Bad Advice | Work on Your Weakness

This episode of Books for Men features another edition of Bad Advice which speaks to a well-trodden (oft-given) piece of advice to "work on your weakness" or “improve in areas you’re not so great.” In general, I think (most of the time) the exact opposite is probably better advice. Ooh, dicey, but hear me out. Listen for more!

Listen to the episode:

*Subscribe to The Books for Men Newsletter, a monthly round-up of the episodes w/ links, full book and author info, all the best quotes, and newsletter-only book recommendations!

READ THE TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So this week we have another edition of Bad Advice, and this piece of advice surely will have its supporters and its non-supporters, and that is to work on your weakness. So you hear this a lot and you've heard it a lot, probably through your life in school and athletics and everywhere really, and that is to see where you're weak and try to strengthen it. So obviously that I think that this advice is bad, but let me just first start by saying that I think that there are probably instances where this would be good advice, right? I mean, if you're talking about fitness, let's say you can't have a part of your body that is substantially weaker than another part of your body, your right leg versus your left leg, let's say, because then you're going to have posture problems, you're going to be more susceptible to injury, you're going to have worse balance, or there are going to be instances where this advice would probably be good.

(01:17)

However, as a general rule in life, I think it's pretty bad advice. So I know I get it. It's a bold statement and you're probably asking yourself, what the heck is this guy talking about? Why wouldn't you want me to get better at the areas that I'm not so great? Why wouldn't you want me to improve? And I'm just going to ask for you to hear me out. So I want you to just consider what the alternative is to work on your weakness. It's doubling down on your strengths, and that's the idea or the piece of advice that I tend to favor. Now, of course, as I said, there are going to be situational examples or context-specific things that would require the opposite, but as a general rule, I favor doubling down on your strengths. For starters, it's just more fun. Who the hell wants to live life focusing on the areas where they are not so great and the things where they're weak?

(02:15)

And I don't know, it just sounds miserable to me. I would never want people to spend their life doing that kind of thing, but even more importantly, I feel like that's the opportunity for you to be great, right? Not average. Great, and the returns on being great in life at something are astronomical. So whether it's social credibility, whether it's financial success, it all comes from being great at something. And I think personally, you have a much higher susceptibility and a higher chance of being great at something that you are innately strong at. Now, I get it. I'm not here to poke a hole in your dream or the hopes you have in whatever you are trying to do, but what I would encourage anyone toward is to see if what you are shooting for aligns with some innate strengths that you have. So things that you are intuitively just pretty good at, and those benchmarks are going to be different depending on what you're doing.

(03:29)

But what I will say is that the people who don't work on their weakness and they just say, this is what I'm good at and I'm going to keep doing that thing, those are the people that end up doing the thing. In a previous podcast, you heard me talk about Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld can't go out there and do edgy dirty comedy. That's not what he does. It's an area of weakness. So why is he going to sit there and spend time developing what somebody else probably considers a strength? It doesn't make sense. Instead, he focuses on the area that he's a strong, observational, clean comedy, and because he focuses solely on that thing, he becomes great at it. Now, I don't want to presume to know that if he did dirty comedy he wouldn't be great, but I don't know. It seems to me that it probably wouldn't be because the people that are doing great dirty comedy do great dirty comedy.

(04:36)

Can you go from an extreme weakness to an extreme strength? Probably. Is it going to be a lot harder? Probably. So I don't know if that's the journey you want to go on. Go for it. I guess now you might be saying to yourself, well, I could just be well-rounded, like that's a goal. And if you want to be well-rounded, then you have to work on your weakness. I do want to remind you that the majority of people who are well-rounded also are unremarkable. Now, that doesn't mean that they're not good people. It doesn't mean that they're not good at the things that they do. They're just unremarkable and unremarkable. May or may not be something that you are willing to trade off. For me personally, I'm in the camp of doubling down on your strengths, trying to be great, trying to be remarkable.

(05:32)

Now, I get it. This all might seem pie in the sky, crazy outlandish. Maybe that is too high of a goal. It might be worth it to remind you that no matter what you choose to do in life, it's going to require a certain set of skills. And so even if you don't want to be great at doing something, you're probably still off knowing where you're strong in matching the thing that you do in life to the strengths that you naturally possess. So even if you don't want to work at it, you're probably better off being an extroverted salesman than an introverted salesman. So if you're a naturally introverted person who likes spending time with yourself, it's probably a bad idea to go be a salesperson where you have to talk to people every day, right? Every job is going to require a certain set of skills.

(06:28)

And so I think that even at the base level, even if you don't intend on doubling down on those strengths in a working manner, still matching your strengths to the jobs or activities and things that you do will be a better bet than aligning your weaknesses for a lot of the same reasons that I said before. So interestingly, as I'm recording this, I'm thinking to myself, I'm getting sick of hearing my own voice right now, talk about the subject matter, and it reminded me of exactly what I'm talking about in that probably a strength in my life is my ability to talk or speak. People tell me that all the time, but it also can be an extreme weakness depending on where you are or what you're talking about. So this is a podcast where I have the platform to be able to explore these episodes called Bad Advice in a fun way, and hopefully, you enjoy it.

(07:34)

If I did this in public, I'd look like a douchebag, right? Maybe I look like a douchebag. Now, I don't know. But what I'm saying is, is that there is a time and place. So just because speaking or being able to talk is a strength, it could also be a weakness. Now, again, double down on your strength. Start a podcast. It's harder to start a podcast if talking isn't your thing, especially a monologue podcast. So I'm not tooting my own horn, or at least I hope I'm not, because I'm also saying that this mouth gets me in trouble a lot, in a lot of different areas of my life. And even with myself, right? I just said I'm getting sick of hearing my own voice so I could beat myself up about this mouth that I have. And so you could see how strength can be a weakness, and that is really the point that I want to end this on and focus on, is that no matter what strengths you have in life, they're also going to be a weakness.

(08:34)

So you're never going to be able to get rid of your weaknesses in totality. You can only hope to control them or to keep them locked up in the corner and at bay and not let them out in bad situations and get you into trouble. You always have weaknesses. And so working on those weaknesses and focusing on those weaknesses to me seems counterintuitive because they're probably never going to go away. You're going to solve one weakness and another one's going to pop up because everything is situational. As I kind of alluded to just moments ago, it could be your strength and it could be a weakness. So rather than chase your tail and try to improve weaknesses, just double down on your strengths. Life is better that way. All right, so that's all I've got. If you enjoyed this addition of bad advice, I want to encourage you to share it with friends, family members, or someone that you think might enjoy it or maybe need to hear it.

(09:41)

That would be a good reason to share it with them as well. Maybe not as receptive if they need to hear it, but they might enjoy it. So share it, please. This podcast and this initiative, which is to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do needs your support and to do that word of mouth is super, super important. And if you're a regular listener of this show, then I always want to remind you, you can double down on that support by rating, following, subscribing, or reviewing on whatever podcast platform you listen to this on. For more information, you can always visit BooksforMen.org where you can also sign up for the newsletter, which is a monthly roundup of all the episodes, complete with links, full book and author information, top five quotes from each book, as well as newsletter only book recommendations. So, if you're interested in that, again, you could sign up at BooksforMen.org.