Focus: you can’t do both. This suggestion resonates quite well with me. Everyday I try to become a better student, dancer, fraternity member, guitar player, video game designer, friend, brother, etc. These are all things that I enjoy doing or being. The problem is I can’t focus on all of them at the same time. The suggestion makes the point that we have limited resources and energy to work on tasks. I’m currently exhausting all my resources just trying to balance school and fraternity matters. It’s pretty ridiculous how unbalanced my schedule got so quickly simply because I overloaded it. Now focusing on all those things I wanted to do would be completely counter-productive because none of them would get done in time. Attempting to fix my disorganized self can diminish my corresponding strength (creativity, according to the chart). So instead of trying to organize my entire schedule, maybe I should figure out how to turn some practices or activities into less time-consuming activities. It will take some creative thinking, but I’m sure I’ll come to a conclusion eventually. I thought it was extremely interesting to see this point illustrated in the retail industry. Both Target and Wal-Mart have strengths that they play to, but when another retail store such as K-Mart attempts to be well-rounded, there becomes no reason to go there. This is similar in any field. If an employee is too well-rounded they won’t excel at anything, and probably won’t get hired. An unfortunate paradox to what we’ve been taught almost our entire lives.
Forget it: Don’t try to fix your weakness. “You can’t put feathers on a dog and call it a chicken” is the inspirational quote at the beginning of this suggestion. I feel like I really need to pay attention to this suggestion in particular because I’m always beating myself up about how I need to change myself to eliminate my weaknesses. The truth is that’s only making me more stressed, frustrated, and miserable. Just as the manifesto mentions “It’s painful. We don’t enjoy working on our weaknesses”. It’s entirely true. I hate organizing and planning and trying to figure out what I’m going to do with myself. I’d much rather be playing video games or watching Doctor Who. These are activities I could be making a significant progress in and finding self-fulfillment (also addressed in the manifesto). If I become successful at realizing what I enjoy doing then it shouldn’t matter what I don’t enjoy doing, because I won’t have to do it. The process through actually addressing a weakness and trying to fix it is slow. Not only is it slow, but it is extremely cumbersome, as previously mentioned, we hate working on our weakness. At the end of the day, it doesn’t actually work. Even if we eliminate a weakness, it doesn’t become a valuable strength. All that time refining our problems becomes wasted and we simply become mediocre.
Foundation: Build on your strengths. It just makes sense. What do you like doing? We will hardly enjoy doing something that feels bad. We enjoy something because we’re passionate about it and proficient in it (or becoming proficient in it). Statistically speaking you also have the greatest potential to succeed in areas you’re already strong in. Because you’ve developed early interests and retained them, you’re more inclined to indulge those interests. As mentioned in the earlier suggestions: if your strengths are well defined they make up for your weaknesses. It can get to the point where your weaknesses become completely irrelevant. If you never excelled in math, then why would you want to become a math major? Instead of torturing oneself and trying to make something work, they should find what works and pursue that instead. I took 3 years of animation in high-school. Despite the fact that the tasks were time-consuming and tedious, they were tasks that I had fun with. Because I found enjoyment in my work the tasks became much easier at times and that much more rewarding at the end of the day. Not only was it rewarding, but I could see physical improvement in my skill-sets. The point is that you should definitely look into what you’re good at or what you enjoy doing and keep at it.
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