of weekly work times, company politics, pressure to perform etc.) can really hurt the passion though.

Finding something you like doing and find easy to get better at is typically the easy part. Finding a work place that doesn't suck the fun out of it... that's more difficult. At least in my experience.

Two books I would strongly recommend:

(1) Range: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range

The book describes the advantages that generalists have and how they can get the most of them, and basically says that specialization is somewhat overrated. As a fellow generalist I found it uplifting and encouraging.

(2) Stolen Focus: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57933306-stolen-focus

This book is all about focus, why it's hard to maintain focus and what you can do to improve it. Candidly it's a bit discouraging, because many of the conclusions are that the problem is environmental and there's not a ton that individuals can do about it. But for me, it's still very reassuring and empowering to recognize the environmental problems around me and know how they are affecting my ability to focus.

I think you'd find reading those to be very helpful and time well-spent :)

Maybe context switching and exploring new things are what you are good at?

Maybe someone with discipline is different from me, but I can't "stay focused", I either "am focused" or not.

I don't think anyone is supposed to look for a single thing to stick with, that sounds sick..

If you happen upon a thing and you can't let it down, you've found it.. But maybe you never will, maybe your talent is not a single thing.

> Changed several jobs, and in my hobbies, I am jumping from one project to another. [...] How do you find 1 thing you are really good at and stick with it?

For the vast majority of activities (especially those considered viable work), it will not be immediately obvious to you that you love it enough to stick. You must put an unspecified quantity of time and effort into it to figure out if it has legs... Also with these things you tend to be able to keep extracting and discovering new enjoyment from the activity as you get better - that is, if it's truly a good fit. Unfortunately it's not even this simple, because what you do is affected by context, i.e what you love and hate can be easily conflated with where or why or who you are doing it with, which is something else you come to appreciate over time.

I think this is the critical detail left out of the commonly given advice "find what you love to do"... you don't really "find" it, you have to develop it by trying different things enough to see which one sticks.

Speaking only from personal experience. Take what you will.

Sometimes, we overthink stuff. It is okay to be however you approach things. You don't need to be exactly (skilled/good/whatever) like the people you see. I found that, if I stopped thinking too much, and stopped worrying about a specific version of me I have in mind, I just _be_ and end up doing something spontaneous, and leads me to a state I did not originally plan for.

Professionally, I studied computers, and I worked to find my way within the field. Tries being a consultant, software developer, people manager etc to realise that I didn't like any of them, and then stuck to caring for systems and how they work which has been the fascinating part all along. Now, I work as an SRE. Happy to come to work, and inching forward on being a good SRE everyday. I do have a big imposter thought when I listen to talks/ works of other SREs, but this is me. I know and can do things they probably can't.

Hobbies wise, I think the best ones are organic, and happen by a bit of chance + social effect. I ended up playing with a few wood working tools at a garage of my friends' when I was a teenager, and it was always a good memory. When I was away from home, living alone in the US, and had lot of time in my hand after work, I found a local community wood workshop and went there for a woodworking class. It gave me a good time, and I ended up visiting more and more often. I have now been woodworking for the last 12 years, and it is one of those hobbies that make me forget about the rest of the world, when I am focussing and working on a project. I religiously visit my woodshed for 5 hours every Saturday, and it is my time where I can build something tangible and feel the sense of accomplishment without caveats.

Just sharing my experience in case it helps you.

I can only say what worked for me. For as long as I can remember I was obsessed with video games. It’s all I thought about. I would play any genre, any platform, didn’t matter. However, I grew up in a very tech-fearing culture. Working on video games, let alone software engineering, was unknown and looked down upon.

I eventually made it into the software industry, but things never felt right. I would force myself to focus, changed jobs many times, and generally found it unrewarding.

I finally realized I should be doing what I already knew I was interested in and started making games. The hard part was peeling away the cultural brainwashing that prevented me from doing it in the first place.

Now I can’t believe I ever needed focus hacks. I can enter a flow state the moment I sit in front of the computer because it _matters_ (to me). There are still times when my inner dialogue starts to pester me with negativity, but I remind myself that in my heart of hearts I love what I do.

Do you have something deep down you know you want but avoid because it’s not “the proper thing”?

I'm not sure how to find what you're really good at.

I would think trying new things and finding one you're good at, or passionate about and can improve on, would work.

I'm not really good at anything. I'm above average in quite a few things. I'm fine with that (at least at a hobbies level). Once you get good at something, you realize that there are still many others who are better than you. It's exceedingly rare to be the best in the world at anything. So a lot is perspective.

I also struggle with the work side though. I don't feel like an expert in anything. Even though I have 10 years of experience (at the same company no less), my career feels like there's no continuity - just forget everything and start over on the new team/tech/problem. I'd like to get to a place where I'm expert enough to be comfortable or not stressed and be paid much better. I have no solution to that.

> How do you find 1 thing you are really good at and stick with it?

Perhaps someone could have helped Leonardo Da Vinci (painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, architect) with that. Maybe already you know a lot of stuff which will one day come together. Being a specialist is great if your specialisation has legs, not so otherwise.

You sound a lot like me. My best moments of clarity always come from a 2+ week trip abroad, spending less time on the internet and more time with the world and myself.

It's taking time to talk to other people and hearing that people are happy and successful doing all sorts of different things.

It's recognizing the core values that make you feel fulfilled.

It's possible, if not likely, that any given person is not very good at anything. However, you can become good at many things, even if you are not naturally talented. To overcome the talent deficit requires spending more time than a talented person to build the same level of ability.

Since the thing you can control is how much time and effort you put in, the main question you should answer is: what is the thing that you enjoy very much that has a good potential for earning an income? If you love spending time on it, the probability that you spend enough time on it that you become good at it is dramatically increased, and you avoid much misery. Once you find something, you then have to take a leap of faith and stick with it, spending as much time on it as you possibly can, until you are good at it and can make a good income (or you are forced to give up). Good luck!

You should talk to some close friends and ask they to tell you about your strengths. After that, I highly recommend that you read the "Awaken the Giant Within : How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny" by Tony Robbins. Author said that you should focus on your strengths

I think an interesting exercise which may or may not be relevant to you is to decouple what you want to be really good at with what you are interested in. I find it a common scenario where people want to get into different fields either because of the perks of the hobby/career or they want to see themselves as good at it.

An interesting exercise is to take breaks from certain areas (probably more feasible with hobbies than with career), journal regularly and think wider than you're used to. If everything you have tried career wise is in software (for example) why not pick up a book about psychology, philosophy, languages, hardware etc.

It's also worth considering that every scenario will have some form of stress attached, one of the questions to ask is what types of stress are you willing to work through to gain from.

Again this advice may or may not be relevant to you, all the best with your journey on it!

I'll add two book suggestions:

How to fail at nearly everything and still win big by Scott Adams. Good for reframing the jumping around you're prone to from goals that you succeed or fail at to systems that simply work.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Good for sticking with a project when the going gets rough (and understanding why it will).

Generally whenever I feel this way (and it happened a lot) it was coming from a situation when I tried to press myself to choose. The more I pressed the worse it got, the more anxious I got and the more stuck I felt.

There is a recent article on min-maxing and optimising life as much as we can: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/why-you-shouldnt-optimize-your-...

But life is a not a math equations. There is also a concept of wu-wei called effortless action. Something that we do that doesn't feel like work and we just pursue our energy or flow without even realising it.

That is essentially the magic.

What productive activity do you find yourself naturally gravitating towards?

More concretely, when you're by yourself and without external pressure, what activity do you find yourself pursuing most? Examples: writing, learning a language, reading books, programming, playing music, etc.

In terms of a book teaching this, there's a Japanese book "How to find what you want to do". I'm not aware of an English translation but this Youtube video (by Ruri Omaha) has a decent summary: "how to find out what you want to do in life - watch this if you feel lost"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUBjPPU9NwQ

I'm on the same boat. I even posted a similar Ask-HN a couple of months ago.

My understanding is I don't know what I want to do. I drift by and try to grab at whatever that keeps me floating for a while, and then drift away when it is no longer interesting.

I kinda gave up fixing this and believe it has a lot to do with gene or luck. Some people (think Carmack) just know what they want to do for LIFE so they start early, have laser focus amd achieve great things. They are born to do great things.

I gave up. I will never achieve a fraction of whatever they do even in spare time. Fuck it, I gave up. And I'm 40 so there is even barely enough energy to keep daily chores float.

I've only ever been successful when I'm able to turn what I do for fun into what I do for a living. I don't remember not being interested in computers, programming, games, BBSs and early online services etc. There just was no other way it was going to go. Absent something like that, I'd say just find something that is genuinely fun to you... something that you enjoy being terrible at and keep doing it until you're no longer terrible at it. Hopefully someone will eventually pay you for it. There's a lot of opportunity out there these days for a wide variety of skills to be applied creatively.

Way too many personal opinions here. Check out the aptitude testing done by the Johnson O'Connor Research institute. https://www.jocrf.org/ Johnson O'Connor has turned aptitude testing into a science as much as possible. They have helped a lot of people including me. Good Luck.

If you don't know what you want to do, then trying different things is a good way to find out how things really are. It does not scale to all jobs (you can't "try being a neurosurgeon for a while") but will give you an initial perspective for a lot of them.

Keep in mind that at the beginning of a new project or hobby we all go through a "learning phase" in which the effort put does not correspond with a lot of value obtained. Process can be slow, mistakes frequent. That's normal. Look not only where you are now, but where you could end up, and ask yourself if that's where you want to be.

I myself went for what I enjoy / makes me happy / balanced / serene. I am not “good” at anything myself either, but I realized that being “good” is heterodirectional criteria i.e. it’s judgment from the outside and I don’t think I want to let the “outside” chose for me. Not claiming social influence is not important, just that it should be 2nd-3rd in importance. Try to do what makes you happy, whatever it is, and try to surround yourself with good relationships. I use this criteria and it works on my machine… :D

When I was 16 I was wondering whether too many things interested me at once. I was really into music, playing music, mixing/producing music, photography (both analog and digital), graphic design, web development and web design, drawing, writing, product design, electronics, film, skateboarding, snowboarding, programming and 3d modelling, contemporary art, philosophy and media science.

Naturally my feeling was that this is way to much for one individual to be good at and I felt I had to pic one.

Nearly two decades later I still haven't picked one and I am excellent in a few of these at the same time. I managed to create a freelance job in film post production and web stuff that paid well and covered many of those fields, with many of the intersection being fruitful.

When I was doing the sound editing for movies with directors, I could use my own experience as a director, as a DOP and as a student of film science to talk about certain aesthetical decisions with them, all while being the guy who knows how a preamp is structured on a circuit level. People booked me precisely because I know how to technically make it work and have the artistic experience both in picture and sound.

Then during corona it shifted more towards backend programming, electronics and media tech. But having a pool of abilities is not a bad thing.

If you are the type that can make it work of course. I have always been faster than average at learning and understanding new things. The most important thing is that the things you do go into, are things you like doing. And it is totally okay to split your money earning from that.

I know guys who lead a perfectly happy life by working in social care and make art and music in their spare time. There is a few happy ones that made their passion their profession and are happy with it, there is a lot of people who have no discernable interest at all, besides going on vacation or partying. There is people who always worked in tech only to realize they like working with people more or the other way around.

Find out who you are, what you are good at. Ask friends and family what they honestly think you are good at and figure out if there is a gap between how you see yourself and how others perceive you.

If you're in the US, the military has a placement test that can show you your strengths and weaknesses. You don't have to sign up to join to take the test. There's even a civilian version of it but I can't remember what it's called. Here's the description of the army test: "The ASVAB is a standardized test that reveals areas of strength and ability in science, math, and language. Taking the test is one of the first steps before you enlist. Once it’s over, you’ll get to find a job that matches up to your strengths."

I spent my free time at university jumping around between projects and working on whatever I liked most that week. Looking back, I believe that was very useful just to memorize all that's possible.

Most frontend developers have never seen Haskell, so they don't even know what programming paradigms they are missing out on.

Also, there's nothing inherently wrong with cutting your losses and quitting a project that isn't working as you had hoped.

In the end, I stuck with a project long-term because I liked the team. So maybe that's your antidote: build stuff together with others.

I always suck in some way so I am always improving. But a better question is "what do I enjoy?" and that is infosec stuff and they actually pay me to do it lol.

Even if you are never good at something, you should enjoy the things you suck at instead of be miserable trying to be good at things you don't even like.

I was very good at biology, it was effortless and natural. But more school and messing with people's meat was all too gross.

I suppose the sweet spot is when you are tolerably competent at something and you also really enjoy that thing.

You'll have a temporal horizon shift in your 30s/40s where approaching death seems closer than from when you were born.

You work on being a better person everyday and you'll find exactly what you're good at through the process.

Some people might call this practicing "philosophy". It's really just about getting to "know thyself".

I wrote a whole book on this that released last month. Would love to give you a copy to see if it would help you.

I found myself asking similar questions about a year ago and stumbled upon a book called Be Your Future Self Now, by Dr. Benjamin Hardy that helped. After reading the book, I:

1. Created 1 to 3 goals that I want to accomplish in the next 1, 5, and 10 years. 2. Evaluated all my activities. 3. Eliminated all activities that aren't actively driving me towards those goals.

Once I eliminated superfluous junk from my life, I felt a lot more focused.

First of all, you're really good at identifying the need for people to be able to answer this question! It's a very good question because often people aren't aware of their own skills. I don't have an answer here but if you could develop one you'd have many customers to utilize this as a service.

I googled "what hidden skills do i have" and found other people looking into this question as well.

Whatever you will become really good at will be something that motivates and keeps you energized.

Getting good at something takes time. If your first discover what you like, i.e, what motivates you, inspires you, energizes you. Then, getting really good at it will come im time and be tempered by your natural talent.

Perhaps what you could potentially be the best at is not something you even like - and what’s the point in that?

Trying to find what you are good at is not the right approach. But you are onto something in this question, just asking about the wrong part.

What is it with these projects, hobbies, and jobs that disinterest you? What are you avoiding?

Armchair-ing: Maybe you are in the cycle of having higher expectations than what you can create? Avoiding creating a project to finish as the result is not what you had set your expectation to?

Back when I was 6, then 10, then 14, there were some activities I can go for hours without ever want to interrupt. Parents shouted me to dinner, tried to reason me to go out, but to no avail.

These were constructing things (first from plasticine, then from MEccano-like sets), reading, and then hacking computer. Generally, those are still things I can do for hours and even days.

I think you need to find what motivates you. I am in the same way right now, working on personal project is fun, but when it becomes a career it gets boring after a while. However I keep pushing to pay the bills, mortgage, and of course twice a year of traveling. Find a good company to work with that gives you least stress, my current one keeps working a bit more fun at least

Read through some of the comments here and there's great insight from various vantage points. What I haven't seen and would love to add is that taking a break from a hobby or activity (which may be achieved by jumping to something else end back) is very beneficial. Coming back with after a break leads to a different insight to said activity.

I think this highly depends on your age. It’s great to explore! Be curious. I have been lucky enough to be above average at a bunch of things and I take great enjoyment in those things. I also suck at things. What I am good at is the things I have put most time into.

So my theory is: if you like it, do it and do it more.

Also, you don’t actually have to be good at anything. Just be good at being.

Social media to blame. At least in my case. Too many distractions. Too many temptations. Very difficult to stay focused with all that.

You may not find it by asking others. You will lose sense of time if you really want to get good at something. Sportsmen do not go on a quest in their childhood. They are playing in the middle while their peers are enjoying birthday parties.

The good thing is you are exploring a lot. And exploration never ends until you begin to enjoy getting tired.

There's nothing wrong with being a generalist, although I'm certainly biased in that regard.

I empathize with the stresses relating to short employment stints and unfinished projects; however, if you asked me if I'd rather be a lifer at IBM or a state agency, I'd run away screaming.

Maybe just go with the flow and focus on things you enjoy?

What you're really good at is whatever you can manage to spend 10,000 hours practicing.

https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/complexity-a...

You could also see if there is a theme in your different projects and jobs. That might reveal that you are actually sticking to a theme/subject - you just didn’t know it. Also, you can try to play the long game. If you think in terms of years or decades. A theme might be so fuzzy that it requires a long time horizon.

IMO you should flip the question around. How do you get very very good at your current skill / job, and then over time find creative ways to:

- apply it in other adjacent fields - gain more autonomy and creativity - craft the work-life you want

I recommend reading -- So Good They Can't Ignore you by Cal Newport, read it!

Maybe try to examine your own perception of what hobby / job is. Trying to focus too much on your own sensation can lead to shallow engagement. Having a different approach to what a goal is, not too big, so you can finish it, and then see if you want to do it again or change.

Don't find your talents, cultivate your skills. You likely will never just "find 1 thing you are really good at", but if you find something that's worth getting good at and stick with it even though you suck, eventually you will become good at it.

That's my approach, anyway!

You could check out this life purpose course. Although not free, the price was reasonable and worth it for me. https://www.actualized.org/life-purpose-course

Being good at something doesn't mean you want to keep doing it and yes things take time to master, you're not a natural on everything. Maybe you should take some time off, go travelling for a while, maybe your will see things that will get your interest.

I don't think you are really good at something. Most things you get good at come from doing them a lot. It's pretty unlikely you are going to stumble into a thing that you are incredibly good at without spending a lot of time doing it. You might stumble into something that is similar to things you've done in the past that make you better than most when starting out. You might find things you enjoy enough to keep doing even though you are not very good at them at first.

The two things I'm pretty good at are wrestling and public speaking. I'm good at wrestling because I spent 8 years doing it in high school and college. I'm good at public speaking because I spent 10 years doing it in college and after college. I was pretty bad at both of these things when I started. The only advantage I had was that I was willing to push myself and I enjoyed them enough to keep doing them.

Anything related to those two things I tend to be better than the average person at them. But anyone who has focused on some subset of those things for a significant period of time will likely be better than me.

TLDR: Dont focus on finding something you are good at. Focus on finding something you like, keep doing it, and eventually you will be really good at it.

>> How do you find 1 thing you are really good at and stick with it?

Maybe if you stick with one thing you'll become really good at it. Most (maybe all) people aren't inherently really good at anything.

What MBTI type are you? I have spent the last two years learning everything I can about my type and it has raised my self-esteem a lot.

Also, and possibly a lot more painful to answer: What attachment style are you?

Eh, don't worry about it. As long as the job you're working at is paying you enough to live and save enough, change as many hobbies as you want and change as many jobs as you want.

What you need to do is to learn to love what you do. The actual activities, barring some really awful ones, are not that important.

There is a lot of pleasure in doing things, just for doing things.

There is no need of focus, if something pulls you more, you will know.

Thank you all for the valuable tips and suggestions! It is a start for going out of the hole for me! Thank you!

Off hand, it sounds like you're good at trying new things and handling a lot of variety in your work.

you're good at what you like to insist on making it work (be it writing, going to the gym, developing a software/app, etc.), even if there's a 1% chance of success, something inside of you along with your belief system will make you go forward.

Most people become good at something by sticking with it...

Very few people are born with useful skills.

You should read the book Mastery by Robert Greene, which is exactly what you want.

You have it backwards. Pick 1 thing, stick to it, you'll get real good at it.

follow this video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYEDD2l0YUw

as funny and short as it is, it's absolutely spot on

Wrong way around! Stick with one thing and you’ll get good at it.

It's not the task, it's the co-workers.

The following questions helped me: what do you spend most of your free time doing voluntarily? Where do you have a backlog of material that you are afraid of showing to the world? What things do you take for granted because they come easy to you, that others have expressed appreciation or amazement at/offered to pay for?

Also, question your assumption that you need to find 1 thing and devote most of your time to it. Why? What's your goal?

If it's enjoyment, why 1 thing? If it's money, you only need to choose the highest paying profession that you can tolerate.

Read Art of Impossible

You are good at what you love.

Uh, no. Find what things you like, then find which ones make money then look at one you're good at.

I like music. Music makes bad money. I'm not good at music. I don't look for music jobs.

I like tech stuff. Ops stuff makes decent money. I'm good at ops stuff. I do ops stuff.

I like tinkering with hardware. It can make decent money but hard to find a job in. I do it as hobby

1) "Jumping from one project to another. How do you stay focused ?" : that screams ADHD to me (not a doctor, not a shrink). Full disclosure : I have ADHD.

2) what activity bores you the least ? could it be turned into a job ?

3) filling in an ikigai diagram ( https://becomingbetter.org/ikigai/ ) could help you find some professional compass