Your Zone of Genius Isn't Optional Anymore
AI is automating your Zone of Excellence. Here's how to find the work only you can do.
You’re going to die someday. So am I.
The only question is: will you die having done your best work, or someone else’s?
I’m 60 years old. If I’m lucky, I have 15-20 productive years left. Maybe less where I’m sharp enough to do the work I’m built for. Every month I spent in my Zone of Excellence (successful, well-compensated, respected) was a month I’ll never get back. A month I was slowly dying inside.
In 2020, I read “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks, and it gave me permission to admit what I’d been running from: I wasn’t operating in my Zone of Genius. I was great at technical leadership, driving complex transformations, building high-performing teams and software products. But my true genius? It was at the intersection of technical mastery, strategic thinking, and teaching: helping leaders see what’s possible and giving them the capability to make it real.
Five years later, I wake up every morning energized to do work I’m uniquely built for. My mind is clearer. I’m less stressed and anxious. I have the freedom to pursue my unique value proposition. The difference isn’t just professional. It’s physiological.
And now, with AI rewriting the rules of every profession, finding your Zone of Genius isn’t a luxury for the self-actualized. It’s a survival imperative.
Here’s what’s different now than when I first read Hendricks’ book:
AI is rapidly automating everything in your Zone of Competence. Those tasks you’re “pretty good at” that fill your calendar and justify your paycheck? They’re being compressed into prompts.
Your Zone of Excellence (where you’ve built your reputation, where you’re reliable and steady) is next. Not today, maybe not this quarter. But the erosion has started. I’ve watched AI capabilities double every six months. The work that made you valuable five years ago is becoming table stakes. The work that makes you valuable today will be commoditized tomorrow.
The only sustainable place to build your career is your Zone of Genius: the work only you can do, in the way only you can do it. The activities that draw on your unique combination of skills, experience, and perspective that no AI can replicate because it’s distinctly, irreplaceably yours.
If you don’t know what that is, you need to find out. Now.
Hendricks defines four zones where we operate. Most of us are trapped in the wrong ones:
Zone of Incompetence: Activities you’re not good at. Others can do them far better. The best way to handle these? Stop doing them altogether.
Zone of Competence: You’re competent at these activities, but so are plenty of other people. You can do them, but they don’t differentiate you. AI is systematically eliminating these first.
Zone of Excellence: You do these activities extremely well. You make a good living here. You’re reliable, respected, well-compensated. This is the seductive trap where your addiction to comfort wants you to stay. You’ve built your reputation here, and walking away feels terrifying.
Zone of Genius: The set of activities you are uniquely suited to do. They draw upon your special gifts and strengths. You generate energy instead of depleting it. Time moves differently. This is your ultimate path to success and life satisfaction. In an AI-accelerated world, it’s the only defensible position.
The question isn’t whether AI will disrupt your Zone of Competence and Excellence. It will. The question is whether you’ll find your Zone of Genius before that happens, or after.
Your Zone of Genius isn’t about being the best in the world at something. It’s about being the only person in the world who brings YOUR specific gifts to a specific problem.
Hendricks defines it through four questions:
What do I most love to do? (So much that I can do it for hours without getting tired or bored)
What work doesn’t feel like work? (I could do it all day without exhaustion)
What produces the highest ratio of value to time spent? (Even ten minutes creates disproportionate impact)
What is my unique ability? (The special skill that provides enormous benefit to myself and others)
When I asked myself these questions honestly in 2020, I realized I’d spent decades as a tech leader in my Zone of Excellence. I was exceptional at driving transformations, building teams, delivering complex initiatives. But my Zone of Genius? It was helping leaders see around corners: translating technical complexity into strategic clarity, then equipping them to execute with confidence.
At the end of 2022, my CIO role ended. The tech job market was a complete mess. Mass layoffs happening daily, hiring freezes everywhere, uncertainty rippling through the entire industry. I had a choice: scramble to find another role in my Zone of Excellence, or be open and courageous enough to pursue my Zone of Genius.
It was stressful. It was uncertain. But I had no choice, really. I needed to do it for me.
Pursuing my unique calling wasn’t the safe path. But it was the right one. And everything that’s happened since proved it.
Here’s what nobody tells you about operating outside your Zone of Genius:
It’s killing you. Slowly, imperceptibly, but measurably.
When you spend your days doing work you’re “good enough” at, work that others could do equally well, your body keeps score. Chronic stress. Inflammation. Exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix. That persistent sense of running on a treadmill that’s slowly accelerating. I know because I lived it.
When you operate in your Zone of Genius, the opposite happens. You wake up energized instead of exhausted. You finish the day buzzing with ideas instead of collapsing on the couch. Problems that once drained you now invigorate you. You generate energy instead of depleting it, and everyone around you feels the difference.
This isn’t mystical thinking. It’s biochemistry. Your nervous system knows the difference between grinding through competence and flowing through genius.
The shift for me was profound: my mind became clearer. The anxiety and stress that had been constant companions started to fade. I had the freedom to pursue my unique value proposition instead of conforming to someone else’s definition of success.
I’m 60 years old. I probably have 15-20 years left where I can do my best work. Every day I delayed finding my Zone of Genius was a day I’ll never get back.
The question that finally broke through my resistance: What will I regret more on my deathbed? The risks I took, or the risks I avoided?
Research on end-of-life regrets is brutally consistent: people don’t regret what they attempted and failed at. They regret what they never tried. They regret playing small. They regret letting fear win. They regret spending decades in their Zone of Excellence when their Zone of Genius was calling.
You’re going to die someday. So am I. The clock is ticking while you read this.
What are you doing with your remaining days?
In “The Big Leap,” Hendricks identifies four hidden barriers that keep us from our Zone of Genius:
Feeling fundamentally flawed: If you carry this false belief, you sabotage success because you think you’re essentially unworthy. Good things can’t happen to flawed people, so you unconsciously create failure to confirm the belief.
Disloyalty and abandonment: The false belief that by succeeding and changing, you’re betraying people in your past. Leaving your current role or identity feels like abandoning everyone who depended on “the old you.”
Success as burden: The belief that you’re a burden in the world. If you hold this inside, you sabotage success because more impact means being a bigger problem.
The crime of outshining: The belief that you must dim your brilliance so you won’t outshine or threaten others. You hold yourself back from expressing your full genius to keep others comfortable.
Which one is running your life?
For me, it was abandonment. I’d built my identity as the reliable tech leader who delivered what was promised. Walking away from that when my CIO role ended felt like betraying everyone who depended on me. The teams I’d built. The leaders who trusted me. The predictable path I’d spent decades cultivating.
Then I realized: the biggest betrayal was staying in a pattern that no longer served me or anyone else. Because I was cheating the world out of my best work, and I was cheating myself out of my one life.
Stop reading. Get out a piece of paper or open a notes app.
Answer these questions with brutal honesty:
If money weren’t an issue and you couldn’t fail, what would you spend your days doing?
What work have you done in the last month where time disappeared and you felt most alive?
What feedback do you consistently get from others about your unique strengths? The things they say “only you” can do?
What are you doing in your Zone of Excellence (good at, well-compensated for) that AI will automate in the next 2-3 years?
What’s the real reason you haven’t made the leap to your Zone of Genius? Not the story you tell others. The truth you tell yourself.
Now the hardest question:
If you had six months to live, would you regret not pursuing your Zone of Genius?
If the answer is yes, what the hell are you waiting for?
Imagine waking up tomorrow and instead of that familiar dread, you feel curiosity. Anticipation.
Your first thoughts aren’t about what you have to get through, but what you get to create. The work waiting for you isn’t an obligation. It’s an invitation. You’re not forcing yourself through the day. You’re being pulled forward by genuine interest.
Your commute doesn’t fill you with resignation. You’re mentally mapping possibilities, seeing connections, getting excited about conversations you’re about to have. Problems that would have felt like burdens in your Zone of Excellence feel like puzzles in your Zone of Genius.
You finish the day energized, not exhausted. Your partner asks how your day was, and instead of a heavy sigh, you lean forward and actually want to tell them. You sleep deeply because you’re not carrying the weight of work you weren’t meant to do.
This isn’t fantasy. This is what operating in your Zone of Genius feels like.
And you can have it.
I’m not suggesting you quit your job tomorrow. (Though if your Zone of Genius is calling loudly enough, maybe you should.)
I’m suggesting you start being honest about where you’re operating and why.
Conduct an audit this week:
Track your energy: What percentage of your time is spent in each zone? Which activities energize you? Which deplete you?
Identify the drag: What activities drain you that others could do better, or that AI could handle?
Find the leverage: What work creates disproportionate value but you’re not prioritizing because you’re too busy being “excellent”?
Study the models: Who do you know who’s operating in their Zone of Genius? What can you learn from their choices?
Then make one change this week. Not next month. This week.
Delegate one thing in your Zone of Competence. Block three hours for one thing in your Zone of Genius, and protect that time like your life depends on it. Because it does. Have one honest conversation about what you’re really built to do.
The path to your Zone of Genius isn’t a single Big Leap. It’s a series of small ones. Each choice to honor what’s true. Each decision to stop playing small. Each moment you choose courage over comfort.
After reading “The Big Leap,” Hendricks offers this commitment:
“I commit to living in my Zone of Genius, now and forever.”
I made that commitment in 2020. Two years later, when my CIO role ended and the market was in chaos, that commitment gave me the courage to choose my Zone of Genius over my Zone of Excellence. It transformed my health, my relationships, my impact, and my sense of purpose. My business has grown beyond what I imagined possible, not despite leaving my Zone of Excellence, but because I finally did.
I’m asking you to make the same commitment.
Not someday. Not when conditions are perfect. Not when you’ve figured everything out.
Today.
Because every day you delay is a day you’ll never get back.
Because AI isn’t waiting for you to be ready.
Because you deserve to spend your remaining years (whether that’s 50 or 5) doing work that makes you feel fully alive.
I’ll make you a deal: Tell me one action you’ll take this week toward your Zone of Genius, and I’ll personally respond with one insight to help you accelerate. Not someday. This week.
What’s your next move?