Do you know what you truly are good at?
Last week I talked about “do you know what you truly want”, and a natural progression of this topic is “do you know what you truly are good at”.
You might think, well this is easier to figure out. But it’s actually more nuanced than what it seems at first glance.
Level 1: basic understanding
When I ask a junior engineer what they are good at, the answers I normally get are like:
I’m good at solving problems
I’m good at debugging issues
I’m good at delivering solutions
These are a solid foundation to build upon.
I was like that in the first few years of my career.
Level 2: surprise understanding
A few years later, someone once said to me: “you are good at teaching others”, and I was completely shocked and asked back “what do you mean?”
A little about me: when I was a kid, I really didn’t like to explain homework problems to other students. Subconsciously I was thinking “how can you not know this already?” and I don’t think my facial expression was hiding it either. As time went by, I knew myself as “I don’t like teaching others”.
In fact, the first time I heard of “you are good at teaching others” was from my PhD advisor during my grad school years, but I dismissed it right away, and never thought more about it.
It was the 2nd time hearing it, in the work environment, that made me take notice.
Level 3: intentional understanding
Each surprise understanding is a great self-diagnosis opportunity. I took on this “you are good at teaching others” opportunity and did some self-diagnosis.
What is the contrast between me helping classmates on homework and me helping teammates on work tasks? Clearly I treated them differently and got different results.
I listed down the differences I could think of, and quickly ruled out most of them. The standing out item was: My attitude.
Helping classmates on homework was perceived as a burden for me.
Helping team members on work tasks was perceived as part of my responsibility.
Apparently in a work environment where I was TL, I needed to delegate certain tasks to other team members. To aim for better results, I would spend extra time thinking about what would be the best illustrating examples to show others. What I didn’t know was, that unintentional action of figuring out the best illustrating examples had great outcome, and thus gained my reputation of “you are good at teaching others”.
In other words, that attitude difference changed everything. I was more patient in helping team members, I spent more time observing where they were stuck, and thinking what’s the best way to help them, etc. Once I put in the thought, people were happily learning from me, and I also felt my own deep joy when others learned new skills.
At this point, my self-understanding has changed from “I don’t like teaching others” to “If I want to, I can be good at teaching others, and I enjoy it too”.
Then the journey begins for me to think “where else I can apply this ‘if I want to’ aspect?” That became wide eye-opening.
Level 4: true understanding
Now let me share my definition of “what you are truly good at”. This phrase, in my definition, refers to things that without intentional effort, you are doing it better than average, with outside 1-sigma deviation.
The key phrases are “without intentional effort” and “outside 1-sigma deviation”.
Outside 1-sigma deviation.
We all know everything is a Normal distribution, and every Normal distribution is a bell curve. When it comes to people, pick any dimension, we can draw a Normal distribution. “Coding ability” distribution? That’s a Normal bell curve. “Doc writing ability” distribution? That’s a Normal bell curve.
Self-assess yourself in the bell curve. For most things, you are in the middle (by definition a Normal distribution has the middle 70% within 1-sigma). For some things, you’d be outside of the left 1-sigma (meaning you are worse than average); it’s okay, everyone has these; we just avoid them and life is all good.
For some things, you’d be outside of the right 1-sigma (meaning you are top 15%). This is where you should focus.
Without intentional effort
For all the things you are outside of the right 1-sigma, assess your effort level. Are you working very hard to maintain that top-15% level, or this top-15% level comes at ease?
Top-15% without intentional effort -> these are your true strengths. You are born much better than others on this. This is God’s gift to you.
In the example I gave earlier, in the work environment, I wasn’t putting intentional effort to get better at teaching others. The moment my attitude was “this is my responsibility”, I was naturally good at teaching others.
Natural talent + effort == non-stoppable
By following this process (which starts from others’ genuine surprise praise to you), if you’ve identified an area where you are outside of right 1-sigma deviation without intentional effort, congratulations! You’ve identified one of your natural talents.
Now start to put effort to this. You’ll soon find yourself outside of 2-sigma in this dimension (top 5%) and then 3-sigma (top 1%).
Natural talent + effort == non-stoppable.
What if I can’t find any “outside 1-sigma deviation without intentional effort”?
This is a common question I hear.
The answer is simple, to combine multiple dimensions together. If on dimension A, you are at top 40%, and on dimension B, you are at top 40%. Chances are at dimension A&B, you are at top 15%.
Illustrating example: say one engineer is slightly above average for infra development, at top 40%. Say this engineer is also slightly above average for mobile app development, at top 40%. Now for a product that needs both strong infra and mobile app development, this engineer likely is a top 15% candidate.
It’s my strong belief that everyone can find their “outside 1-sigma deviation without intentional effort” areas. The challenge is to find such areas that matter. (But hey, be open-minded. Even if I put “software engineer” and “sweeping floors” dimensions together, I could become a top-1% talent at iRobot.)
Enjoy this individualized journey to identify what you truly are good at!