Increasing Your Chance of Excelling

I believe the idea that to excel in life, you should spend as much time as practical doing the things that you are exceptionally good at.  (I was partially influenced by Marcus Buckingham's books First, Break All The Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths.)

I’ve noticed in my own life that at the core, my talents don’t change much over time. Finesse in using talents and the applications in which talents are used may both change in time, but the very core of the things at which you excel, the types of activities that you are drawn to, will probably change very little. 

An Exercise to Identify Your Talents

Here’s a useful exercise that I came up with one evening  as I was trying to sort out

Are you comfortable with what you have?

Last week I met with a very good electrical engineer that had a good grasp of his project and a plan for completion. He spoke about some new equipment that would be very helpful in finishing his tests. Once he decided what he wanted, he was leaving it to someone else in the group to request the funds. "I don't get into that..." he said, making clear his discomfort when talking about money.

I wished that he would get into that,