The Element / Finding Your Element
Sir Ken Robinson
The clearest account of what happens when natural aptitude meets the right environment — and why so many capable people are judged in the wrong one.
TAIU · The alternative is unthinkable
What are you trying to work out?
You do not need to know what you are looking for. Write it as you would say it to someone you trust.
Leave these alone and we will work it out from what you write.
Start from something familiar
Most people arrive with a sentence rather than a category.
I hate my jobWe keep having the same argumentI don't know what I want nextI'm worried about someoneI can't switch offShould I leave?I've lost my jobI feel behind everyone else
If none of those are yours, write your own above. If nothing fits, TAIU will say so rather than send you somewhere that half works.
How TAIU works
Think. Discover. Save. Understand. Decide. Act. Keep developing.
Sessions
Every session is free, takes about half an hour, and gives you something to keep.
Browse the sessions →01
Find your superpower
What are you unusually good at, and what is the evidence for it?
Me
20–30 min
02
Find your purpose
Energy versus competence, and what you would keep doing anyway.
Purpose & values
20–30 min
03
Build your story
The red thread through apparently unrelated chapters — and the bios that come out of it.
Me
25–35 min
04
What do you want to be known for?
The box people put you in, and what the evidence gives you permission to claim.
Work & career
20–30 min
05
What do you actually want?
What you say you want versus how you actually live your Tuesdays.
Future
20–30 min
06
What should I actually do?
A difficult decision, framed properly — including the alternative you haven't considered.
Major life decisions
15–20 min
07
How am I showing up?
Where your time, attention and energy actually go, and who gets what's left.
Relationships
15 to 20 min
08
What does money mean to me?
What you are really buying, what you inherited without examining, and what enough looks like.
Money
Live
09
Your principles
What you steer by when it costs you something.
Purpose & values
Live
10
What am I responsible for?
Who reasonably depends on you, and what you have promised.
Me
Live
11
What stage am I in?
Your life may have changed before you changed your mind about who you are.
Future
Live
12
What does not need fixing?
What if this part of your life is already good?
Me
Live
Or enter by area of life
Try
Ten minutes is enough to find out whether this is for you.
A short written exercise. One page, a handful of questions, and something written down at the end that you can take away.
Try an exercise10 min
Evidence of Strength
Names a claimed strength and asks for the occasions that prove it.
10 min
What Keeps Coming Back
Collects the subjects a person returns to without being asked, then tests them against time actually spent.
12 min
Red Thread
Finds the line running through a working life instead of a list of roles.
12 min
50 Word Introduction Builder
One short written introduction built from evidence, not adjectives.
Who this is for
You do not need a crisis to be worth taking seriously.
Working out what you are actually good at
and what the evidence really says.
Carrying a decision you keep postponing
because the alternative is uncomfortable.
Building something
and unsure whether anybody else cares yet.
Doing fine on paper
and quietly wondering whether this is it.
Resources
The books, talks and thinking behind the sessions.
Books, talks and writing, each attached to the session it actually helps with rather than a reading list nobody finishes.
Coming to My TAIU
One exercise is useful. Several, kept together, start to tell you something.
My TAIU will be the place your work accumulates: what you discovered, what you decided, and what actually happened when you tried it. It does not exist yet.
Tell me when it's readyProduct concept · My TAIU is in development
My TAIU
- Today
- My Work
- Decisions
- Goals
- Discoveries
My TAIU
Today
Completed
4 exercises
Open decisions
2
Goals in progress
3
Recent discoveries
- I work best when I have purpose and autonomy.
- I'm drawn to building things that help people grow.
- I want more freedom to create and travel.
Next up
- Revisit your goals
- Build your network
Where TAIU came from
I have spent most of my life meeting people.
For more than twenty years, work and curiosity took me around the world. Different countries, different cultures and religions, different businesses, different ways of living. Along the way I built things that worked and things that did not, raised a family, made good decisions and bad ones, lost things I thought mattered and found things that mattered a great deal more.
What stayed with me was the people. Enough of them, different enough from each other, to convince me there is no single correct way to live a life. TAIU came out of that. Not because I have the answers. I am still working through plenty of my own. But a good question, asked at the right moment, changes how a situation looks, and sometimes that changes what you do next.