Today’s discussion touches on ways I compensate for weakness or work to a strength. Let me give some specific examples. Monday I told my story “Balloon Head” at the story teller’s festival hosted by the Weber state, (http://community.weber.edu/storytelling/). The story seemed to be received very well. Anyway, I do not have the best vision so seeing and understanding a street sign for easy travel is a short coming. Since I knew I’d be performing on Monday I arranged to stay in Layton on Sunday night. I also arranged for my host to accompany me to the two locations I’d need to be at during the festival. The virtue of doing this was that Sunday afternoon traffic is much lighter and we had a chance to scope things out in an environment to our liking. I didn’t have to hassle with commuter traffic.

I did the same thing when having to teach a class to fellow employees on software while working for Intel. While in Oregon, on Sunday afternoon I was able to drive to the business location where I’d be conducting the training and get back to my hotel again. That one time drive gave the necessary familiarity of driving around in a new city.

A third example, I find that I tend to do other things than writing when I get home from work. How do I compensate for that when I want to write new material? I go to work early and write in the morning before I start my work day. Then I can go home at the end of the day and do other projects and not feel ‘guilty about it.

When it comes to exercise if I have a choice between working out and having a one on one with my mattress then Matt usually wins out. I am much more inclined to exercise after work.

So, what is one of my strengths? I have a pretty easy time getting up and going to work if I need to. I guess that means I’m a morning person. The virtues to this is that if my company permits me to work four ten hour days I’m eager to do it because I don’t find working ten hours isn’t any more tiring then eight hours. Another example is when I become involved in a volunteer organization I often lean toward duties that involve scheduling since I’m not normally shy about calling someone to remind them of something if that is under my jurisdiction..

The suggestion is that you evaluate your weaknesses and your strengths and then alter your life to compensate or take advantage of each.