Of all work I've done with different companies and of all the different stuff I've written, probably the most controversial is if you want to know the one thing about sustained individual success, it would be find out what you don't like doing and stop doing it. People seem to have a really hard time with this one. They look at me and give me that, "Yeah, right," response. I'll say, well, if I don't like talking on the phone, I should just not talk on the phone? Yeah, right. Or if I like starting projects, but I don't like finishing them, I should just quit finishing them? Yeah, right. Or if I don't like doing emails, I should just not do emails? Well, yeah, right. Nothing's as straightforward as that, is it? I mean, we're always going to have some parts of our job that we don't like doing. That's why they call it work. My point was just that you've only got a certain amount of time to invest in your achievement at work and the time spent on activities that weaken you. That really is the best definition of a weakness, is an activity that weakens you. It's just not a very good investment of your time. It's actually a bad investment of your time. How bad? Bad in the same way that economists call it an opportunity cost because you've lost that time that you've invested in a weakness and you can't get it back, you can't reclaim it, you can't lease it back from someone. It's gone, permanently gone. You forever lost the opportunity to invest that time in one of your strengths. In a word, that's a bad use of your time. If you want to make the biggest contribution for the longest period of time, you got to take responsibility for identifying those things that weaken you and then deliberately try and veer away from them. I'm not saying you'll never get it down to zero. I mean, maybe you will, but few of us are that lucky. But I think for most of us, it's a matter of degrees. If you can deliberately veer away from those activities or try to, then there's no reason why you can't over time get it down to about quarter of your day. Maybe a quarter of your day given over to things that drag you down. That's not gone completely, but it leaves a big old chunk of time, three-quarters of your day that you could then deliberately fill with activities that strengthen you. That's the point really, isn't it, of minimizing your weaknesses. Not so you'll have less work to do, but so you'll free up a big chunk of time so that you'll be enabled to invest are in your strengths and so contribute more. We're all well and good in theory, but how do you actually minimize the time you spend on an activity that weakens you? Well, before you try anything else, maybe the activity that weakens you could lend itself to the simplest solution of all. Just stop doing it and see if anyone cares. I know that sounds crazy and you're thinking, well, I can't just do that. Before you dismiss it, just look at the activity. Remember, I once interviewed a great salesperson. She was fantastic, but she hated filling it out her call reports. Now she did it because she was responsible, but every week it would drag it down. I think she was still be doing them today if she hadn't one day wanted pastor manager's office and seen him feeding them carefully into the shredder. She knocked on the door, went in and said, hey, you have any idea how long it takes me to fill those out? Do you even read those? He said, no, actually, I don't. That was something that my predecessor did. She goes, well, do you mind if I don't do them? He goes, no, it's fine. Now, I'm not saying it's going to be as easy as that for you, but my experience at least is that companies are really good at starting new work streams or starting new projects or activities and terrible at stopping them. Before you try anything else, just look at the activity. Is it necessary? Does that she's someone benefit from? If not, maybe you could stop there. See if anyone cares. Now, maybe it is necessary in which case you can't just stop it. The next most obvious thing to try is see whether or not there's someone out there who is actually strengthened by the very activity that weakens you. Is there's someone out there who loves what you love? You think that'll be hard and there's no one out there that could love what you love? Well, think a moment longer because the weird and wonderful thing about strengths and weaknesses is that no two people are quite the same. What strengthens you might weaken someone else and vice versa. Initially, you're so, I mean, I know I'm this way, you're so close to your own strengths, you're so familiar to them that you can't quite imagine that anyone else sees the world differently than you. But look around and you may actually see that although you hate numbers and hate the admin stuff and you can't quite conceive with the fact that someone out there could actually love it. I mean, you think, well, maybe someone could put up with it for awhile, but love it now, never. But if you look around, you might actually find there is someone like that, someone who gets jazz by the very things that bore the living daylights out of you. I know people that wear weaknesses and strengths tattooed on their arm or stencil on their forehead. Ask around, look, observe, see whether you can find someone who finds things strong that you find weakening. If you find someone like that and you want to hand it off to them, don't feel guilty. Handing off to somebody say something, some activity that strengthens them is not inconsiderate, it's not irresponsible, it's actually freeing both of you up to contribute more. You don't like it, he does, so do it. Remember, boring is in the eye of the beholder. Now, if you can't find the perfect partner, if you can't find that guy, then okay, you're going to need another tack. Here's another one that you might want to try. Offer up one of your strongest strengths and see whether you can experience some success of that. Then parlay that success gradually into a new changed role that is made up of that strength most of the time. I once interviewed an incredibly effective executive who's real genius, who's real strength, was starting things up. She was brilliant at beginning a new project, swooping in, identifying all the different variables at once within it, and then figuring out how to arrange those variables into the most effective configuration. She loved startup. What she lacked was implementation. Now, the conventional wisdom would have told her, hey, look, suck it up. If you're going to get better at your job, if you're going to grow your career, you're going to have to get a lot better at implementation. That is an area of opportunity for you. But she actually tried a different tack. Once you've gotten over the guilt of not being this beautifully, perfectly, well-rounded executive, she decided to keep offering up that startup strength of hers. She sought out projects where it was needed or she volunteered it to teams where it was missing on the team. Gradually, over time, she became known as the startup expert in the company, the startup queen, as she was known by her boss. Now she looks back, she can actually see that her very successful career is actually made up of a series of 18-month gigs, 18-month assignments, each one of them using that startup strength of hers. Well, maybe you can do the same as she did. Maybe you can find a small stream in which your strengths can flow and then curve it into the Mississippi. Now, maybe none of those tactics will work. Maybe you can't stop doing it because it's necessary, maybe you can't find that perfect partner, and maybe you can't gradually navigate away from it, in which case, don't give up quite yet. There's one other tactic you might want to try. See whether or not you can just change your perspective on the activity. You are not going to change the activity, just change the way you look at it. Of course, if you're going to do that, the perfect perspective to look at it is your strength's perspective. Look at it through the lens of one of your strengths. I once interviewed a very effective assistance, really good assistant whose particular weakness was doing expenses, just loads, they just dragged her down every day. She had to do expenses every day and they dragged her down every day. Now, you might think, well, an assistant who doesn't like to do expenses has a pretty crushing weakness. But she did have a strength, she was very competitive, loved scores, numbers, loved keeping track of it all. Rather than just bemoaning the fact that she'd be dragged down by her weakness every day, she actually chose to look at doing expenses through the lens of her competition. She chose to make a game of it. She would keep track of how much she could get done in a certain period of time or she'd keep track of how far she could get it done, and she would have little personal bests of hers. Weirdly, it became for her almost a Zen-like moment in her day, something she almost looked forward to. If you hate doing budgets but you love serving guests, maybe you can see how doing the budgets will serve the guests. If you love working on a team but hate planning meetings, maybe you can come to see how the planning will help the team. This does involve a little bit more mental gymnastics than the other tactics, but hey, if you can change your perception on it, maybe you will actually change your reality. If you look around you, just look at the people in your life that you would consider to be lastingly highly effective people. Just look at those people for a minute. I think what you'll see, if I do with those in my life, I see that what has made them so effective is less about what they chose to do and more about what they chose not to do. It's less about how many doors did you manage to open and more about which doors did you have the self discipline to close? It's less about all the stuff that you accumulate and more about what do you have the discipline to cut away? Look at those people in your life. I'm sure they spend a disproportionate amount of their time doing things that strengthen them, but this didn't happen by accident. They kept their senses over weeks, over months, over years even, they kept their senses finely tuned to those activities that weaken them. They didn't try and change that, they kept their senses finely tuned to those activities, and then with great deliberateness, great precision and little guilt, they cut them out of their life. If you want to make the longest possible contribution in your life, which I think is what we're here to do, make the greatest contribution that we possibly can, if you want to do that, then you should do the same as they did. Identify those activities that weaken you and then edit them out. Almost simply, find out what you don't like doing and stop doing it.