Haven’t found your niche? This might be why. | Adam Davidson | Big Think

Haven’t found your niche? This might be why. Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A niche, in terms of the economy and what you do for a living, is often considered a special talent or service that speaks to you on a different, secondary level. Adam Davidson, co-founder of NPR's "Planet Money" argues that when a niche finds an audience and becomes a successful business, it evolves into its own primary economy. For most people, finding something you're passionate about can take a long time. The search should happen concurrently with your current job and life, not in place of them. It won't be easy and there will have to be sacrifices, Davidson says. But when it's something that you can't live without doing, then it is worth investing the time and effort. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ADAM DAVIDSON: ADAM DAVIDSON is the cofounder of NPR's Planet Money podcast and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he covers economics and business. Previously he was an economics writer for The New York Times Magazine. He has won many of journalism's most prestigious awards, including a Peabody for his coverage of the financial crisis. You can check Adam Davidson's latest book The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century at https://amzn.to/2X31pv5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT: ADAM DAVIDSON: There's a lot of thought, a lot of people talk about having your right niche or nitch. I was raised to say niche but some people say nitch. Which I think is absolutely right. I sometimes feel like it's thought of as this cute little add on to our economy like an indulgence. Like yeah, most people have to do the main thing. They have to get a big job at a big company but maybe you could get your cute little nitch. A proper niche, when you are actually producing a unique product or service and you're finding an audience that particularly loves that thing and is able to pay the value that it brings to them in a way that allows you to have a successful business, that's not a cute little add on to the economy. That is a much better functioning economy. That's an economy where the vast majority of people are able to get things that add more value to them in more real ways. And that the people producing goods and services are able to have more satisfying lives. They're able to not only make more money but live more authentic and real lives. Finding your niche to me is a profound, profound thing and so profound that it's worth an investment of time. Sometimes I talk to younger people or it also could be older people but who say I don't know what my thing is. I don't know what my passion is. I don't know what my niche is. And most of us don't know certainly when you enter the workforce. I mean I don't think I fully figured out mine until I was well into my thirties. I think that you should think of it as this like really important precious thing that's worth investing years into finding. That doesn't mean you sit in a room thinking about it. You get a job, you do work and you pay attention to those things that speak to you, those things you seem to be particularly good at, those things other people are telling you hey, you're pretty good at this. And you associate yourself with people who are doing things you find appealing and you study them and try and figure out what you could copy from them, what you could learn from them. But yes, I think having a niche is, or having a passion is sort of the central responsibility of being a fully, a full member of this economy. I think people sort of realize they've had their passion a bit after they've already found it often. But yes, I think that, I think people, we're not yet trained. We don't yet have a language to recognize that how you feel is not some irrelevant thing you have to shove aside when you enter a workplace. It actually is the key to figuring out your place in the work world. And people my age, people in their fifties like to make fun of millennials and these young kids who are demanding that work be satisfying and we kind of make fun of them. But I think they do get it in a way that my generation is still struggling to see. It's not that work should be giddily fun all the time. I often when someone's thinking about taking on a challenge I often say what do you want to wake up at three in the morning worried about. Because if you're really going to take on a challenging job that means a lot to you where the stakes are high because you really want to do it successfully, it's not going to be giddily fun. You're going to be worried... Read the full transcript at https://ift.tt/2yqQ7XC