I’m not really into career books, so at first I wasn’t particularly interested in this book called The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great, even though it’s a bestseller. Frankly, I probably wouldn’t have read it if the author Rick Smith hadn’t sent me a copy.

But it’s good, really good. It’s really not about traditional career advice, but more about how ordinary people make a quantum leap from an average life to a great life. One example is the author himself, who went from being fired from a job he didn’t care about to starting World 50, an elite executive networking company.

Other case studies are a door-to-door fax machine saleswoman who started her own clothing line, a shrimp farmer who became a renowned genetics expert, a software designer who became a leading advocate for the homeless, and a guy named Bill Gates who started a company called Microsoft.

The book is about how to make your own leap by following three rules. The first rule is to find your primary color, which represents the intersection of your greatest strengths and passions.

It’s illustrated with a color chart, with red representing curiosity, green representing execution, and blue representing leadership. Where do these intersect for you?

You can find out your primary color for free at http://www.primarycolorassessment.com. It takes about 15 minutes, and an email address is required, but you can use a fake one if you want since they give you the results right there in the web page. My results are below.

It says:

YOUR PRIMARY COLOR IS:
CANDY APPLE RED – Wildly Curious

Congratulations! Your primary color is that specific area of the spectrum that best represents the intersection of your greatest strengths and passions. Be sure to check out the So What?! and Now What?! tabs for additional information and resources.

Curiosity is the cornerstone of this color area. You are energized by the new and novel…interested in trying new things and exploring innovative approaches and solutions. Leaders in this cluster are generally most comfortable and effective when leading through vision and ideas. You are decisive, yet are always looking for a better answer and need time to think and explore alternatives.

Fast paced go-go environments can be a negative place for you even though you may be energetic and driven. You are also quality driven and motivated by achieving excellence. If you are a STRONG RED, others may see you as idealistic and perfectionistic – certainly difficult to please – never settling for “just OK.”

I thought “wildly curious” was accurate, but a couple of things jumped out at me. First, 0% for execution? Do I really have that little follow through? The other thing is that these numbers add up to 94%. Did 6% of my soul leak out?

Then I thought that maybe they’re not supposed to add up to 100%, but each one can be 100% for a max total of 300%. And I saw that the inside of the book jacket shows a screenshot with 95% curiosity, 21% execution, and 86% leadership, for a total of 202%.

Now my scores look really low! Oh well, I’m focusing on the color rather than the numbers.

I agree with him that the MBTI isn’t useful for career planning, but then again it’s not meant to be, despite what everyone thinks.

To find your field, you’d want something that measures strengths and passions, like his primary color assessment. One thing I’d like to see is what other people with my primary color have done to make their leap.

I do think he has some good insights about how to live the life you’re supposed to have, and the common elements among ideas that really take off. If you’re looking to make a leap, you’ll love this book.

If you take the primary color assessment, please tell us your color. Any other candy apple reds out there?

Image from The Matrix (1999).

There’s a scene in The Matrix where Morpheus is explaining to Neo how they’ve been hiding from the invincible agents who rule the Matrix. He says that a prophecy has foretold of someone known as “the One,” who Morpheus believes to be Neo, and who has the power to destroy the agents and save the human race (no pressure). Morpheus says:

“I won’t lie to you, Neo. Every single man or woman who has stood their ground, everyone who has fought an agent has died…I’ve seen an agent punch through a concrete wall. Men have emptied entire clips at them and hit nothing but air. Yet their strength and their speed are still based in a world that is built on rules. Because of that, they will never be as strong or as fast as you can be.”

“What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?”

“No, Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.”

It isn’t exactly clear what Morpheus means until the end. Neo is shot by Agent Smith and confirmed dead. But then Trinity tells him that the Oracle told her that the man she loved was the One, so he can’t be dead. When Neo realizes that he’s the One and the rules of the Matrix don’t apply to him, he gets up, uses his mind to stop the bullets fired by the three agents, sees through the illusion of the Matrix to the streaming green code behind it, effortlessly blocks Agent Smith’s punches with one hand, then jumps inside Agent Smith’s body and explodes him from the inside. Woah.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we refer to as a quantum leap, a sudden and profound jump from one state to another. Neo started out not believing that he could ever be able to dodge bullets, then at some point his powers suddenly expanded so much that dodging bullets was beneath him. There were many steps in between that led up to this, but it culminated in a quantum leap—that one instant when Neo accepted that he was the One. Now he’s forever changed and can’t go back.

OK, this makes for a good example, but it’s just a movie. Let’s look at a real world example.

One of my hobbies is juggling. In college, my roommate and I had learned how to juggle three clubs individually, but we wanted to learn how to pass. This means that instead of juggling by yourself, every right hand throw or every other right hand throw passes a club to the other person. We saw in a video that it looked pretty cool, and we decided to give it a try.

It was very unnatural at first and it took us a while to get started, especially since we were both left-handed (we had to do it right-handed or we’d never be able to pass with anyone else). It took some time before we were able to pass even once. With some more practice we were able to pass a few times before dropping, and eventually we could consistently keep it going for a while before it fell apart.

Although we were getting better, my roommate said that we’d never be able to pass like the people in the video. He said that maybe if we practiced really hard and had a lucky run, we might be able to pull off 20 passes, but that was about it. And I agreed with him. We had made a lot of progress, but it was still very hard. We could continue to get better with practice, but realistically we weren’t going to get a hundred times better. Other people told us this as well.

What I hadn’t counted on was a quantum leap.

We stopped practicing at some point, never having been able to pass very well. But a few years later I met some people who had been passing for years, and I practiced with them. I don’t remember how long it took, but at some point it just clicked. It no longer seemed that every pass was a desperate Hail Mary, but time slowed down and it just came naturally. Today I can pass as long as I want to, and it gets boring unless I throw in some under-the-leg passes, left hand passes, and double spins. Aspiring to make 20 regular passes now seems like a joke.

Quantum leaps are much more likely to happen with mental abilities than with physical ones. You’re not likely to instantly lose 100 pounds, double your bench press weight, or cut two minutes off your mile. Why is that? Because your body is based in a world that is built on rules. Because of that, it will never be as strong or as fast as your mind can be.

Juggling may seem like a physical activity, but it’s predominantly mental. The reason I’m able to pass clubs is not because I increased my strength or my endurance. It’s not even really because I improved my accuracy, although that’s part of it. The main thing that happened is that I just learned how to pass! It was like flipping a switch on in my brain. Suddenly I just got it, and now it’s hard to understand why I couldn’t do it before.

You’ve surely made some quantum leaps in your life. Some common ones are learning how to walk, read, or ride a bike. Maybe you’ve made the quantum leap of going away to college, getting married, or having a baby. A lot of quantum leaps happen naturally, without a lot of forethought. Toddlers learn to walk because trying to is instinctive, they don’t have much else to do, and they don’t remember that it hurts when they fall. People get married because one day after spending years together, it just seems like the right thing to do.

But many quantum leaps aren’t inevitable. While nature and society deserve most of the credit for you learning how to walk and going off to college, it’s up to you to decide if you want to become super confident, develop a positive attitude, become self-employed, or establish healthy eating habits. How do you consciously initiate a quantum leap?

The main thing is to be aware that personal development often occurs in quantum leaps, as opposed to continuous growth. You can put in a lot of effort without seeing any results, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not making progress. Something’s happening inside your brain; it just hasn’t manifested in the physical world yet. At some point something clicks and you’re able to make the quantum leap. It won’t necessarily be an instantaneous shift, but once you see how it’s going to happen, the shift will happen relatively quickly compared to all the effort that led up to that moment.

Consider this:

At 211 degrees, water is hot.
At 212 degrees, it boils.
And with boiling water, comes steam.
And with steam, you can power a train.
One extra degree makes all the difference.

So don’t give up because your efforts don’t seem to be producing results. Just keep going. The bullets may seem impossibly fast, but if you keep trying to dodge them, maybe one day you’ll find that you don’t have to.