Why pattern-spotting is crucial for your career
Opening your eyes to the hidden signals shaping your career
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This is the final newsletter focused on a mini-series running throughout January, in which I’ve reshared four podcasts that will set you up for a successful 2025. If you’ve missed any, you can listen again here:
Grace Lordan on Thinking Big in your Career
Daniel Pink on Making Bold Career Decisions
Dorie Clark on Playing the Long Game in Your Career
Marcus Buckingham on the Hidden Signals of Career Success
Why pattern-spotting is crucial for your career
The most powerful guide to your next career move isn't a five-year plan or a personality test. It's hiding in plain sight:
The patterns that naturally capture your attention each day.
Last week, we explored why you should focus on following your curiosity, not your passion. This week, we're digging a little deeper. To help uncover what's really driving you. The patterns in your work and life that will positively shape your choices and experiences.
Even if they’re not immediately obvious.
As Bruce Feiler told me when we spoke on the podcast:
"The people who are happiest and most fulfilled in what they do, they don't climb, they dig. They do what I call a meaning audit, going through their own lives, specifically through their own life story and constructing a story that's suitable for who they are. Not for who other people want them to be."
Marcus Buckingham, who I spoke to for this week’s podcast, takes this even further.
"Every day is your wisest, most loving friend, basically going: what about this thread? How about this thread? How about this one?"
A real-world example
Take Maya Grossman's journey, for instance.
Early in her career, she was a travel agent with no clear direction. But she started paying attention to the patterns that genuinely excited her. And the parts of the job that she genuinely did enjoy. After digging deep, she needed to embrace her creativity. "I decided I want to pivot into marketing," she shared with me.
And her approach was radical.
She set an audacious 10-year goal of becoming a CMO of a Silicon Valley startup - a dream that seemed impossible at the time. Most people laughed when she shared her ambition with them. But she made that seemingly impossible goal a reality by carefully tracking the patterns of what energised her, what she was naturally good at, and what she loved doing.
But to make this work, you’ve got to get super-specific, as Marcus explains:
"The most common answer to 'what do you love to do?' is 'I love working with people.' But what you're really looking for is initially just a verb. What are you doing with the people? Do you love selling to people you've already built a relationship with, or do you like knocking on doors?"
These aren't just vague, random interests - they're what Marcus calls 'red threads'. The specific activities that naturally energise you.
How to identify your patterns
Marcus offers three specific signals to identify a "red thread":
Before you do something, you find yourself looking forward to it
While doing it, time flies by
After you're done, you want to do it again - you're invigorated, not drained
Or, Bruce Feiler suggests another powerful approach to finding your red threads:
Look at the stories that naturally draw you in.
"The stories that you associate yourself with are the stories you want to associate yourself with. What books do you read? What shows captivate you? These are clues to your deeper inclinations."
The bigger picture
The goal isn't to have a perfect job filled with 100% red threads. As Marcus emphasises,
"We have no data [showing that]. Nobody who's really good loves all that they do. But if you can find about 20% red threads every day, your brain chemistry changes. You're more creative, you're more innovative, you're more resilient. You are unimaginably unique. When you die, there will never be again in the history of humankind anybody who has the same unbelievably weird pattern of what you love, what you lean into, how you think, how you build relationships."
Lean into that.
Your day is constantly trying to show you something about yourself - it’s just a matter of paying attention to the patterns that are revealed.
Want to hear more? Listen to my full conversations with Marcus Buckingham, Bruce Feiler, and Maya Grossman on the Future Work/Life podcast.
If this resonates, forward it to someone rethinking their career - sometimes, we all need help seeing patterns, even if they’re right in front of us.