What’s Your “Zone”?
Does time fly by when you are working in the kitchen? Did you ever lose track of the hours
when you were researching a paper for school?
Maybe you love visiting the elderly in a nursing home and you could do it all day! Or, perhaps,
working with children (not necessarily your own) is your thing?
“ZONE” or “FLOW” is what happens when you concentrate very hard on one activity because
you really enjoy it. You are so “into it” that you forget to do other things you need to do. You
might even find yourself thinking: “Wow, if I could do this all day, it wouldn’t even feel like
work.”
Write a list of occasions when you’ve been “in the zone”. Go back in time as far as you can
remember. That’s the first step…take 10 minutes now and write down the first 5 such occasions
that come to mind.
Now – for the second step – take a good look at your list and see if your activities are connected
more to People, Things, Ideas or Data, or, perhaps, a combination. Most people will find they
have a preference for 1 or 2 categories.
These 4 broad categories define the “World of Work” and give us clues as to what kind of work
we’d like to do.
If a woman is into “People”, she often gets energy from being in a large crowd. Or, she might
want to deal with people, in a one-on-one setting. Either way, she enjoys being around people.
Jobs might include teaching, sales/business and the various therapies.
A girl who’s in her Zone when cooking, baking, sewing, or doing arts & crafts, might be more of
a “Things” person. She likes to work with her hands. Jobs could be sheitle-macher, chef or
seamstress. She might enjoy working as a pre-school teacher, especially if she also likes people.
“Ideas” – if you like to think, you’re here! Jobs include teachers – especially for the higher grades
and the more complex subjects. Health care professions also fall in this category, as will
anything requiring analysis, such as computer programming.
Lastly, if you love numbers, and are comfortable handling a lot of different pieces of
information, you fall into the “Data” category. Bookkeeping and accounting are two obvious
examples of Data jobs.
So … What’s Your Zone?
Sara Brejt, Esq., CPC helps job seekers in our community become more employable and get better jobs.
You can reach her at Sara@SaraBrejt.com or 973-936-9006.
