Most of us go through our lives paying attention to the things that we are not particularly good at. Report cards in school tell us what we have to improve on, or “put in more effort”, the scale tells us how badly out of shape we are, and later in life, on some performance review, our boss lists us all the things that we should be working on.

It is commendable to be a person that’s self-critical and strives to improve, but I have never seen someone who has excelled at something who hasn’t also leveraged their strengths. We don’t ask world-class athletes about their handwriting, and we don’t really care that much about the time management skills of our favorite artist unless it is to keep a beat.

Knowing your strengths gives you center, and helps you make the decision on whether you should invest time in trying to improve certain aspects of yourself. And always, you will be better off amplifying a strength, than trying to improve on all the other things.