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Post by duplexfields on Dec 2, 2012 23:16:58 GMT
With a nearly infinite universe of possibilities, how do you find out who you are and what to do?
Organization!
If you have a categorical list of what exists, you can glance at it and see what catches your eye.
Example: the Elements of Harmony. Which of the Elements matches your character and personality best?
Honesty
Loyalty
Laughter
Generosity
Kindness
"Magic"
Further posts in this thread should suggest other categorical lists. Please share your thoughts and lists!
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Post by duplexfields on Dec 2, 2012 23:27:04 GMT
All jobs fall into three categories:
Production
Distribution
Marketing
Examples:
You make burgers at Burger King? You're in Production.
You're a register jockey handing the burgers that others make to customers in exchange for money? You're in Distribution.
You make art? Production. You write computer code? Production. If you create or modify a good, or perform a service, you're in Production.
Do you notify people that products or services are available for purchase? Do you hand out coupons? Are you a sign spinner? Do you make announcements? You're in Marketing.
Are you involved in getting a produced item to a customer, or bringing a customer to the place of service? Distribution. Taxi!
Then things get interesting. Do you create art in the art department? You're a Producer of Marketing. It's like a fractal from here on; managers focus on making sure the Producers have enough parts, tools, time, and discipline to produce the products, which makes them Distributors in Production. Their inverse are truck drivers, on the other hand, are Producers of Distribution.
It still sounds clean and easy, but in real life, most careers have aspects of all three, even if they have a focus on one.
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Post by sageowl on Dec 2, 2012 23:50:21 GMT
I'd like to add a fourth category: Discovery.
While you could argue that Isaac Newton's discovery of calculus led to production, what about someone studying crowd behavior, or discovering new species, or finding new laws on how neutrinos and black holes work?
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Post by EccentricVixen on Dec 3, 2012 1:15:56 GMT
Jobs-wise, I'm creating a game ( Click) so that counts as production? When it comes to the elements on harmony I honestly try to embody all of them. Though really I only manage Honesty, Kindness and Loyalty. It should be everybody's goal to be all of them! So when it's your cutie mark, you'll need to create a list of things which sound cool to you, and categorise them. |
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Post by brackets on Dec 3, 2012 18:21:20 GMT
Woah...
*spinny eyes*
Too much categories...I shouldn't try to read this 2.20 in the morning...
Then again, I shouldn't sneak internet this early either...
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Post by duplexfields on Dec 10, 2012 4:28:39 GMT
I'd like to add a fourth category: Discovery. While you could argue that Isaac Newton's discovery of calculus led to production, what about someone studying crowd behavior, or discovering new species, or finding new laws on how neutrinos and black holes work? Discovery is a form of information production: you are producing experimental data, theories, and other info. By contrast, a librarian is an information distributor, as are teachers and Google. By positing this theory of three basic categories of "economic" activity, I am not trying to quash creativity or discovery; I am trying to help people understand that their skills may be seen in terms of their functionality, not just their subject. For example, I like cartoons of both the animated and still varieties, but I don't draw often enough to draw well enough to animate or draw a webcomic. I am decent at calligraphy and the aesthetics of fonts; perhaps I could be a comic strip letterer? These are areas of production, across which my skills can stretch. My distribution skills include knowing how to plug in A/V equipment right the first time, running a sound board, and being able to navigate in DOS. |
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Post by duplexfields on Dec 10, 2012 5:04:31 GMT
Another set of categories is the scale or scope of a skill.
Procedural
Tactical
Strategic
Procedural skills are usually for hands-on activities: driving a bus, flipping a burger, writing a report. These have a set goal and usually a set of tools available for use. People whose jobs require procedural skills are usually workers, working below a manager or supervisor.
When I worked at a hot dog restaurant, we made french fries from potatoes instead of buying bags of frozen pre-cut fries. For an hour each day, I did the following procedure:
1. take a box of potatoes from the darkened storage room
2. cut each potato on the slicer into a bucket for fries
3. when 3/4 full, fill the bucket with water, seal, and refrigerate
4. when the box was empty, take another and continue
5. when I estimate I can't fill another bucket with the remaining potatoes, stop
6. disassemble the slicer and dishwash the parts
7. clean the starch from around the slicer frame
In the same example, my manager made sure the food supplier brought us enough boxes of potatos. Tactical skills are those that set up the environment for goals to be met. If the slicer sprung a blade, she would call the repair man. If we hadn't sold as many fries yesterday, and still had some unused buckets, she'd tell me not to cut as many buckets today. She also made sure we cleaned the fryer daily, had enough baskets ready for the fry-man to use, and didn't start cutting taters just before the lunch rush, when we'd need all hands on deck.
Strategic skills are the goal-setting, big-picture items. Do we need to sell fries? Yes; only soda is more profitable than fries. Do we need a variety of portion sizes to satisfy different customers? Yes, small, medium, and large. (Tactical: most people buy medium, so set the three prices based on that.) Do we have enough people on payroll to match our customer demand? Do we buy from a supplier whose trucks always arrive on time with good produce? Do we have a marketing campaign currently? Executives make these decisions, based largely on input from the managers or supervisors.
So we can expand our understanding of the list:
Procedural - tasks - workers
Tactical - setup - managers
Strategic - goals - executives
However, a single project or job can also be divided into these levels.
In a video game, these same skills show up. Let's say I'm playing Doom or a similar first-person shooter. My strategy will either be to make it through the level as fast as I can or to kill all the enemies and take their stuff. If I'm going for the latter goal, one of my tactics will be to save the big health/armor/ammo items until I'm ready to leave the level, so that exit with the most stuff possible. Another tactic is to conserve the biggest ammo for the biggest bad guys, or big groups of small bad guys. My procedures will include ducking around corners to avoid being hit, aiming rockets at floors for splash damage, and making sure not to run out of health or ammo.
Visual artists make tactical decisions about which tools, physical or digital, to use for a given project. Strategic decisions include the subject of the drawing/painting and which site to submit it to when it's done, and how much time to spend on commissions vs uncompensated work of their own initiation.
As a person with high-functioning autism, I have found it frustrating to understand the inherent differences between these levels of decision-making and problem-solving. Learning these distinctions has helped me see my own potential more clearly. I now can discover what skills I need to learn in order to get a better or better-paying job. I can now see the monumental task of being a public speaker as a problem that can be solved with enough organization and thought.
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Post by duplexfields on Dec 24, 2012 7:56:58 GMT
Another way to figure out what you'll enjoy is to figure out what you have good instincts in. There are three basic types of things in this world: Physical - trees, pencils, buttons, and horses Logical - the number 3, the concept of difference, and the implications of two falling stars in Applejack's night sky Emotional - the feeling you got when you realized who those two falling stars represented, the need that drove you to this forum, and whatever you express with emoticons Most men are physically intuitive. Most women are emotionally intuitive. Most geeks are logically intuitive. Or to borrow and alter a phrase from John Gray: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and Geeks are from Vulcan. In the past, most logically intuitive types would become inventors, scientists, file clerks, scribes, or lawyers. Nowadays, IT is the place for geeks to be. My cutie mark is in the accurate duplication of information in different formats. I worked as a printer/scanner at a blueprint copy shop until the economy kicked me out. At the moment, I am the file clerk for a company that helps kids with autism. Guys who can wiggle a loose engine part to make a car work are physically intuitive. So are tattoo artists, whose work is emotional, but whose tools and "canvas" are all very physical. When I say that most women are emotionally intuitive, one example is that women tend to be able to read a situation social better than men, identifying the social status of people in a room by their manner of dress, their body language, and other cues. Relationships, roles, and duties are the structures that emotionally intuitive people can recognize and alter if they want. Wants and needs can be clear or "complicated." It's important to note that everyone has some instincts and some learned capacity in all three areas. However, if you're logically intuitive, sales probably isn't for you, since marketing is highly social, a combination of the emotional and physical. In the same way, most physically intuitives don't have the patience for spiritual philosophy, seeing that combination of logic and emotion to be a load of touchy-feely nonsense. (If you want to know more about this philosophy, visit my Triessentialism blog.) |
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