Your Superpower and Your Kryptonite
August 16th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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What’s your greatest strength? Can you identify it?
I’m not saying your greatest strength is necessarily unique, and it probably won’t put any comic book heroes to shame. But if you can identify any strengths at all, then one of them must be your greatest (or at least a few are tied for first place). So what is it?
Not an easy question. But think of an answer anyway.
How has your greatest strength served you thus far? Do you simply take it for granted, or have you been using it deliberately and consciously? What’s the downside?
Do you find as I do that your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness? Do you find that your best human superpower is also your personal kryptonite?
For example, my greatest strength is probably my ability to learn very quickly and to retain well. I’m a fast learner. I can learn things in a few days that often take other people several months.
But this ability is also my kryptonite. Because I’m rapidly soaking up new information and ideas, my mental understanding is constantly racing far ahead of my external world. I take in knowledge far faster than I can apply it, so I’m always outpacing my surroundings. It would be exceedingly difficult for me to thrive in a corporate environment doing the same type of work year after year. If I wasn’t getting promoted every month or two and assigned bigger and bigger challenges as opposed to repetitive gruntwork, the pace of change would be too slow for me, and I’d feel bored and trapped, like a caged animal.
I had the same problem with my games business. One reason I opted to retire from game development was that it was too slow and restrictive a business model for me. I outgrew the desire to make entertainment products. But because I was so deeply entrenched in that business, I held myself to follow through on many past commitments that I would never have made again if I were starting fresh. I kept making and publishing games, and my new perspective simply oozed out around the edges. For example, I shifted the focus of the business away from arcade shoot-em-ups and towards highly cerebral, largely nonviolent logic puzzle games. I was trying to shift the business to become a better fit for me. I even toyed with the idea of using electronic entertainment as a medium for teaching personal development. But the nature of the business (and the industry as a whole) made the pace of change too slow for me to manage.
I soon realized that by clinging to the current state of my external physical world, I was only putting the brakes on myself. My reality was becoming a very inaccurate reflection of who I was on the inside. This web site is a fair reflection of who I am now, but a year ago there was very little in my external reality that accurately reflected the real me.
I realized that I needed a far more adaptive and flexible career, one that could help compensate for my kryptonite and take better advantage of my strength. This helped me commit to working directly in the field of personal development. Since the very basis of my work now is learning and growth, I have enough flexibility to keep reinventing myself without feeling trapped by an overly rigid business model. Consequently, I’ve been able to release the leash I’ve put around my growth, and in the past year I’ve probably experienced more growth than I have in the previous ten.
Do you see yourself in any of this?
Have you ever felt that your current life situation is preventing you from taking full advantage of your greatest personal strength? Is your career the best fit for your personal superpower? Or does it repeatedly expose you to kryptonite? Can you think of a different career that would allow you to work directly from your strength?
One of the advantages of working from your strength is that it produces a high ROI. You get disproportionately high results for the time and energy you invest.
Once you have a general sense of your personal strength (and if not, take your best guess anyway), brainstorm a list of 10-20 new careers that would take advantage of it. See what new possibilities you can imagine for your future.
What’s your yellow sun?
August 16th, 2005 at 8:47 am
My wife knew instinctively what she would be good at in college and has continued to grow in those areas. But I have to try things out. Since quitting my cube farm job three years ago I’ve done a variety of things, each time learning more about my strengths. For me, this has been the best way to progress.
August 16th, 2005 at 8:48 am
And yes, greatest strength is definitely greatest weakness!
August 16th, 2005 at 9:02 am
An aside… Have you heard of Eliyahu M. Goldratt, author of _The Goal_ (a very interesting book, it is a work of fiction that tries to teach Goldratt’s theory of constraints of a manufacturing enterprise)? Goldratt was frustrated by how difficult it was to get a diverse group of people to really absorb an abstract concept. That was one reason he tried writing a novel as a way to teach his theories of manufacturing.
He found people read the book all the way through, understood the concept, then continued to do everything the old way that they had always been doing it. The book ultimately had no effect on their behavior. He tried turing the book into a movie, and had some more success, but still not the level he wanted.
Later, he found some amount of success using computer games to teach abstract concepts. People seemed to understand the concept better when they could actually see it affect the game’s character.
I believe Goldratt is still frustrated and constantly trying new methods of teaching, but the idea of using computer games to teach abstract concepts is interesting to me.
Macromedia Flash is also interesting to me. Particularly, Flash on a website as a way of distributing games in a nearly effortless way.
August 16th, 2005 at 9:09 am
I think my greatest strengths are my ability to solve complex problems and design large, complex systems (these two go hand in hand). The weakness here turned out to be that I ended up designing such a large and complex game that it’s taking me a very long time to complete it. I guess you just can’t have your cake and eat it too.
By the way, didn’t Superman’s home planet have a red sun?
August 16th, 2005 at 9:41 am
Yes, Krypton had a red sun. But Superman got his super powers from our yellow sun.
August 16th, 2005 at 10:04 am
Steve’s last question and the exchange between Ilya and Erin illustrate a communication problem which exists when any highly specialized field attempts to communicate with the general public.
Most Comic Book readers are much more aware of the details of Kal - El’s story than are those who have only seen movies and TV shows. ( Smallville is exploring some facets of these details as well as creating more. )
But my point, just as Steve’s article, is not about the Comic Book hero. One example is the medical field’s use of the verb “present.” Another example may be found in the vocabulary of marketing. Another example may be found in the proliferation of acronyms.
Whenever those who are on the inside of a field of knowledge attempt to communicate with those outside of that field of knowledge, it helps to remember that your insider vocabulary is unintelligible to those who have not been exposed to it.
Marketers who talk about CGM and ROI and PPC are easily understood by those who are themselves experienced in investing in acquiring and retaining customers but for the small business owner who is trying to figure out why she (or he) is having difficulty competing in her industry’s marketplace, it obscures rather than enlightens.
I knew that Scott meant “What Energizes Your Potential And Expands your Horizons” but those who do not know that Kal - El’s body is the biological equivalent of a solar cell charged energy receptacle, may not have gotten the point of the last question.
(If I misspelled Kal-El, I apologize. - Its been many years since I was an avid reader of Action Comics, World’s Finest and Superman.)
August 16th, 2005 at 1:10 pm
Thanks for the enlightening post Steve. There’s a lot I can take away from this.
I too like to learn lots of things as quickly as possible and sometimes find I suffer from and information overload - and start learning another topic before I finish the previous.
I’m currently trying to map out what I want to learn about a topic and complete this before learning something else. Of course, I think that I need to re-asses this map from time to time as it is not concrete. For example, I may dedicate 3 weeks to a new topic, but after 10 days I might find that I have learnt enough about it. In this situation I need to adjust the map accordingly.
Cheers
Dominic.
August 17th, 2005 at 10:30 am
I call my greatest strength (I refer to it as genius) Creating Clarity. I search everywhere for things I don’t quite understand and then set out to becoming clear about them. It works to great benefit in my coaching, consulting, and writing. And…you are quite right that this is a mixed blessing. It took me some time after I recognized my genius to get it that one key to clarity is being clear that there are things I can never be clear about.
August 17th, 2005 at 7:34 pm
My ability to learn quickly is my superpower. My ability to become bored with what I’ve just learned (before I apply it) is my kryptonite.
August 18th, 2005 at 7:21 am
Coincidentally, I just finished reading “Now, Discover Your Strengths,” but was a little dissatisfied with it. They offer a web-based StrengthFinder assessment, but you have to have a unique code from the printed book to access it - so people who use got the book from library are out of luck.
Since I thought the book was a little fluffy anyway and I trust the book more - is there a possibility of you devoting a future article to discovering one’s greatest strength?
August 18th, 2005 at 7:21 am
er, should be - “I trust YOU more.” Sorry, long night…
August 18th, 2005 at 7:56 am
One of the best gifts I gave myself a 5 years ago was to do the aptitude testing at Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation, http://www.jocrf.org/ . They’ve been studying and researching aptitudes for many years.
The reason I found them helpful was that I have many things that I can do well and am interested in. But not all of them are satisfying. In fact, I’ve found many are quite dissatisfying as a career.
According to the JOCF, interests and skills do not equate to aptitudes. I’ve found that concentrating on working with my aptitudes to be really helpful in finding satisfaction in whatever I’m doing.
Their site explains what they mean by aptitudes and how they test. It’s not like any other testing/evaluation I had ever been exposed to.
August 21st, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Hi
I stumbled on your website by accident as I was looking up something on google. I’ve bookmarked it as the stuff you’re writing about is particularly interesting to me at this point in my life. I’m going through one of those take-stock-and-evaluate milestones.
Anyway, I think my greatest strength and wekaness is my passion. I used to work in theatre and film and found that passion is great for that type of work. It requires a certain kind of commitment, drive and interest to really enjoy it and pull it off successfully. When I left the industry to go into academia, I was at first passionate about my research subject, but found the repetitive cycles of teaching, research and publishing really stifling and slow. I went on to do a law degree and again, I was passionate about learning the law and really enjoyed the course. But my stint at a law firm made me realise that the day-to-day work of a lawyer is a lot of repetitive paper-pushing and application. And the whole 9-5 grind was too much for me.
So I’m back in the film and tv industry and working from small jobs upwards again. I love the fact that each new project requires new energy to push through, and each project allows me to make new connections and research new areas of work. It also allows me to work intensively for short spurts of time.
While each new job has taught me new skillsets that enhance my overall performance at my current job, I’m starting to realise i need to work with my personality. I had thought I could take on the trade of a lawyer which would bring certain amount of intellectual work and good money, but in the end, I just felt imprisoned. With my current work, it’s a struggle financially but I feel fulfilled and excited.