On Superpowers

Yesterday my brother and I were talking about Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg, and how their Asperger’s might be a blessing in disguise — a superpower that allows them to go ahead and do the thing they believe in without consideration for external perceptions or criticism.

It made me wonder what my own superpower(s) are.

Let’s take account of what I believe are my top 5 strengths and 5 most debilitating weaknesses right now:

STRENGTHS: 🦸

1. Perseverance / Getting shit done — Ability to set a goal and persevere towards it with discipline, through pain and hardship, and without getting attached to the means to get there.
2. Self-improvement — Actively reflecting and improving on my weaknesses. Learning from mistakes. Hunger for knowledge and growth.
3. Optimism — looking at the bright sides and opportunities in everything
4. Communication — Articulating my position in a logical and methodical way.
5. Couldn’t find a 5th one. 🧐

WEAKNESSES: 💩

1. Self-consciousness — Too worried about external perceptions and pleasing others, and unsure about what my true beliefs, values and independent thoughts are.
2. Defensiveness — Inability to take harsh criticism, i.e. when it is not sugar-coated or constructively presented
3. Ego / Narcissism — Lack of curiosity about what I don’t know, and not skeptical enough of what I do know. Not actively listening to others’ point of view and inability to empathize with them completely.
4. Lack of courage — to always do the right thing or own up to my mistakes completely. Taking ethical shortcuts or justifying mistakes by saying I have learnt from them.
5. Superficiality — Not getting into depths of any topic and instead jumping into action too soon without sufficient due diligence. Find it hard to identify risks and deficiencies and manage them.

(Of course this list is incomplete and maybe even inaccurate — I welcome any feedback if you have interacted or worked with me to shed light on any blind spots.)

Given this list, where should I focus my self-development energy? For the last few years, I have mostly been focused on my weaknesses, and worked on improving them. I am making good progress on reducing my self-consciousness and ego (this blog being one instrument in that journey), and am proud of some decisions I made in the last 6 months that I believe required real courage and integrity. So the effort seems to be paying off.

But should I focus 100% of my energy on the weaknesses column, or focus a commensurate amount of effort on honing my strengths further. How would that make me as a person and professional? Which of these strengths should I even attempt to build up further, or how?

My best guess right now is that the key may lie in the Pareto Principle — to identify the 20% of strengths and 20% of weaknesses (top 1 in each list) that would give me 80% of the return on investment, and split my effort between those two at any given time. The decision on which strength or weakness to pick may also depend on what role or action I am optimizing for at a particular time — whether I am trying to be a better fit for a job, or a better partner to my wife, or a better father for my kids.

Given that right now I am optimizing for becoming a better human being and learning as much as I can from my past experiences, the strength to focus on would probably be Self-improvement, and the weakness my Ego. It’s good that that’s where most of my focus has already been intuitively, but this framework may prove useful as the situations evolve going forward.

Any suggestions or feedback is highly welcome.