Captain’s log, stardate 20180321

Success story from reader Mike Spanger

Sent by Jonathan Stark on March 21st, 2018

Reader Mike Spanger wrote in to share a story which I hope you’ll find inspirational (shared with permission):

Hey, Jonathan. I wanted to give you a quick thanks. I’ve listened to your stuff for a year or so. I knew I needed to pick a specialization, but I couldn’t settle on anything. Recently, I heard you say something along the lines of “pick your mission” (maybe it was from Business of Authority), and you gave ditching hourly billing as an example for yourself. When I heard that, something clicked, and I realized my “mission” is to convince software engineers to use test driven development. In my mind it’s the most professional way to develop software. I rebranded my website, changed the language, and deleted every post (not that I had that many) that didn’t talk about TDD. I went from “What the hell do I write about?!”, to seeing blog post ideas everywhere. At this point I’m not sure how I’ll leverage this specialization into some type of consulting, but one step at a time. Thanks for all your work. - Mike

There are a number of things that I’d like to call out from Mike’s message:

For most people, it’s hard and/or scary to pick a specialization. It can feel like career suicide even if you know intellectually that it’s in your best interest.
Having a core focus that drives you (e.g., a mission or purpose or epiphany or vision or big idea) can crystalize your specialization for you. It’ll give you the confidence to take the initial leap of faith, and it’ll keep on you target when the going gets tough.
If you have no idea what your mission is, you might be able to find it by identifying a common thread in your previous work. It isn’t always possible to identify a common thread, but if you can it’s quite powerful.
One of the best parts about being on a mission is that a mission is almost always centered on improving the lives of others. This is a much more persuasive story to tell than what I normally see:
- “I’m an amazing web designer - wanna hire me?”
- “I’m passionate about solving hard problems with custom software - wanna hire me?”
- “I want to make a million dollars so I started doing freelance motion graphics - wanna hire me?”
Picking a specialization is one of the best cures for writer’s block that I’ve come across. If you’re not sure what to write on your home page, on your sales pages, on your blog, for your mailing list, on your guest posts, or in your books, etc... pick a specialization and I guarantee that you’ll have more ideas than you would ever have time to write.

K, I’ll shut up there... maybe more about missions tomorrow?

(Thanks to Mike for sharing!)

Yours,

—J