Quit Should-ing!
I've been reading Marcus Buckingham's Go Put your Strengths to Work as part of the Joyful Jubilant Learning second learning project, and for weeks now I've been feeling I "should" write a post about it. And of course, I've actively resisted that Should.
This morning I woke early, and as I lay in bed planning my day ahead I again thought about writing that post, and I immediately felt my energy draining. I paid attention to this and it reminded me of the underlying core message of Buckingham's entire book: focus your energy and attention on your strengths, and manage your weaknesses so that you spend as little time as possible on those activities. Of course anything at all that feels like a "should" is a weakening activity, even if it is something that you would normally enjoy.
The key element of a strength is your appetite for the task - talent, skill and knowledge are also important elements, but if you don't have an appetite for it the activity will actually weaken, instead of strengthen you. And the conditions that create the appetite can be very specific, which is why it's incredibly important that you get the detail just write when writing your strength and weakness statements.
For example, here is one of my strength statements:
“I feel strong when writing material that conveys a message that is meaningful to me, and which I believe to be of value to others, and which I feel inspired to write.”
And by contrast, one of my weakness statements:
“I feel weak when forcing myself to write something I don’t feel like writing, just because I feel I should, or because I made a commitment to do so.”
So, the same task can either strengthen or weaken me depending on whether in the moment of doing it I'm forcing myself to do it or I'm feeling inspired to do it. When I signed up to this learning project I was inspired to do so, but my participation included a commitment to blog about my learnings along the way. Subsequently, everytime I read up on a step I felt obliged to post about it, and then resisted doing so because of that feeling. Eventhough it was something I really wanted to do, a sense of duty to do it eliminated that necessary feeling (for me) of being inspired to do it.
In his chapter on weaknesses, Buckingham tells us to "quit should-ing":
"If those activities make you feel drained, frustrated, or burned out, you should not be doing them, or at least not much of them and not for long."
As I lay in bed this morning feeling my energy drain thinking about how I have yet to post on this project, I said to myself "Hilda, quit should-ing!" And as I heard myself a major shift came about - I recalled the section on Should-ing in the chapter on Weaknesses and suddenly I felt inspired to write the post. In fact I started writing it in my head, and then just had to jump out of bed and get to it. And then I was inspired to write a second post, which synopsizes everything up to Step 4 (see below this post).
My productivity this morning knows no bounds. And it feels easy. If I had forced myself over the last couple of weeks to sit down and write this post it would have taken me a couple of hours, I would have given in to every distraction going, and I would have struggled to get my message clear in my own head, never mind getting it out of my head and onto my pc screen. (And I certainly wouldn't have gone on to write another post)
Two things happened here that made all the difference. I shifted my perspective on writing this post (one of Buckingham's proposed strategies for managing your weaknesses) AND I quit should-ing. The effect of these small shifts has been quite magical for me. That is the differrence between working with your strengths and working with your weaknesses.
Which would rather work with - force or ease?
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