Here’s Why You Should Forget About Your Weaknesses
Peter Drucker’s Managing Oneself is one my favorite books (and one that I recommend the most).
In that book, there’s one paragraph that stands out:
One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. And yet most people — especially most teachers and most organizations — concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a start performer.
Did you catch that?
Focus on your strengths.
I love that advice because it’s exactly the opposite of what conventional wisdom would tell you. Conventional wisdom would tell you to be well rounded. Have a balanced life. Works on your weaknesses. Be great at everything in your job or at home.
But Drucker knows the secret:
It’s not about improving your weaknesses — it’s about doubling down on your strengths.
For example: I’m not great at following up (especially with email). I’m a momentum maker. And that means I’m better at focusing on the here and now than I am at staying organized and creating process. But I used to fight it and I would focus on every single hack and trick to try and help — from to do lists on my laptop, reminders on my computer, phones on my phone, notebooks, etc.
This lesson took me a decade to learn. But eventually I learned the secret: I needed to double down on my strengths and surround myself (and team) with people who complement my weaknesses.
Here’s a simple formula you can use to find your strengths and weaknesses:
- Think about the things that keep putting off. What do you keep avoiding? What keeps getting bumped to the next version of your to do list each week? Which things make you procrastinate the most? What have you been meaning to get to for days/weeks/years now? Make a list and then take a second to look at the commonalities. The things that you keep putting off are the things you’re naturally trying to avoid. Those are your weaknesses.
- Think about what people compliment you on the most. What do people always tell you you’re good at? You can even think back to when you were younger. What did everyone say you were naturally good at? Those are your strengths (and often times even your super powers).
This advice might seem so obvious, but years later I continue to run into this problem across teams who want to focus so much on making sure everyone is well-rounded.
So listen to Drucker. The secret is to double down on your strengths and find compliments to your weaknesses.
Here’s the whole story (and a lot more on strengths and weaknesses) on Seeking Wisdom:
PS. If you liked this topic, you might like Seeking Wisdom — our weekly podcast at Drift about life and learning. You can subscribe on iTunes or just search “Seeking Wisdom” wherever you get your podcasts 🙏
