Know Thyself - Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses to Build and Improve On

I remember my first [taxed] job, and a specific moment when I realised I didn't just do well under pressure, I thrived on it. Sure, in high school I knew my real genius came out when I wrote two thousand words in four hours, five hours before the deadline, but this was different.

My best friend and I set about becoming honest hardworking adults by applying to waitress at a local Tex-Mex restaurant. She's the friend that people wonder why we are friends, the one so starkly different from myself, but we clicked. So here we were, at Benavides, flipping tortillas, serving up $1 margaritas, and learning how to multitask like a mo-fo (respect your service people, it's a skill).

Pretty much what it was like

One night it started to get suddenly very busy for some unknown reason and we were just out of training, flying solo. I was afraid at first, but went into that weird turbo mode of mine while my friend began to get flustered. Pretty soon, the panicked gal dropped a tray and went into the restroom to cry out her shame and hide the unfortunate salsa stain on the crotch of her pants.

As soon as I realized I couldn't nudge her out of there anytime soon I took on her five tables along with mine and the rest is a blur. As it started to die down, the slightly sleazy and greasy manager put a hand on my shoulder and said he was amazed by me.

So, clearly, I'm a rockstar and my friend looks like a loser hiding in the bathroom. But that's not the whole picture! See, she's a talented artist, one who can painstakingly detail a thousand realistic scales on a lizard. Quietly, by herself, she produces amazing work. This is how she operates. But she doesn't work well with 25 people counting on her to get them sloshed and fed in under an hour, for under $10.

And as far as my moment of glory, let's move forward from my little anecdote a few days to a rainy Tuesday and a dead restaurant. Finally, I get a table and take their order and then I go back to rolling silverware into napkins in a back booth. After some time I'm suddenly aware of hands waving in the air and immediately think "oh sh-t!, their food!". Yup, because I'm not my best when it's slow. My focus marches off like petulant teenager and pretty soon I am trying to sneak someone a free margarita to makeup for the slightly burnt nachos.

Of course I learned this lesson a few more hard ways before I succeeded in more-or-less managing this weakness. I learned to be aware of myself and extra vigilant on the down days. Ironically, those are the days I need written lists because for some reason I can't remember to do 3 things, but can remember to do 30.

I also learned to make lists of the lowest priority tasks on the busy days to keep myself occupied on the slow days. Because often, when the temporary furor dies down, one easily goes into a vegetative state and can't even remember all the things they wanted to get around to.

Now, many moons quiet day at the office, after crushing all the big projects, begins with a to-do list of the priorities I can't let slide because I don't have my go-go focus goggles on. And then I add in enough of the tasks such as "organize HR folder" and "finish training manual chapter before it's out of date again" to keep me busy.

It's work that needs to be done, of course, but the point is, if I hadn't developed the coping mechanism of knowing my weakness, I'd probably not get that done that day. And I might even forget to do the one time sensitive task on my plate.

I know my strength and I try to play up to it professionally. But often with a strength, the inverse is the weakness, so I identified them as a pair. Play to the strength, work on the weakness. It takes self-awareness, and a willingness to admit the weakness, but it pays off. I'll always be a person who does her best work in the last sprint, but that doesn't get me out of the responsibility for crushing it the rest of the time. And I have to be real about myself if I'm going to do that, I have to go beyond a millennial warm and fuzzy strength based approach and my proverbial participation trophy.

It's important to stop and do a personal SWOT now and then, as we, our lives, and our goals evolve. I wouldn't call myself "successful" (more in imposter syndrome tomorrow) but I have succeeded in my own way by doing this. Also, next time you get asked that stupid "weakness" question in an interview, you'll have something other that "obsessed with perfection" to say.

And as for my friend, well, she joined the Air Force six months later and there you know she learned darn well how to work under pressure - as if the commanders and Iraq were gonna give her a choice. Today we're both more complete and successful for the growth we have made since we were 18 year-olds slinging quesadillas.