Finding Work that Lights You Up with Jonathan Fields

WHAT IS SPARKETYPE?

• A Sparketype is based on the belief that we all have a unique imprint, DNA or ‘source code’ for work that allows us to feel purpose, allows us to feel fully expressed in the world, and allows us to enter a state of flow—where we become absorbed and can work really hard but it feels like ‘effortless effort’.
• Venn diagram of purpose, expression, and flow—when you work from the intersection of these things, whether you get paid to do it or not, you come fully alive and feel like you’re doing the thing you’re here to do.
• Jonathan was curious: with so many ways try to figure out what we want to do, can you identify this place? Is there a set of universal imprints that cross cultures and ages, that stay with us?
• Sees so many people hitting middle and later age with no sense of what it is for them.
• Can we create a tool that allows people to identify the deeper driver at a much earlier point in life, so they can start from there and start to look out at all the potential ways they can contribute to the world?
• By using the tool, we can search in a much more informed way by saying: will this allow me to do the work of my Sparketype? Meaning, will this opportunity allow me to engage myself in work that gives me a strong sense of purpose, makes me feel fully expressed, creates a sense of flow?
• When we experience those things we are fully lit up, and the more we experience that the better it is for us, our relationships and the world around us.
• One of the big mistakes people make is that we start that exploration externally: looking at lists of jobs, lists of industries, rather than starting internally and asking: what is the deeper driver for me?
• Once we identify it, it gives us freedom because we can find thousands of jobs or industries that will allow us to express that, and we can run fewer experiments and get to the right place faster.

EXPECTATIONS OF OTHERS

• Societal baggage of what we ‘should’ be doing with our lives e.g. family telling you – you shouldn’t be a dancer or singer because you’ll never make a living at it.
• Primary driver: the work you’re here to do.
• Shadow driver: something you’ve become really good at, but if you’re honest you’re doing in service of your primary driver.
• Even if your deeper driver is buried beneath the expectations of other people, it’s still the thing for you to do, is still the core of who you are.
• Some people avoid expressing who they are and standing out as it triggers blame or confrontation e.g. Australians getting told not to be a ‘tall poppy’ (means being told not to achieve and stand out).

DIFFERENT SPARKETYPES

MAKER

• Drive to make ideas manifest—wake up in the morning and think: I need to create.
• Love going from the idea to creating something.

SCIENTIST

• Driven by curiosity: need to figure things out, solve problems and puzzles.
• Can exist in any profession.
• The reason they do it: kick of figuring the problem out.

MAVEN

• Knowledge acquisition: wake up and want to learn.
• Specific fascinations: devour every bit of information about a topic until they have exhausted it.
• If you have multiple degrees and only using one or two of them, chances are this is you.
• Not necessarily about solving problems, might just want to know everything about it.

ESSENTIALIST

• Organizing, simplifying, process and systems: this can show up in lots of different ways.
• Drive to turn chaos into order.
• One of the Sparketypes others find hard to understand: why would they want to do that?

PERFORMER

• Bring illustrative, demonstrative energy to a moment.
• Can happen on stage, on screen but can also be a teacher, doctor.
• Taking a moment, experience or idea and demonstrating it in a way that allowing the energy and wisdom from it to be brought to life so everybody gets it.

WARRIOR

• Drive to lead.
• Societal overlay with this sparketype: a lot of people associate it with masculinity, aggression, arrogance.
• Most effective people in this role are quiet, gentle, sensitive, have a powerful balance of masculine and feminine energies.
• About organizing people and leading them towards the desired outcome.

SAGE

• Teaching: transmitting wisdom and information in a way that people will understand with clarity, seeing the light bulbs go on in others.
• Teachers & speakers.
• If you’re finding ways to tell people what you know, this you.
• You may spend a lot of time in maven stage learning, but later you will want to turn around and share what you know.

ADVOCATE

• Giving voice to the voiceless: this can be the disenfranchised, animals or environment.
• Can also be ideas: the champion of unvoiced ideas in a room.
• See injustice and want to right it: giving voice to something that has not been given voice to.

ADVISOR

• Guiding individuals or a small group of people through a process to the desired end.
• Much more intimate expression of work, advisor rides alongside the group.
• Joy comes from advising as they make the journey.
• Therapeutic professions, professional practices that create long-term relationships.

NURTURER

• Drive to give care.
• Likely to feel a lot, high level of empathy: feel other people’s unease, suffering, pain, and discomfort in such a way you can’t understand how others don’t feel it on the same level as you.
• Moved to do something about it.
• Be aware: can be so focused on giving that they forget to look after self, can’t do work of nurturer without self-care.

SHARE

• Take the Sparketype assessment here!
• Don’t forget to take a screenshot of this episode, tag us both on social media (@jonathanfields & @jimkwik) and share your greatest “aha!” moment from this episode with us!