Career Growth Accelerator - Assessing Yourself - Using a Nine-Block to Map Your Skill, Potential, and Energy Investment
whatshot 9 snips
Jan 13, 2026
Explore a practical nine-block matrix to assess your skills, potential, and energy investment. Learn why traditional assessments fall short and discover how to visualize your growth. Dive into evaluating skills based on performance and energy costs, identifying opportunities for rapid improvement. Understand when to drop draining skills and focus on those with high potential. This episode encourages smart trade-offs to prioritize career growth, ensuring you invest your energy where it truly matters.
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insights INSIGHT
Map Skills Not People
Use a nine-block grid to map current performance (x-axis) and potential (y-axis) for specific skills rather than whole-person labels.
Placing skills, not people, on the matrix prevents misleading one-dot assessments and reveals targeted growth areas.
insights INSIGHT
Energy Reveals Opportunity Flags
Add a third dimension of energy cost (1–5) to the nine-block to show how much effort skills require from you.
High potential + low energy flags the fastest wins because small input yields large performance gains.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Force Focus With Limited Tokens
Limit the number of skills you actively invest in to force realistic trade-offs and focus.
Use tokens or weighted coins to prioritize a small set of keystone skills that define your value.
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🎧 Episode Notes: Using a Nine-Block for Skill, Potential, and Energy Investment
Most career assessments try to paint a static picture of what you can do well with the least effort, but they often fail to provide a practical roadmap for your next career move. This episode provides a simplified, multidimensional version of a classic management tool to help you prioritise your growth:
Understand the Nine-block Matrix: Visualise a grid where the x-axis represents your current performance (how well you are doing now) and the y-axis represents your potential (your capacity to grow to the next level).
The Energy Dimension: Go beyond a 2D map by evaluating the energy cost of each skill on a scale of 1–5; this helps you identify where you are on "autopilot" versus where a skill is draining you.
The Risk Factor: Assign a risk or criticality score to your skills to determine which are "fundamental" to your role (like software delivery) and which can be safely dropped to make room for more valuable growth.
Spot Opportunity Flags: Identify areas where you have high potential but low performance and low energy output; these represent your best opportunities for rapid improvement with the least input.
Make the Counterintuitive Trade-off: Learn why you might need to drop a skill you are already good at if it has low growth potential, redirecting that energy toward a new skill that offers higher long-term value for your career.
Categorise Your "Bread and Butter" Skills: Recognise those mid-level skills that ensure your reliability and help you get the job done but shouldn't be the primary focus of your intense energy and development.
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