Who inspired the concept of the Freedom Compass, and how is it relevant to career, goals, and team dynamics? Why is it important for individuals?
Today, I delve into a powerful concept that could serve as a guiding tool for your career, goals, and team—The Freedom Compass. Inspired by Michael Hyatt, the Freedom Compass introduces two pivotal dimensions: passion and competence.
Join me as I navigate through the four distinct quadrants of this compass, exploring areas of drudgery, personal and professional development, the desire zone, and the realm of tasks that may be competent but lack passion. Unraveling this compass could unlock insights into your ideal work, projects, and career path, while also shedding light on effective team dynamics. Whether you’re reflecting on the past year or setting new goals for the coming one, this episode provides valuable insights to align your passion and competence, offering a compass to guide you through the intricate landscape of your professional journey.
So, let’s embark on this exploration together and discover how the Freedom Compass can shape a more fulfilling and purpose-driven career.
I discuss the following key points:
- Introduction to the Freedom Compass
- Two Dimensions – Passion and Competence
- The Drudgery Zone
- Personal and Professional Development
- The Desire Zone
- The Boring Area
- Optimizing Team Dynamics
- Automation and Delegation
- Reflection for Goal Setting
- Application of Flow Concept
I encourage you to take a moment for introspection. Reflect on the patterns in your work, the tasks that bring you joy, and those that may feel like a drag.
Use the principles of the Freedom Compass to align your passion and competence, creating a roadmap for a more fulfilling career journey.
Consider discussing these insights with your team, exploring ways to optimize collective strengths and delegate tasks that fall outside the desire zone.
As you embark on a new year, let the Freedom Compass be your guide, steering you towards a path of purpose and satisfaction.
Don’t forget to share your thoughts and experiences with me, either through social media or by joining The Effective Statistician community on LinkedIn.
Here’s to a year filled with growth, achievement, and meaningful pursuits.
Never miss an episode!
Join thousends of your peers and subscribe to get our latest updates by email!
Get the
Learn on demand
Click on the button to see our Teachble Inc. cources.
Featured courses
Click on the button to see our Teachble Inc. cources.
Transcript
The Freedom Compass – A Tool to Guide Your Career, Goals, and Team
[00:00:00] Alexander: Welcome to another episode of The Effective Statistician. Today I want to talk about something that I learned from Michael Hyatt, the Freedom Compass. The Freedom Compass is a really, really interesting Concept to understand more about where you actually want to work and what things that you want to pursue. What are the projects that you want to work on? Generally, kind of things you would love to move forward with. And of course there’s a, there’s one other aspect that we can talk about and that is probably money. Yeah. And a third dimension that I will not mention about, but if that also comes into play, then you have the perfect area [00:01:00] for guiding your career.
[00:01:04] So the compass is actually pretty easy. It like many of these concepts have basically two dimensions. The first dimension Is passion. Are you passionate about these things? And the other area is competent. Can you do these kind of different things? Are you good at doing these things? And if you think about passion and competence, then obviously there become four different quadrants in this matrix.
[00:01:42] And of course, yeah, passion is continuous and competence is also continuous. So think about this as a Simplification, of course, but it helps you to kind of think about different things. So let’s start with [00:02:00] the areas that we really don’t want to be in. That is the area of no passion and no competence.
[00:02:09] So what are these things? These are the things Michael Hyatt calls them. These are the things that are in the drudgery zone. And for me, for example, these are everything about taxes. Yeah. So I’m neither competent nor do I have a lot of passion for it. I still need to do that. Of course, but I really, really hate it because I’m not good at it and because it’s really not of my biggest interest.
[00:02:43] It’s not interesting to me at all. So this is for me the drudgery zone and that’s probably also why I procrastinated all the time. Another area is if you’re passionate, but you’re not competent about [00:03:00] it. Now this area is kind of interesting, because this could be an interesting area to explore, whether that is something for your personal development.
[00:03:13] You’re not yet competent in it, but you could become competent in it. And these are the things that Potentially you want to invest more time in especially if these are also areas where you can distinguish yourself from others, where you can really move the needle where maybe you even have some kind of And so that is something that you can really start doing.
[00:03:45] It doesn’t necessarily need to be something on the business side. It could also be something that is maybe a hobby. You know, something like playing an instrument or things like this. Maybe you never will get kind of an [00:04:00] expert in it. But if you’re passionate about it. Maybe it doesn’t, doesn’t matter. So that could be personal development or it could be professional development.
[00:04:10] Then you have the desire zone. That is you’re passionate about it and you’re competent about it. So this is where hopefully most of the things that you do Both inside and outside of work you’re spending time on. So these are the things where you can really excel, where you love doing them because you know how to do them.
[00:04:37] You can probably further improve and improve and improve and become kind of an expert in it. And you can spend a lot of time on these things. For me, for example, this is everything about leadership. Probably pretty good on lots of these different things, but it’s such a great area and such a wide area [00:05:00] that I can spend more and more time on it, learn more concepts about it apply these concepts and get better at these.
[00:05:10] This is For me isn’t like work. It doesn’t feel like work. It feels like the area where I really, really love doing something. The last area is the boring area. And that is the area that you’re competent, but you don’t have a lot of passion for this. When I think about this, well, this is, for example, reviewing tables.
[00:05:36] Yeah, I can do these kind of things. I have done them for 20 years. I can also, you know, get maybe a little bit creative about it, but I’m not that passionate about it anymore. So this is an area that for me is in the boring space. If you have things that are [00:06:00] in the boring space, boring space, then this is potentially something you want to delegate, something you can give to someone who is maybe more passionate about this and wants to kind of more grow in this area.
[00:06:18] Yeah. Maybe for someone else that is in the development area. Yeah. Passionate about it. Want to learn more about it. Want to become a really good statistician. And of course, kind of being able to review tables is part of our core skills kit at the beginning. If you’re already very, very experienced, then it’s probably something you can delegate.
[00:06:44] So, think about these kind of different things. How can you Automate, delegate, these kind of different things, so that you are more in your desire zone? And also the [00:07:00] colleagues around you are also more in their desire zone. Assign the different things according to passion. I found that really, really Good for having a great team set up, having a very, very productive team. And so make sure that people most of the time spend either time in the development zone.
[00:07:28] So this is also the area where you probably get into some kind of flow from working perspective. I’ve talked about flows, a concept of flow of an Hungarian psychologist which name I can’t pronounce in an earlier episode. And if you’re interested in this concept, just search for slow search for flow. in the podcast and you’ll probably [00:08:00] find this episode. So short episode for this year. I think it’s a really really good episode for the start of the year as you’re probably reflecting about last year and what you want to do this year about goals all these kind of different things. So take this and have fun with it.
Join The Effective Statistician LinkedIn group
This group was set up to help each other to become more effective statisticians. We’ll run challenges in this group, e.g. around writing abstracts for conferences or other projects. I’ll also post into this group further content.
I want to help the community of statisticians, data scientists, programmers and other quantitative scientists to be more influential, innovative, and effective. I believe that as a community we can help our research, our regulatory and payer systems, and ultimately physicians and patients take better decisions based on better evidence.
I work to achieve a future in which everyone can access the right evidence in the right format at the right time to make sound decisions.
When my kids are sick, I want to have good evidence to discuss with the physician about the different therapy choices.
When my mother is sick, I want her to understand the evidence and being able to understand it.
When I get sick, I want to find evidence that I can trust and that helps me to have meaningful discussions with my healthcare professionals.
I want to live in a world, where the media reports correctly about medical evidence and in which society distinguishes between fake evidence and real evidence.
Let’s work together to achieve this.
