The Good Stuff Exercise
Find your zone of genius by tracing the moments when work felt effortless
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 98%
The Good Stuff Exercise starts with evidence from lived experience rather than an aspirational personality label. The participant records eight concrete moments when they felt highly capable and the work also felt unusually easy or enjoyable. They then compare those moments, looking for repeated skills, motivations, environments, and forms of contribution. Those themes are compressed into a concise zone-of-genius statement that describes the distinctive value the person creates. The statement becomes a career-design filter: future roles, businesses, and projects can be judged by how much time they allow the person to spend exercising and improving that ability. Alex Lieberman used the exercise after feeling lost following his departure from Morning Brew's CEO role.
Origin
Alex Lieberman learned the exercise from the Conscious Leadership Group, whose book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership he described as a favorite business book. He used it after stepping out of the Morning Brew CEO role.
Core principles
- 01Peak performance leaves patterns across different experiences
- 02Energizing moments reveal more than job titles do
- 03Specific memories produce better insights than abstract self-assessments
- 04A zone of genius should guide how future time is allocated
How to run it
- 1
Collect eight peak moments
Write down eight highly specific moments from your life or career when you felt skillful and the activity felt easy and enjoyable.
Pro tip Describe observable events rather than broad periods such as an entire job or school year.
Watch out Do not choose moments solely because they produced prestigious or profitable outcomes.
- 2
Describe the good stuff
Record what you were doing, which abilities you used, who benefited, and what made the experience energizing.
Pro tip Look for the type of contribution you made, not merely the subject matter.
- 3
Find recurring themes
Compare all eight moments and identify repeated skills, motivations, working conditions, and effects on other people.
Pro tip Give more weight to themes that appear in several unrelated contexts.
Watch out Avoid forcing every memory to fit a preferred identity.
- 4
Write the zone-of-genius statement
Condense the strongest themes into one sentence describing what you do, how you do it, and the value it creates.
Pro tip Use active language that can guide real decisions.
Watch out A vague statement such as 'helping people' will not provide a useful filter.
- 5
Design around the statement
Evaluate opportunities by whether they let you exercise and improve this ability, then increase the share of time devoted to aligned work.
Pro tip Use the statement to shape your role even when you cannot immediately change careers.
Watch out Do not treat the statement as a permanent identity that can never evolve.
In the wild
After leaving the Morning Brew CEO role, Lieberman felt unusually lost. His eight moments revealed a recurring ability to use creativity and unconventional thinking to tell stories and persuade people. That insight helped him prioritize marketing content, business incubation, and roles where he could strengthen those abilities.
→ He gained a clearer basis for choosing how to spend the next phase of his career.
Common mistakes
Listing achievements instead of experiences
A prestigious outcome may have been stressful or poorly matched to your strengths. Capture moments when skill, ease, and enjoyment occurred together.
Stopping at disconnected themes
The exercise becomes actionable only when recurring themes are condensed into a clear statement that can guide choices.
Ignoring the resulting filter
Discovering a zone of genius has little value if future commitments continue to crowd it out.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for founders, executives, and professionals reconsidering their role or direction after a major transition.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for making an urgent decision that depends primarily on financial or logistical constraints.
From the transcript
“you have to write down eight very specific moments from your life or career where you felt like you were skillful and where everything felt…”
“then you start finding themes in them and then those themes boil down into one statement of what your zone of Genius is”
“how can I spend as much of my time getting better at that”
From the episode
Alex Lieberman on Building A Personal Brand & Influencer Marketing Trends
Alex Lieberman