Do you know that in the process of trying to achieve success, most people focus on the opposite of what they should be doing? It’s true, and probably this is a mistake you have made in the past as well. Once you turn this around, your success will accelerate dramatically.

The mistaken strategy is to focus on your weaknesses instead of your strengths. Let’s look at some examples of hugely successful people and brands to see what they do. Donald Trump and Richard Branson are both super self-promoters. They know how to make a news event out of every new venture, and usually it’s not their own money that is financing the bulk of the projects. They are promotable brand names, and that’s what they focus on. They have other people to handle the nitty-gritty aspects of their business.

It’s the same with product brands. The key trait of all Apple products is their great design. They don’t try to be the cheapest or the most popular. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, has made itself the most successful retail business in the world by being the cheapest and the biggest.

Contrast this focus with the attitudes of most people. They identify their weaknesses and focus on trying to fix those. While they’re busy becoming passable at what they don’t do well, they’re not giving their time to the things at which they excel. It’s a prescription for mediocrity.

When you do the 80/20 analysis, usually you find that the 20% that will give you the most value is something you already do, but you’re just not doing enough of it. Similarly, when looking for strategies that will help you succeed, it makes sense to look at what is already working for you and simply do it more often or apply it to more challenges in your life. In this chapter you’ll discover what your strengths are, and learn how to apply them for maximum impact.

The point is so important that it bears repeating: if you want to join the top 5% of achievers in any field, you will have to do more of what you do well, and worry less about becoming good at what you don’t do well. It’s perfectly logical, isn’t it? If you already do something well and then put even more energy into it, you’re going to do it extremely well. It will put you far ahead of most others doing that thing. On the other hand, if there’s something you don’t do well at all, and you put effort into getting better at it, the odds are that with a lot of work you’ll become mediocre. Of course you can’t just ignore the necessary things you don’t do well, but you can put your energy into finding people who do those things better than you ever could, and delegate or outsource those things to them. For example, check which of these give you a shiver of excitement and which give you a shiver of fear:

• sales
• accounting
• public speaking
• web design
• brainstorming sessions
• networking
• marketing
• meetings.

There’s nothing inherently evil or awful about any of these, except accounting. Just kidding. It strikes terror into my heart, but there are people who live for it, whereas I quite enjoy public speaking and some accountants would rather throw themselves under a bus than get up to speak in front of a group. It’s not even only about what you enjoy. I’d like to learn how to do web design myself, but I realise that it wouldn’t be a good use of my time and I’d probably never do it as well as the professionals, so I delegate it. With online services like the ones I’ve already mentioned, such as elance.com, it’s easier than ever to find people to do the things you can’t or don’t want to do.

What are your strengths?

I bet if I asked you what your greatest weaknesses are you’d be able to reel them off without much effort. Most people, however, are not able to identify their strengths as easily, even though knowing that is essential. So let’s take an inventory of your strengths. Jot down the first answer that comes to mind for the following questions:

1. What is your greatest strength when it comes to having new ideas?
   
   
2. What is your greatest strength when it comes to expressing yourself?
   
   
3. What is your greatest strength when it comes to dealing with other people?
   
   
4. What is your greatest strength when it comes to getting things done?
   
   

Of course there are certain things that you want to do and that relate to your strengths, but you don’t always do them as effectively as you could. In that case, one good way to find out how to do them better is to look at the times when you do perform them well.

When do you do the right thing?

I once coached a writer who said she was “always” late for meetings. They were vital to her work and they weren’t unpleasant, so she wasn’t trying to avoid them, but she seldom got to them on time. Naturally this didn’t endear her to editors, agents, or others who had to wait for her to show up.

A closer examination showed that there was an important exception: the writer never missed a plane. Obviously she had a different pattern when she had a plane to catch. The question was, what did she already do differently at those times, that she could now also start to do in other situations when she’s supposed to be somewhere by a particular time?

Her answer was that when she was flying somewhere she did all her packing and preparation the previous day. We then looked at how she could do a mini-version of that kind of advance preparation to get ready for other obligations, and it made a huge difference.

Here are some questions along these lines that might be helpful for you:

• If you generally procrastinate, what don’t you procrastinate about?
• If you generally don’t finish projects that you start, but once in a while you do, what is different about those?
• If you generally don’t start your workday by doing the most important thing, but some days you do, what’s different about those days?

In the exceptions to unproductive patterns, you will find clues to change. Quite often, the problem contains the seeds of its own solution.

You can give this approach a try right now.

1. First jot down one thing you generally don’t handle as well as you’d like to:
   
   
2. Now think of at least one time when you did handle it well:
   
   
3. What was different about the time you did it well?
   
   
4. How can you apply this the next time you have to do the same task?
   
   

Notice when things are going right

An even better way to learn to make a habit of using your most effective traits and behaviours is to notice them as they are happening. Most of us don’t do this – we notice when things are going badly, but when they’re going well we take it for granted. From now on, spend a few minutes at the end of each day reviewing what happened and take note of what worked well for you and why. For instance, if you managed to clear up your backlog of email, why was this easy to do today? Maybe you set yourself a deadline of 30 minutes for working through all of them, and the ticking clock kept you from getting distracted by interesting but not really relevant emails, or maybe you worked out a new way to use a system of folders to sort the emails more effectively.

Now take another couple of minutes to consider how you could apply these techniques that work to any other challenges you’re facing at the moment. Would it make sense to set a similar deadline for writing a rough first draft of that report you’ve been meaning to do? Could you use a version of your new email folders system to bring more order to your paperwork?

Even better is to jot down all the things that work well, so that every time in the future that you face a difficult task you can review your list and find the proven methods that will help you the most in tackling the new challenge. The best thing about this approach is that you are learning from yourself, knowing that these are strategies that have already proved themselves.

Learn from Pavlov and his drooling dogs

Do you remember reading or hearing about Pavlov’s dogs? The Russian scientist rang a bell whenever he fed the dogs. The sight of the food made the dogs drool. After a while, all he had to do to get them to drool was to ring the bell. They associated the sound with the food so closely that their bodies reacted as though the food were there. You may be wondering how this is relevant, since you probably have no desire to make dogs drool unnecessarily. Well, this same phenomenon of “classical conditioning” is one you can use to your advantage.

There are times when you’re performing at the top of your game, but for most of us those physical and mental states come and go, and they feel out of our control. Wouldn’t it be great if you could trigger those states whenever you wanted to? You can, by using the same principle that Pavlov utilised. When you realise you are in a particularly productive state of mind, link it to a sound (for instance, a particular song that you play on your MP3 player – be sure to pick something you don’t play too often) or a smell (for example, from a bottle of peppermint oil, or even an aftershave or perfume you don’t normally use). When you have done this a few times, the state of mind and the other element will be linked to the degree that when you expose yourself to the sound or smell the positive state will also appear. We’ll look at a variation of this approach in the next chapter, where you’ll learn how to use the Alter Ego strategy.

When and where do you get your best ideas?

A survey conducted by BT and Management Today magazine revealed that two-thirds of the managers responding have their best ideas outside work. When and where do you have your best ideas? Typical answers are:

• in the shower
• in the bath
• while shaving
• while driving to work
• on the train or the underground
• while playing golf
• while walking or jogging
• in bed, right after waking up
• in bed, right before falling asleep
• during the adverts when watching TV
• at the gym.

Circle any of the above that apply to you and if you have different answers jot them down here:

As we’ve already noted elsewhere, it’s vital that you capture any great ideas before you’re distracted and they vanish. Put pads of paper and pens anywhere in the house where you’re likely to have ideas: in the bathroom, by your bed, by the sofa in the living room, in the kitchen. If you come up with insights in places where it’s impractical to write things down, such as while jogging or working out, consider taking along a little digital voice recorder or an MP3 player that can be adapted to record as well.

How to harness the power of daydreams

Unfortunately, we’re told when we’re growing up that daydreaming is a foolish waste of time, yet that’s exactly what you’re doing when you’re in the shower, or on a walk, or on the treadmill at the gym and suddenly an idea pops into your mind. The information is coming from your subconscious mind, which is fed by a multitude of your conscious activities. There’s no way to force this kind of productive daydreaming, but there are some ways to invite it to occur more frequently. If you’d like to have it happen more often:

• Make more time for the kinds of activities during which you tend to have ideas (for example, take longer baths).
• When ideas come up, don’t judge them right away. A negative thought will quickly kill a new idea. Even if your first impulse is that the idea is impractical or irrelevant, stay with it. It may lead to another idea that works.
• Never try to force ideas but do play around with them. For instance, if you want to work out how to give a powerful presentation, let your thoughts wander back to good and bad presentations you’ve seen and notice what pops into your mind. If they come up, entertain “crazy” ideas (what kind of presentation would Homer Simpson give . . .).

A hidden source of ideas: your night dreams

It has long been known that many great writers were inspired by their dreams, including Robert Louis Stevenson for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Paul McCartney dreamed the tune for the song Yesterday. Madame C. J. Walker had a dream in which she was shown how to mix a hair-care product that made her America’s first female self-made millionaire. If you never remember or write down your dreams, you may be missing out on a great source of information.

Research suggests you can even use dreams to solve specific problems. A study reported in the Journal of Sleep Research (December, 2004) got 470 people to write down their dreams and rate them in terms of their intensity, emotions and impact. The participants were also asked to recall various events that took place up to a week before. Then independent judges evaluated the dreams to see whether they contained possible solutions for problems arising from those events. Their conclusion: dreams do offer insights and solutions in the week after the problem comes up. The solutions can appear in dreams as quickly as the night after the problem first arises, but also six to seven days later.

You can make it more likely that a solution will appear if you focus on the problem shortly before you go to sleep. Don’t do it in the form of worrying, but rather as a question to which you expect an answer. Then go to sleep. The next morning jot down any dreams you remember. Don’t analyse yet, just write down everything you can remember. If the dream wakes you up, record it then (you might forget by morning). The next day, sit down in a quiet place and look over what you’ve written. Dreams are metaphors, so the solution to your problem may appear as some kind of symbol. Let your mind flow free to come up with ideas of what the dream may be trying to tell you.

What’s next?

You now have a much better idea of the strengths that are going to be the key to propelling you to the success you desire. When you do what you know is the right thing to do, you have immense power. However, most people find that power is sapped by procrastination. In the next chapter, you will learn how to overcome that negative habit once and for all.

Website chapter bonus

At www.focusquick.com you will find a downloadable guided visualisation that helps you identify one of your key strengths and lets you imagine how you could use it to help you solve a challenge or problem you’re facing at the moment.