I want, I can, I want

An exercise in formulating your life goals.

To do this, you need to make three lists:

• What I want. What am I interested in, what do I enjoy doing?
• What I can. What can I do, what skills do I have?
• What is in demand. What activities can bring me money, what are people willing to pay for?

As a result of these answers, you will get three areas: “I want”, “I can”, and in demand”. At their intersection lie your life goals.

From an interview with Kozlov Nikolai Ivanovich

To determine your life goals, you can start with three questions. First, what am I interested in, what do I enjoy doing? Second, what can I do? And the third — what brings money, what are people willing to pay for, what do they need? The answers to these questions can be imagined in the form of three circles (“I want”, “I can” and “in demand”. Your goals will lie at their intersection.

Of course, sometimes it happens that these circles do not intersect. Why? The first reason: a person wants little. For some reason, small children are interested in everything, they want everything, there is not enough day for them — and they need to play cars, and read a book, and fight with someone, and run, and try on a new dress … But the children grow up, and the usual begins: “I don’t like it, I don’t want to…” Dear, just get well! AND HOW TO BE TREATED?

Secondly, it may be that a person knows little. Here the way out is clear — go learn. In addition, there is still such a pattern: if you know how to do something masterfully, then almost certainly you will want to do it. Therefore, the more we know how, the easier it is for us to find what we want to do.

Well, the third — a lot of people rush about with the only thought — «what do I want?» They are not interested in what others want. Such people have no business prospects. A successful leader is an extrovert who feels other people, knows what they want, what he can give them and what to play on. It goes beyond «what I’m personally interested in». There should always be a question in my head: what do people need?

This approach will give you a good job: interesting and in demand, which you do well and for which you get good money.

But such an approach will not show where and what your vocation is. A vocation is more than just a good job. For people who have succeeded, earning a living is no longer a task — it is not interesting, it does not invigorate. They already have a question: where is the meaning? A vocation is when you know that what you do is needed by people for a long time — now and in the future, that it will remain after you. And for the sake of this big it is worth living. At the same time, ask yourself the question “what can I do?” not even necessary — a businessman will be able to pick up, «buy» specialists who can.