Finding Opportunity

Ever since graduating from full-time student to full-time employee, I have heard my leaders talk about all the opportunities around the world. At the time, I would do what any naive kid does: just nod and smile, agreeing with the person to avoid follow-up comments. It was not until recently that I realized just how blind I had been.

For many years at the keyboard, my only thought was that I had to go up the corporate ladder to see where all this opportunity was hiding. Then, once I achieved a certain level, my eyes would magically open wide. Peering out to see the full landscape of opportunity. For full transparency, reflecting on this makes me wonder how I held this position for such a long time. It feels really silly.

Of course, I was wrong with this line of thinking. Opportunity is everywhere; you can see it walking down the street. It is there when you are talking to a friend about an idea they have. It is solving the storage problem in a closet, a garage, the trunk of a car, etc ...

The question is, how do you start seeing it more clearly? I do not have a one-size-fits-all answer, nor do I believe one exists. But what I do have are some notes on what made me finally see it.

First, it was a former consulting client of mine reaching out to see if I was interested in moonlighting for them. There it was, the opportunity hit me square in the forehead. At that particular point in time, we were both ready to take on the engagement; however, it ended up falling through before it got off the ground.

Next, it was focusing on impacting those around me positively. I had been a dev lead for at least five years before this shift began. I was finally beginning to understand the balance necessary for the role. In that balance, I had an interest in getting the next developer ready for the role. In sharing the role, I began to see areas where the trainee had yet to be exposed. If it appeared to be an opportunity to learn something, I sent them to go do it. The more I looked, the more opportunities for them to grow began to show up. Each activity became a lesson, each lesson was an experience, and as the experiences grew, so did their ability to lead.

This was fun and fascinating for me. It was also an opportunity for me to learn when someone is ready for an activity and when they should be an observer. Before long, this began to snowball into other areas. Some of which I have written about here already, like creating new tools to make blogging more enjoyable. That was my opportunity to remove friction from the writing process, allowing me to write more and do less of the undesirable work. None of this has been worthy of a new business idea, but that is not to say they could not work toward a new business. Developer coaching is a real job out there; many people are offering their services for an hourly rate. Many people write blogs, I could take that tooling and apply it to the most popular blogging platforms to help other writers.

So where should you begin looking for an opportunity? Take a look around you. What are the things you enjoy? What problems do you face that you can also push yourself to fix? Who are some friends who have ideas but lack the execution? Not every opportunity is going to have a dollar value on it. Not every opportunity has to remain unmonetized. There are plenty of ideas roaming around the world looking for someone to pick them up and solve them.