You will produce a shortlist of two or three directions, each with evidence and a test plan.
By now you probably have more ideas than you can act on. The three-circle drawing from lesson 1.1 threw up a few, the skills you collected in lesson 1.2 suggested others, and a friend has told you about a role you had never heard of. Holding six possible futures in your head feels like keeping options open. In practice it means none of them gets enough attention to be tested properly.
This exercise cuts the list down to two or three directions, each with a score, a reason, a named gap and a test plan. It takes about half an hour, and you will use the result in every module that follows.
List every direction you have thought about seriously, even briefly. Write each one as a role in a field, such as "data analyst in supply chain" or "learning and development in a bank", so it is specific enough to test. "Something in tech" is too vague to score.
Wei Ling, the operations executive from lessons 1.2 and 1.3, wrote down four: supply chain data analyst, procurement executive, operations manager at her current company, and UX designer, which a friend had suggested over dinner.
Set up a sheet with one row per direction and these columns: direction, skill fit score, skill reason, interest score, interest reason, market score, market reason, biggest gap, time to close the gap, and decision.
Score each circle from 1 to 5. A 5 for skill fit means you could do most of the job today. A 1 means you would be starting from scratch. A 5 for interest means you would happily do the work on a bad week, and a 1 means you are drawn by the pay or the title and little else. A 5 for market means you have seen plenty of ads from many employers at a pay level that works for you, and a 1 means you can barely find any.
The reason column is the important one. A bare number is a mood. A number with a reason is a judgement you can check later. "Market 4: about a dozen different employers in the ads I read, mostly mid-level" can be tested in module 2. "Market 4: seems popular" cannot.
Here is how Wei Ling's sheet looked, with her scores as an example.
Supply chain data analyst: skill 3 (strong Excel, no SQL yet), interest 5 (the dashboard project was the best part of her month), market 4 (many ads, several employers). Total 12. Procurement executive: skill 4 (already negotiates with vendors), interest 2 (she finds contract admin dull), market 3 (steady but fewer ads). Total 9. Operations manager at her company: skill 4, interest 2, market 3 (one opening, and it depends on her boss leaving). Total 9. UX designer: skill 1 (no design work at all), interest 3 (curious, nothing more), market 2 (she found few junior roles). Total 6.
For each direction, write the one thing that most stands between you and a first role. Then estimate in months how long it would take to close, based on the hours you can really give it each week around your job.
Wei Ling's biggest gap for the analyst direction was SQL and a portfolio piece that used it. She estimated four to six months at five hours a week. For procurement, the gap was not a skill at all. It was her low interest, and no course fixes that. For UX design, the gap was the whole skill set, likely a year or more of study and practice, and a thin market at the end of it.
Notice the difference between those gaps. As lesson 1.1, Skills, interests and market: the three-circle test, explained, a skill gap is a project with a timeline. A missing interest or a missing market is much harder to fix.
Totals can mislead. A direction can have a good total and still fail one circle so badly that it will not work. Procurement totalled 9, but its interest score of 2 means Wei Ling would likely be stuck again within a few years. A score of 1 or 2 on any circle is a strong reason to drop the direction, unless you can say clearly how that circle would change.
The one exception is a low skill score with a short, clear gap, because that is the kind of gap training and practice close. A 2 for skill with a six-month plan can stay. A 2 for interest usually cannot.
Wei Ling dropped procurement and the internal operations role for low interest, and UX design for weak skill fit combined with a thin market. That left one strong direction. She added a second, a data role inside a logistics software company, which she had come across while reading ads and scored 3, 4 and 3.
Keep the shortlist to three directions at most. Every direction you keep will need a market sheet, conversations and a test plan, and more than three spreads you too thin to test any of them well.
Then choose the one to research first. Usually it is the highest scorer with no circle below 3. Wei Ling chose supply chain data analyst. Her shortlist now had two rows, each with scores, reasons, a named gap, a time estimate and the 30-day tests she had written in lesson 1.3, Test a direction before you bet on it.
A finished shortlist fits on one page. It has two or three directions, three scores per direction with a reason for each, the biggest gap with a time estimate, and a decision. If a stranger could read it and understand why you kept each direction, it is done. The activity asks you to fill it in for your own top directions and choose where to start.
Complete the direction shortlist template for your top two or three directions and choose one to research first.
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