Each of us is unique. Everyone has a unique skill set.
That skill set has been built through our experiences, filtered through the lens of our perspective and sharpened by the actions we took.
Everyone should do an assessment of themselves. Know yourself. It’s the first step to being successful at anything. Including relationships.
Take a personality test, start with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Test – here’s a free one – it’s very helpful. Or a Career and Aptitude test like this one from Psychology Today.
We need to focus on increasing our strengths to be as good as possible at the things we do well (which generally coincide with what we like to do) and not worry about our weaknesses. Unless you have a glaring weakness like illiteracy.
By focusing on our strengths and partnering/collaborating with other people who can cover our weaknesses, we all improve. The team is best when each person exerts all their energy on their areas of strength. Maximize output for input.
Why spend countless hours getting marginally better at something that isn’t for you, when there’s plenty of people who love that thing and are already very good at it? It’s wasting time.
Tim Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk advocate this strategy and it’s safe to say they are pretty successful. Seems like the strategy works.
Another benefit is this forces us to collaborate with people different than us – diversity (of skill sets, background, ideas – not always external factors such as race or sex) improves ideas and teamwork.
We tend to like doing things we are good at doing and we gladly spend the energy needed to get better doing things we enjoy. So, create the positive loop of reinforcement on something that is for you.
You owe it to the world to get as good as possible at something you enjoy doing so you’ll be optimizing your productivity and life happiness.
Doing it all alone isn’t a good idea. For a startup founder or anyone doing much of anything – we’re meant to be together. It’s a basic human need.
Instead of the mantra “If you want it done right, do it yourself,” maybe we should go with “If you want it done better, do it together.”