The Two Ways of Managing Weakness
Parrish offers two complementary ways to manage weaknesses: develop strengths through practice and use safeguards where effort alone is unreliable or cannot remove a limitation. Safeguards can support both learned habits and biological limits.
THE IDEA
There are two ways to manage your weaknesses. The first is to build your strengths, which will help you overcome the weaknesses you’ve acquired. The second is to implement safeguards, which will help you manage any weaknesses you’re having trouble overcoming with strength alone. In addition, safeguards help us manage weaknesses that are impossible to overcome—for example, the ones we owe to our biological limitations.
| How to Manage Inbuilt Weaknesses | How to Manage Acquired Weaknesses |
|---|---|
| Safeguards | Strength + safeguards |
Part 2 connects self-control with managing emotional reactions and self-confidence with acting despite inertia or social pressure. Practicing those strengths can help you acknowledge a weakness and respond to it; safeguards provide support when practice alone is insufficient.
When to use it
A manager with poor delegation skills (acquired weakness) builds self-confidence to trust team members, while setting up a project management tool as a safeguard to track delegated tasks.
An individual prone to impulse spending builds self-control through budgeting habits (strength) and installs a browser extension that blocks shopping sites (safeguard).
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Overcoming emotion-driven behavior with self-control
Developing self-control helps you manage impulsive emotional reactions, reducing regret over words spoken or actions taken in anger.
Using self-confidence to overcome inertia
Building self-confidence enables you to make difficult decisions despite the fear of failure, overcoming the paralysis that can accompany a lack of belief in oneself.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
What acquired weaknesses are you currently facing, and which strengths could you develop to overcome them?
For inbuilt weaknesses (e.g., biological limitations like the need for sleep), what safeguards can you put in place to minimize their impact?
How can you distinguish between a weakness that can be overcome with strength alone and one that requires a safeguard in addition to strength?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Clear Thinking Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results (Shane Parrish)