The Abilities-Interest (A-I) Matrix

The Abilities-Interest (A-I) Matrix

Abilities must be part of any systematic approach to identifying majors, jobs, and careers, but only broad abilities as discussed above, and they are primarily useful in the negative direction—lack of abilities can help eliminate certain types of jobs. A person’s broad abilities must then be used in combination with what they define as important to do and accomplish in their lives. It is not just what someone regards as “fun” or “interesting” to do in life, it is much deeper. These are “fundamental” interests because they are deep, longer-term goals and priorities, as opposed to more superficial and temporary interests. Fundamental interests develop during the transition from adolescence to adulthood and can serve, in combination with individual abilities, as a useful basis for guiding life decisions about college, majors, jobs, and careers.

This combination is called the Abilities-Interest Matrix and it helps individuals focus both their strengths and weakness and their fundamental interests and priorities in life. Neither abilities nor interests alone will suffice as a basis for making life choices. Choosing a particular career path based on either abilities alone or interests alone can be a big mistake. It is essential to take both into consideration in order to make smart decisions.

Abilities

There are many different ways of dividing up and labeling different human abilities. One popular framework was proposed by Howard Gardner in his best-selling book Frames of Mind (1983) in which he postulated nine basic human “intelligences”—what most of would call “abilities.” There is good consensus among psychologist and educators about at least six of these abilities, which have been given various summary labels by different authors. They are:

Ability	Alternative Labels	Description
1. Math	Quantitative Skills Logical-Mathematical Analytical Skills “Math Brain”	Good with symbols, numbers, and math. Strong abstract mathematical reasoning, symbolic logic, and mathematical problem solving.
2. Verbal	Linguistic Skills Language Skills	Good with words and language. Excel at reading, writing, and learning languages. High verbal memory.
3. Visual-Spatial	Graphical Skills Artistically Talented	Ability to visualize and create curves, shapes and spatial forms, motions, and relationships. Strong aesthetic and design sense. Visually artistic.
4. Physical-Motor	Bodily-Kinesthetic Athletic	Good body awareness and control. Ability to memorize and reproduce complex body movements with coordination, timing, efficiency, and grace.
5. Musical	Musically Talented	Skilled at perceiving, memorizing, and reproducing sounds, rhythms, tones, and music. Sensitive to subtle differences in rhythm, pitch, meter, tone, and melody.
6. Social	Interpersonal Skills “People-Person”	Skilled at interacting with others. Highly sensitive to others' perspectives, feelings, and motivations. Capable of developing deep and lasting social relationships.

As outlined above, your strengths don’t necessarily narrow down your choices of majors, job, about careers—at least not very much. But, knowing your strengths can help focus your search in promising areas for you. Your lack of certain types of strengths, on the other hand (let’s not call them “weaknesses”) are extremely important to identify and can definitely eliminate many majors, jobs, and careers from any further consideration. So, a first step toward finding yourself in the A-I matrix is to identify not only your strengths, but also your areas of “non-strength.” For example, if you are not good at math, you are almost certainly not going to be an engineer, mathematician, statistician, actuary, accountant, scientist, math or science teacher, and so forth. Lack of strong verbal and language skills will nearly rule out being a writer, reporter, translator, copyeditor, novelist, speechwriter, court reporter, etc. If you lack visual-spatial abilities you almost certainly will not be an artist, sculptor, graphics designer, illustrator, web designer, architect, city planner, or choreographer. Without strong physical-motor skills, you are very unlikely to be a professional athlete, dancer, stage performer, craftsperson, tradesperson, or lots of other occupations that require physical performance. If you are not musically inclined forget about being a musician, music teacher, recording technician or engineer, singer, conductor, or composer, etc. If you are not socially skilled, you are not likely to be a counselor, therapist, social worker, customer service representative, teacher, supervisor, salesperson, or politician.

Identifying lack of strengths is the first half of the A-I matrix. The other half is fundamental interests. Fundamental interests are basic life orientations that define what is important to you and provide the basis for constructing meaning in your life. People have different fundamental interests because they have different motivations that drive them to set different priorities and pursue different ideals and goals in their lives. In the end, satisfaction with your life will come from achieving the goals that are important to you—that is, goals that match your deepest motivations and fundamental interests.

It goes without saying that anyone who does not achieve goals they set for themselves will be less than satisfied with their life. The important point here goes far beyond that: Anyone who achieves the “wrong” goals—goals that they do not value because those goals do not match their fundamental interests— they will be as unsatisfied with their life as if they had achieved nothing at all. In other words, the only way to live a satisfying and rewarding life is to be true to yourself by pursuing and achieving things that are fundamentally important to you. Anything else will be deeply disappointing to you in the long run.