As said previously in this series, everyone has weaknesses and it’s important not only that you know what yours are but that you work with them in order to improve your career and your personal life.
How do you do that? Well, not by focusing on them which is what many people advise you to do. That will ruin your productivity, frustrate you, and possibly harm your career due to the drop in performance that will happen when you spend all your time working on things you are weak on.
Instead, you’re going to focus on using your strengths as much as possible, as detailed in the rest of this series. The first way you are going to work with your weaknesses, instead of against them, is to minimize how much you have to use them.
The less time you use them, the less they can impact your productivity, effectiveness, and performance.
What should you do when you do have to use your weaknesses? There are going to be times when you cannot avoid it, after all. First, you need to approach whatever the task is with the full awareness that you are weak at it. Don’t try to bluster your way through or convince yourself that you’re good at it.
Make sure you approach the weak task when you are at your best, physically and psychologically. Try to arrange to tackle it during your best time of the day. Rearrange your schedule to accommodate it if possible.
Know that it will take all of your effort and concentration to do the task well and devote all of your focus to it. Get rid of distractions and competing tasks. Focus exclusively on the thing you are weak at while you are doing it.
If it is a long task and will take a while to complete, you might want to break it up into sections and work on it a bit at a time. For example, if it is a task that will take an entire 8-hour day to complete, try to break it up into one-hour segments and complete one segment every day.
If that’s not possible, break it up as much as possible and take plenty of breaks to restore your concentration.
Finally, one strategy that will always be helpful when doing something you aren’t good at: ask for help. Most people will always be happy to help you!