3 ways Human Design can help you win at work.
Human Design is the best kept self-empowerment secret to helping you channel your strengths and achieve your highest potential.
For this article, we're going to focus on how your Human Design can help you hack your productivity, satisfaction, and joy at work, though the themes can also be applied to your relationships and life. (Download your free Human Design chart to follow along.)
1. Your Human Design holds the key to your PRODUCTIVITY.
We are not built the same, whether physically or emotionally, and a lot of knowledge workers (as opposed to site-dependent workers) figured this out during Covid.
When your work day is no longer structured around long, tedious commutes and all the other rituals, time wasters, and productivity drainers that go along with working in a shared space, you learn to create your own structure — one that's built around your preferred and authentic way to do great work.
Do you think more clearly when you can spontaneously share ideas with others, or do constant interruptions (or the persistent threat of them) distract you?
Do you draw energy from others, or do you feel drained?
Do you work best before the sun is up, or are you most productive at mid-day?
Your formula for maximum productivity is in your Human Design chart and consists of many inputs, but these are the top three for me:
Your energy type. This is the way you "metabolize" the world around you. There are five energy types: Manifestor (9.7%), Generators (35.8%), Manifesting Generators (30.5%), Projectors (22.6%), and Reflectors (1.4%). (Note: traditional Human Design fuses Generators and Manifesting Generators into a single energy type, but as a Manifesting Generator myself, I find great support when separating the two to better understand and embody the nuances.)
Your profile lines. This is your engagement style, whether you have a natural tendency to look more inward for your stimulation and evolution, or outward in the way you interact with others. There are 12 combinations of profile lines: 1/3 (14.5%), 1/4 (2.3%), 2/4 (14.3%), 2/5 (2.3%), 3/5 (14.2%), 3/6 (2.2%), 4/6 (14.3%), 4/1 (2.4%), 5/1 (14.4%), 5/2 (2.3%), 6/2 (14.4%), 6/3 (2.4%)
Your definition. This is your personal circuit board that determines how your energy flows within you or how it depends on the energies of others to "bridge" your defined energy centers. There are five definitions: None (1.4%), Single (41.5%), Split (45.9%), Triple Split (10.6%), Quadruple Split (.6%).
2. Your Human Design helps you define and defend your BOUNDARIES.
The two most valuable and scarce resources you have at your disposal to amplify your productivity are your time and your energy. That's it.
This is why you must be vigilant in guarding them with every fiber of your being, otherwise you won't just suffer from lower productivity — you'll also experience a host of negative feelings — bitterness, anger, frustration, disappointment — that will further distract and jeopardize your productivity, feelings of self-worth, and overall happiness.
When we make decisions in alignment with our energy type (see above) and decision-making authority, we naturally align ourselves with the people and situations that are in alignment for us, allowing us to use our energy more efficiently as opposed to "leaking" energy by not honoring our energetic boundaries.
Knowing when to say 'yes,' 'no,' and 'let me sleep on it' are game-changers in protecting your productivity by setting and defending your boundaries. Trusting your decision-making authority to help set and defend your boundaries is easier when you understand and internalize how it operates. It might be helpful to recognize that every time you experience ease and flow, you're using your decision-making authority correctly.
Your decision-making authority is your higher intelligence.
Your decision-making authority is another way to describe your intuition or gut instinct that is uncorrupted by the ego-trip and manipulations of your mind.
Our ego mind is trained to avoid painful wounds (usually from childhood). It works overtime to magnify and distort people or situations in our adult life that feel similar to hurtful or humiliating situations of our childhood. It then creates a false narrative to intellectually bypass a "threatening" individual, situation, or opportunity. The much talked about "imposter syndrome" is a perfect example of the ego mind spinning stories about our unworthiness or lack of preparation, keeping us from confidently stepping into a new role, demanding a raise, or starting a business.
Depending on your defined energy centers (Head, Ajna, Throat, G, Heart, Solar Plexus, Sacral, Spleen, Root), your untrained ego is going to insist that you do things you don't have the authentic energy or desire for in order to appear super productive, or to be an agreeable "team player," or be the hero (or martyr), etc.
Your decision-making authority works with your energy type.
Your energy type has a specific decision-making authority that works like a rudder to guide you in allocating and using your energy. There are seven decision-making authorities, which include the Solar Plexus Authority, Sacral Authority, Splenic Authority, Ego Authority, Self-Authority, Environmental Authority, and Lunar Authority.
Each of these authorities operates and feels differently, from an emotional wave of high/low agitation as you patiently gather information until you feel a neutral stillness in the body, to an intuitive "hit" that comes out of nowhere, to a physical push or pull in the belly signaling 'no' or 'yes,' to name a few. Once you learn your energy type and decision-making authority, it takes practice and time to wait for it, watch for it, and trust it as you move more confidently and easefully through your life.
Your decision-making authority comes with a wayfinding mechanism.
Each of these decision-making authorities, when combined with your energy type, creates a wayfinding navigation system that is felt in the body through physical sensations or emotions that indicate whether or not you made a decision in alignment with your higher knowing, i.e. intuition or gut instinct:
Manifestors experience a range from Anger to Inner Peace.
Generators experience a range from Frustration to Satisfaction.
Manifesting Generators experience a range from Anger/Frustration to Peace/Satisfaction.
Projectors experience a range from Bitterness/Resentment to Success.
Reflectors experience a range from Disappointment to Surprise.
3. Your Human Design helps you identify and amplify your STRENGTHS.
Early in our careers, we develop a variety of skills and strengths to meet job requirements and rise up the ladder of increasing responsibility and contribution, power and pay. But somewhere along the line we start to realize that the situation we're in, the path we're on, and the skills we've developed aren't adding up to a work life we love.
The magic and sparkle has faded and work feels more and more like "work." We've developed a mix of mastery and discernment, and it's really hard to unsee or ignore when each new material or professional milestone no longer feels as expansive or fulfilling to us.
There's a Human Design explanation for this change in appetite and it has to do with our early conditioning and ongoing maturation. Wherever our energy centers are open or undefined, we are more vulnerable to the messages and expectations of others — friends, families, society — pressuring us to conform to others' expectations of us.
After our first few career moves and successes, we begin to recognize that the rewards of those career choices no longer add up in the same way. The things we thought would make us happy — the money, the power, the fame — don't, and it can feel very jarring to the heart.
This is the perfect moment to connect with your Human Design and contemplate your Sun gate and your Channels for guidance and clarity on what your soul is asking for you to expand into.
Your Life's Work. Your Sun gate comprises 70% of your energetic profile. It also anchors your life theme or Incarnation Cross — the path you are designed to walk in this life in realizing your most expanded self while serving and supporting humanity. When using the Gene Keys to contemplate the shadow, gift, and siddhi energetic frequencies of your Sun gate, you tap into a new level of manifestation and ease. When we make decisions in alignment with our authentic self (using our decision-making authority described above), life opens up and becomes clear. When we make decisions that are out of alignment, we create energetic roadblocks and walls that prevent us from attracting the helpful people and situations that are meant for us.
Your Channels. Channels are created when two harmonic gates in your Human Design chart are activated. When this happens, there is a quantum effect of different energetic elements lighting up to support you — the energy of the channel itself, the energy of the centers, the energy of the circuits, and all the "fixed" energy of your type, authority, profiles, format energies, and life theme. All of these begin to work together to unlock your inner mysteries and create the mythology of your life. Your defined Channels are the gifts you have to work with at all times, whether or not you have conscious awareness of them. Whether you have one defined channel or eleven, these are the gifts you are here to use and share. When combined with the mechanics of your energy type and decision-making authority, your life path reveals itself to you with every response and decision.
These are your non-negotiables.
These three ways of applying the mechanics of your Human Design to create the conditions you need to do your best work and show up as your best self will allow you to heighten your productivity, impact, and joy in a sustainable, life-giving, life-honoring way. The more you incorporate them, the more clear you will be about the career and community you need that will fully embrace and support the most expanded — and empowered — version of you.
