Lemons
What did that title make you think or wonder? How about this one:
"Whenlife gives you lemons, ..."
Many people will read that and either finish it quickly or come up with a funny pun instantly. How many people would relate lemons to this phrase? Maybe fewer people. You can test that by thinking back to what you thought you were going to read in this post.
This post is about opportunity though, and knowing when to take it.
Opportunity is as much about luck, as it is skill, determination, and intuition. You need most if not all four, to consistently find great opportunities. They could be business deals, job offers, lottery tickets, winning in a video game, hitting a grand slam... "It doesn't matter; if you want it, go get it."
Motivational speakers will say something to that effect. I'm not trying to motivate you. I'm not trying to give you an ego boost. I'm sharing my experience to give you ideas and inspiration.
Recently, I saw an opportunity on Quora and took it. This is a small opportunity in the grand scheme of things, but it's the perfect example to walk you through.
Step One: Staging
I have been on Quora for awhile and I've found it interesting, often hilarious, and sometimes eye-opening. I've followed several topics, questions, and people. I've asked a handful of questions, and posted a few answers and comments, but I had never really gotten a genuine opportunity to standout, even a little.
op-por-tu-ni-ty /,apər'tunəti/ noun a possibility due to a favorable combination of circumstances
This example stood out because it beat my expectations, which I went in with pretty low to start. This is the Staging Step. At first, you can set your expectations low. I took a step back, removed myself from any larger goals, and observed the situation. If you go in hot-headed and confident, it can really turn some people off (they ignore you, or worse, they will downvote you). If you build your expectations up too high, you could repeatedly fail because you won't be able to surmount certain expectations, so you can work up to bigger goals.
Step Two: Searching
So you've stepped back and observed. You should have some intuition, some hypotheses, about how the situation, environment, ecosystem, etc. works. That's great because it will make this step much easier. You need to go out there and search out all of the conceivable opportunities. Really get into the thick of it. If it's Quora, spend several hours a day, or a week, looking through all of the questions and answers. In this case, that either had a lot, or have the potential to get a lot of views. This is going to take good judgment or a strong intuition. Over time, if you practice these steps enough, your intuition may get better, and you may be able to pick out the good opportunities more easily and quickly. Just think back to the exercise at the beginning of this post. Did you intuitively connect the one word title with the longer phrase about life and lemons... or something like that... Practice word, idea, image, thought, etc. associations, and for now, stick to these steps.
For my example, I found this Quora question-answer pair:
Q: What are the best stories about people randomly meeting Steve Jobs? A: Ryan McGeehan - ...
To give some context around how I found this opportunity, I like Apple. I buy things from Apple, and I've watched Steve Jobs' keynote presentations. I followed this question, and found this answer, because I enjoy reading this topic. At this point, in the back of my mind, I was also thinking: this topic has the potential to be very popular, but it was still early. I had noticed similar topics gain visibility in the past, so I knew it had a high likelihood of being a good place to comment.
To recap, in this Search step, I just found a topic and made a mental note that it might become popular, or already was because I found it in the home tab stream of the Quora iPhone app. Quora also places answers and many other things you might enjoy in the home tab stream. That's good because it will make the next step much easier.
Step Three: Deciding
Decisions can be difficult. There's no doubt about it, but we all need to make them on a daily basis. The most difficult ones can often be the ones that we perceive as having no, or insignificant, consequence on us if things go south. That's good and bad. If we're making silly decisions about which Quora topic to post something on, then it can be a distraction in the grand scheme of things, but the same can be true when we have a few great options that all look equally enticing. There is an insignificant consequence in that situation, even if it's something important, like a job opportunity, because you simply have options.
This step, like the last two, also takes a lot of practice to get right. It's easy to get locked up in indecision paralysis. There have been studies on indecisiveness and what leads to it. Today, it seems, it's too many choices. This is something that Costco actively avoids. They give you three options. "Do you have any more options?" "No. We have provided the very best." And they generally do. They use a very rigorous process to pick even the most durable toilet paper! It's science.
I don't want to scare you too much. You need to be aware of the challenges of making and taking great opportunities. So with that in mind, it's time to make a decision.
You've hopefully sought out and mentally taken note of many potential opportunities, and now you need to analyze them and go after the ones that make the most sense. Let's be honest, with enough work and determination, I could have spent hours just writing posts and comments all day on Quora and one would eventually stick. However, I feel it is much more important to work smart, and have fun along the way. I add many of my answers, questions, and comments solely because I'm deeply fascinated in the topics, but a few lean more toward trying to garner upvotes. Upvotes are after all the currency of Quora. How could I ask questions without them? And how could I not make some small, meaningful impact on the community without them? Good. I've got all of my disclaimers out of the way now...
Making tough decisions plays in your favor, while you're working smart and not too hard, it is about playing to your strengths or skills. You need to match those skills to the right opportunities. If we go back to my Quora example, I can tell you that I focused on my ability to be find humor in things. I noticed that Ryan McGeehan had mentioned lemonade in his answer to the Steve Jobs question, but he hadn't quite taken the lemonade analogy far enough to close out his story with humor. I saw an opportunity, I made the connection, and I used my whit to get in there and make a comment.
When life gives you lemonade... make chitchat?
The fact that it even has 84 upvotes is due to several factors, including 3,888 upvotes, and 208K views of the answer. I'm dubious as to whether many people actually view comments, but that's my hypothesis for why it "only" has 84 upvotes. Maybe I'm over-inflating my own ego, and it's not really that funny, but then again there is some data.