Day 572 - Back to creating audaciously - https://golifelog.com/posts/back-to-creating-audaciously-1658803863509
Coming from a sports training background, I’ve always focused on weaknesses. Not because of some puritan joy of self-flagellation, but that I followed the weakest link principle:
We are only as strong as our weakest link.
It’s the idea that all our different qualities come together like a metal chain – endurance, strength, technique, mental fortitude. During a performance, or a competition, your results are a collective synthesis of these different qualities. They are all interlinked. And a weak link will bring down the performance more than a strength props it up. It’s like forgetting to do leg day, and all you got are huge biceps but soft calves. Or you got a great engine in your car, but your driving skills suck. People tend to focus on playing to their strengths because it makes them feel good, and ignore their weaknesses because it makes them feel inadequate.
There’s also the law of diminishing returns – your strengths will only improve so much by training it, while training your weaknesses actually lead to more % gains in performance.
Yet here’s the caveat: in private, during training, you work on your weaknesses. But in public, when performing or competing, leverage on your strengths. The context where you amplify what matters.
I used to train really hard for sport climbing. I was serious. I got into finals of national opens. Never got to represent my country, but the training obviously worked. So that weakest link principle was something that I believed in. And as I moved on from the sport, I brought along that same sense of drive, competitiveness and craze. Even now, in entrepreneurship.
Being a creator, my strengths are being resourceful, learning fast, creativity, design. For weakest links, I targeted the areas that I was weak in as an indie solopreneur – first coding, then marketing, storytelling.
"Improve your weaknesses only until they stop getting your way.
Then triple down on your strengths.
You’ll only find your 100x leverage point in what you’re best at."
– @thatroblennon
I’m no where near the proficiency of enterprise developers or professional marketers, but just enough to be dangerous. They stopped getting in my way. I can stop coding for months, then jump right back in without any fear or hesitation. After doing building in public, posting content daily for the past 1-2 years, I feel the same too about marketing.
They are no longer holding me back as much as it used to.
I feel calmer, way less anxious about my competency in those areas.
I feel more confident in being able to form a more balanced chain, now that my weak links are evened out.
Of course, there’s always room for improvement, and of course I will continue to learn and grow in them as I stay in the game.
But I feel it had crossed a threshold, and it’s now time to “triple down” on my strengths to find that “100x leverage point”.
Back to my why.
Back to creating audaciously. Calmly.
I feel calmer about the road ahead now.
Hope feels brighter now.
Optimism feels closer now.
I’m back.
We are only as strong as our weakest link.
It’s the idea that all our different qualities come together like a metal chain – endurance, strength, technique, mental fortitude. During a performance, or a competition, your results are a collective synthesis of these different qualities. They are all interlinked. And a weak link will bring down the performance more than a strength props it up. It’s like forgetting to do leg day, and all you got are huge biceps but soft calves. Or you got a great engine in your car, but your driving skills suck. People tend to focus on playing to their strengths because it makes them feel good, and ignore their weaknesses because it makes them feel inadequate.
There’s also the law of diminishing returns – your strengths will only improve so much by training it, while training your weaknesses actually lead to more % gains in performance.
Yet here’s the caveat: in private, during training, you work on your weaknesses. But in public, when performing or competing, leverage on your strengths. The context where you amplify what matters.
I used to train really hard for sport climbing. I was serious. I got into finals of national opens. Never got to represent my country, but the training obviously worked. So that weakest link principle was something that I believed in. And as I moved on from the sport, I brought along that same sense of drive, competitiveness and craze. Even now, in entrepreneurship.
Being a creator, my strengths are being resourceful, learning fast, creativity, design. For weakest links, I targeted the areas that I was weak in as an indie solopreneur – first coding, then marketing, storytelling.
"Improve your weaknesses only until they stop getting your way.
Then triple down on your strengths.
You’ll only find your 100x leverage point in what you’re best at."
– @thatroblennon
I’m no where near the proficiency of enterprise developers or professional marketers, but just enough to be dangerous. They stopped getting in my way. I can stop coding for months, then jump right back in without any fear or hesitation. After doing building in public, posting content daily for the past 1-2 years, I feel the same too about marketing.
They are no longer holding me back as much as it used to.
I feel calmer, way less anxious about my competency in those areas.
I feel more confident in being able to form a more balanced chain, now that my weak links are evened out.
Of course, there’s always room for improvement, and of course I will continue to learn and grow in them as I stay in the game.
But I feel it had crossed a threshold, and it’s now time to “triple down” on my strengths to find that “100x leverage point”.
Back to my why.
Back to creating audaciously. Calmly.
I feel calmer about the road ahead now.
Hope feels brighter now.
Optimism feels closer now.
I’m back.