"Knowing what you want is the first step towards getting it."

- Mae West

In this chapter, you will embark on a journey to discover and understand your core drivers - the motivating forces that influence your behavior and decision-making. You will learn about the concept of the "Yearning Octopus," which is a metaphor for the various wants and desires that shape our goals and motivations. You will also discover the importance of identifying, prioritizing and fulfilling your wants, and the role of core drivers in leading a fulfilling and satisfying life.

You will discover:

1. The concept of core drivers and how they influence our behavior and decision-making

2. The "Yearning Octopus" metaphor and how it relates to our wants and desires

3. The importance of identifying, prioritizing and fulfilling our wants

4. How to align our wants with our career and personal goals

5. The role of core drivers in leading a fulfilling and satisfying life.

1. What are core drivers?

Core drivers are the motivating forces or factors that influence an individual's behavior and decision-making. They can be internal or external, and they can vary widely from one person to another. Some common examples of core drivers include a desire for achievement, a need for security or stability, a sense of belonging or connection with others, a desire for personal growth or learning, or a sense of purpose or meaning. Understanding your core drivers can help you make decisions and set goals that align with your values and motivations, and can ultimately lead to a more fulfilling and satisfying life.

In contrast to your basic needs to fullfill, core drivers are the motivating forces that drives individuals to pursue certain goals or outcomes. They can be internal or external, and they can vary widely from one person to another.

2. But how to determine your wants as drivers

Tim Urban explains this well in this great article about The Octopus of wants and how to find work you love:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html

The text mentions the concept of a "Yearning Octopus," which is a metaphor for the various wants and desires that a person may have in life. The idea is that a person's wants and goals can be thought of as tentacles on an octopus, with each tentacle representing a different desire or interest.

Some tentacles may be longer or stronger than others, depending on how important that desire is to the person. The text suggests that it is important to pay attention to these wants and desires and to try to find a career that aligns with them as much as possible.

It advises against trying to completely eliminate or ignore certain tentacles, as this may lead to long-term frustration or dissatisfaction. Instead, it suggests that it is more productive to try to find a career that allows for a balance between all of one's wants and interests.

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Q: What is the "Yearning Octopus" concept about? A: The "Yearning Octopus" is a concept that suggests that our wants and desires are like tentacles that shape our goals and motivations.

To apply the concept of the "Yearning Octopus" in your own life, you can follow these steps:

1. Identify your wants and desires: Take some time to think about what is important to you in life, and what you truly want to achieve or accomplish. This may include things like career goals, personal interests, and values.

2. Prioritize your wants: Consider which wants are most important to you, and which ones you are willing to prioritize over others. You may find it helpful to create a list or a visual representation of your wants, with the most important ones at the top.

3. Find ways to fulfill your wants: Once you have a clear idea of what your wants are and which ones are most important to you, start looking for ways to fulfill them. This might involve finding a career that aligns with your interests and values, pursuing hobbies or personal projects that align with your passions, or finding ways to contribute to causes that are important to you.

4. Be open to change: Remember that your wants and desires may evolve over time, and that it is okay to change your priorities or career path if your interests or values shift. Don't be afraid to make adjustments as needed in order to find a career that truly resonates with you.

5. Focus on the present: While it is important to have long-term goals and aspirations, try not to get too caught up in planning for the future. Instead, focus on what you can do in the present to fulfill your wants and make progress towards your goals.

Really, it’s best to read it yourself. Read the article

1. Find out what you want.

2. What is realistic

3. Match 1 and 2

   Important elements:

   • Gain experience and see your career as a series of dots. It isn’t a mental trick to help you make decisions—it’s an accurate depiction of what’s actually happening. And seeing your career as a tunnel isn’t just unproductive—it’s delusional.

   • Likewise, you’re limited to focusing mainly on the next dot on your path—because it’s the only dot you can figure out. You don’t have to worry about dot #4 because you can’t anyway—you’re literally not qualified to do so.

   • The fantastic website 80,000 Hours (which exists to help young, talented people work through their career choices) has compiled a lot of data to back this up: data on the fact that you’ll change, that the world will change, and that you’ll only learn with time what you’re actually good at.

   • Hypothesis testing is intuitive in the dating world. If a friend were toiling over what kind of person she wants to marry but never went out with anyone, you’d tell her, “You can’t figure this out on your couch—you’ve gotta start going on dates, and that’ll teach you what you want in a partner.” If that friend then went on a solid first date and returned home to toil for hours about whether or not this new person was The One, you’d again have to correct her. You’d say, “There’s no way you can know that from just one date! You have to get some experience dating this person to learn what you need to learn to make that decision.” We can all agree that this hypothetical friend is pretty nuts and is lacking a fundamental understanding of how you find a happy relationship. So let’s not be like her when it comes to picking our career. Dot #1 is a chill situation—it’s just a first date. This is awesome news—because it makes it a lot less scary to draw an arrow on your map if it’s only an arrow to dot #1 of your future. The real cause of tyranny of choice is accurately seeing the sheer number of options you have in today’s world while delusionally seeing those careers as the 40-year tunnels of yesterday’s world. That’s a lethal combo. Reframing your next major career decision as a far lower-stakes choice makes the number of options exciting, not stressful.

   • Building up jobs for your resume is like saving sex for old age

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Q: What are some strategies for applying the "Yearning Octopus" concept in one's own life? A: Some strategies for applying the "Yearning Octopus" concept in one's own life include identifying and prioritizing wants and desires, finding ways to fulfill them, being open to change, and focusing on the present. It is also important to approach career choices as opportunities to gain experience and learn, rather than long-term commitments.

3. Deep analysis - part 1: what do you want?

The idea behind this "Yearning Octopus" is to understand and identify the various desires, beliefs, values, and fears that shape our goals and motivations. These desires and fears are seen as tentacles of the octopus, and the goal is to unpack and understand each one in order to better understand ourselves and what we truly want. This process involves examining each yearning in-depth and asking why we have it, in order to determine whether it is an authentic part of ourselves or if it was implanted in us by someone else. By doing this, we can better understand ourselves and our motivations, and make decisions that are more closely aligned with our true desires and values.

1. Like if there’s a certain career path that sounds fantastic to you, unpack that

2. Unpack your fear and desires

3. Searching for Imposters

4. Denial Prison.

5. Priority Rankings

4. Deep analysis - part 2: your reality box

When it comes to your career possibilities, you’re dealing with two sets of beliefs: beliefs about the world and beliefs about your own potential. When assessing your chances on a certain career path, the key question is: with enough time, could you get good enough at this game to potentially reach whatever your definition of success is in that career?

I like to view this journey to “good enough at the game to succeed” as a distance. The distance starts with where you are now—point A—and ends with you reaching your definition of success, which we can draw with a star.

So how do you figure out your chances of getting to any particular star? It’s all about a simple formula: Distance = Speed x Time. In our case, the more apt wording might be: Progress = Pace x Persistence.

Pace. What makes someone slower or faster at improving at a career game? I’d say it comes down to three factors:

1. Your level of chefness - chefs improve rapidly through a continual loop…

2. Your work ethic

3. Your natural abilities

Persistence. And this is why persistence is so important. Someone who has decided they’re only willing to give a dream career a shot for three years before they’ll go for their fallback plan has essentially disqualified themselves from a chance at their dreams. It doesn’t matter how awesome you are—if you’ll give up after two or three years of not breaking through, you’re unlikely to succeed. A few years is just not enough time to traverse the typically long distances it takes to get to the raddest success stars, no matter how impressive your pace.

Your Real Strengths and Weaknesses

With our pace-times-persistence equation in mind, let’s revisit the concept of strengths and weaknesses. It’s not that “strengths and weaknesses” is a bad concept—it’s that we think about it all wrong. When we list our strengths, we tend to list our areas of existing skill more than anything else. Instead, strengths should be all about pace and persistence qualities. Originality or lack thereof should be a critical component of the discussion, making qualities like agility and humility (trademark chef traits) notable strengths, and qualities like stubbornness or intellectual laziness (classic cook traits) important weaknesses.

So to be a bit more efficient, let’s worry about the parts of the Reality Box that might actually end up in your Option Pool (the middle of the Venn diagram where the Want and Reality Boxes overlap). To complete our Reality Box audit with that caveat, we need to evaluate:

1. The general landscape. Take our best crack at evaluating the world’s current career landscape—the full range of options available (or create-able).

2. Specific game boards. For any careers that sound remotely interesting, ponder what the deal might be with that career’s current game board—the parties involved, the way success seems to be happening for others recently, the most up-to-date rules of the game, the latest new loopholes that are being exploited, etc.

3. Starting point. For those paths, evaluate your starting point, based on your current skills, resources, and connections relevant to that field.

4. Success point. Think about end points and where on each line your star should be placed. Ask yourself what’s the minimum level of success you’d need to achieve in order to feel happy about having chosen that career path.

5. Your pace. Make an initial estimate for what your pace of improvement might be on these various game boards, based on your current pace-related strengths and how much you think you can improve at each of them (in other words, how much your speed might be able to accelerate).

6. Your level of persistence. Evaluate the amount of time you think you’ll be willing to put into each of these respective paths.

5. Match part 1 and part 2 - continuous feedback loop

For help analyzing your situation some paper to write on:

1. For those who want to dig in even further: a more involved group of worksheets

2. Worksheet octopus

3. Worksheet yearning hierarchy

4. Worksheet A-start

5. Your career dot map

Conclusion

Understanding your core drivers is an essential step towards making decisions and setting goals that align with your values and motivations. By identifying your wants and desires and prioritizing them, you can find ways to fulfill them in your personal and professional life.

In the next chapter, we will delve deeper into the topic of finding purpose and meaning in life, and explore how it can lead to a more fulfilling and satisfying life.

Quiz

1. What is the main goal of the "Yearning Octopus" concept?

   a. To identify and prioritize wants and desires

   b. To find ways to fulfill wants and desires

   c. To be open to change

   d. All of the above

   Explanation: The correct answer is d, All of the above. The main goal of the "Yearning Octopus" concept is to identify and prioritize wants and desires, find ways to fulfill them, and be open to change. It is a framework for understanding and managing the various desires, beliefs, values, and fears that shape our goals and motivations.

2. What is NOT recommended when applying the "Yearning Octopus" concept to career choices?

   a. Seeing career choices as opportunities to gain experience and learn

   b. Seeing career choices as long-term commitments

   c. Being open to change

   d. Focusing on the present

   Explanation: The correct answer is b, Seeing career choices as long-term commitments. When applying the "Yearning Octopus" concept to career choices, it is recommended to see them as opportunities to gain experience and learn, rather than as long-term commitments. This helps to reduce stress and increase flexibility, as our wants and desires may evolve over time.

3. Which of the following is NOT one of the strategies for applying the "Yearning Octopus" concept in one's own life?

   a. Identifying wants and desires

   b. Prioritizing wants and desires

   c. Finding ways to fulfill wants and desires

   d. Planning for the future

   Explanation: The correct answer is d, Planning for the future. While it is important to have long-term goals and aspirations, the "Yearning Octopus" concept recommends focusing on the present and being open to change, rather than getting too caught up in planning for the future.

4. Which of the following is NOT a recommended approach when applying the "Yearning Octopus" concept to career choices?

   a. Seeing career choices as opportunities to gain experience and learn

   b. Seeing career choices as long-term commitments c. Focusing on the present

   d. All of the above are recommended approaches

   Explanation: The correct answer is b, Seeing career choices as long-term commitments. When applying the "Yearning Octopus" concept to career choices, it is recommended to see them as opportunities to gain experience and learn, rather than as long-term commitments. This helps to reduce stress and increase flexibility, as our wants and desires may evolve over time.

5. What is the main benefit of applying the "Yearning Octopus" concept to career choices? a. It helps to reduce stress and increase flexibility

   b. It help to improve decision-making skills

   c. It helps to increase productivity

   d. It helps to improve communication skills

How to apply this in your life today?

1. Answer this question as honest as you can: What do you desire?

2. Take the time to reflect on your own wants and desires by creating a "Yearning Octopus" visualization, prioritizing your wants and identifying ways to fulfill them. This exercise will not only help you gain a better understanding of your core drivers, but also lead you to a more fulfilling and satisfying life.

Food for Thought

1. Have you ever felt a sense of lack of purpose or meaning in your life? How did you handle it?

2. How do you define purpose and meaning in your own life?

3. Do you think it is possible to have multiple purposes or meanings in life? Why or why not?

4. How important do you believe it is to have a sense of purpose and meaning in life? Why?

5. Do you think it is possible to find purpose and meaning through your work or career? Why or why not?

6. Can you think of any examples of people or organizations who have found a sense of purpose and meaning through their work or actions?

7. How do you think society as a whole benefits from individuals having a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives?

8. Do you think it is possible to find purpose and meaning in life without having a clear idea of what you want to do in your career? Why or why not?

9. How do you think one can maintain a sense of purpose and meaning in life throughout different stages and changes?

10. What steps have you taken or do you plan to take to find purpose and meaning in your own life?

Expand Your Understanding

1. "The Power of Purpose: Find Meaning, Live Longer, Better" by Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro - This book provides practical exercises and tools for discovering and aligning with one's sense of purpose, and the benefits of doing so for overall well-being and longevity.

2. "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl - This classic book explores the author's experiences as a Holocaust survivor and the role of finding meaning in the face of adversity. It offers valuable insight on the human search for purpose and the importance of having a sense of meaning in one's life.