Ever think you might be in the wrong line of work? Wanting to do something different but not sure what type of work would fulfill you? Maybe you should turn to color to see what inspires and motivates you. And I'm not talking about clothing colors, as in "What's your season?"
Dewey Sadka, author of "The Dewey Color System," says using colors instead of a questionnaire eliminates the gap between self-perception and self-truth and reveals your core motivations. Using something called the
Color Career Counselor, people choose their color preferences to determind successful career paths. By determining which primary, secondary and achromatic colors you prefer most and least, you can figure out a successful career path based on how you approach work, the types of workplaces where you work best and how you handle work tasks.
Sadka claims the Dewey Color System is the world's only validated, non-language color-based career testing instrument. He says traditional verbal placement tests allow for misinterpretation on the part of the test-taker, and as a result can provide inaccurate results. "Color preference indicates your personality's best career fit," Sadka states. "Preferred colors indicate passionate career pursuits; non-preferred choices establish workplace skills you least enjoy."
The test couldn't be simpler. Simply click on your preferred primary color (red, yellow or blue). From there, you choose your preferred secondary (green, purple or orange) and achromatic (black, white or brown) colors. Your resulting choices determine your talents and how you approach your tasks.
For example, if you're partial to yellow, you're information-driven; blue preference people are idea-driven and people who prefer red are results-driven. If you favor green as your secondary color, you realistically evaluate situations; purple indicates you like fact-finding possibilities and orange signals that you scrutinize feasibility. Finally, if black is your choice from the achromatic colors, you consider value above all else; white shows that you like having options and brown confirms that you like implementation and accomplishing tasks.
On the other hand, your least preferred colors determine tasks and issues that you tend to forget. They point out your weaknesses, indicating workstyles that might not be conducive to career advancement. For example, if your least favorite color is orange, sometimes you overcommit yourself by trying to do too much at once. If you dislike the color green, you try to fix everything for your colleagues rather than making them do it themselves. Or, if your least favorite is teal, you feel a deep need to prove you are competent.
Sadka uses color preferences to determine more than just career choices. Your favorite color can determine who you'll get along with in your relationships (romantic and platonic), the best color choice to influence your mood at home (decor), and gain insight into your personal psychological quirks. You can even make a career choice out of color by attending Sadka's two-day color consultation course and walk away as a certified Dewey Color Consultant.
As for me, I would have loved to take the test, but they didn't give me an option to hate pink or select gray as my favorite achromatic color, so I decided to forego the whole thing (honestly, the results would not have been accurate otherwise). I guess I'll never know what my best career choices would have been. But hey, at least I know I'm an Autumn!
