Know what you do best
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Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this special offer at oracle.com slash strategic. That's oracle.com slash strategic. Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to figure out your core competencies. That is, the things you do best that other people cannot do nearly as well.

To spend your time well and to be effective, you want to focus as much time as you can on these things and spend as little time as possible on everything else. Today's tip, like some others this week, comes from my book, 168 Hours. That book was first published in late May of 2010, which means that it is 15 years old this month. A lot has changed in the world since then.

But we do, in fact, still have 168 hours in a week. And so I am revisiting some of the tips in that book that I think can still be helpful. Today's tip is to know what you do best. There are lots of ways people can spend their time. There are also limited hours in the day. It is often more efficient to focus on the handful of areas where you can really shine

and then figure out ways to not spend your time on other things. This makes sense in a corporate context. If you make widgets, you generally don't also own a fleet of trucks that will deliver your widgets to customers. Depending on the size of the widgets, you use the post office or a commercial delivery service to do that for you. But we tend to be a bit less focused in our own lives. Sometimes people have figured out ways to delegate things at work,

But in our home lives, people spend all kinds of time on things that it might be better not to do. I think part of this is that we don't always know what our core competencies are. We don't know what we do best and that other people cannot do nearly as well. So it might be worth spending some time thinking this through. What do people keep asking you about? When do people seek out your advice? What seems easy for you that other people find challenging?

Sometimes there are things that we are good at across multiple dimensions and fields. For instance, in 168 Hours, I tell the story of Roald Hoffman, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist. He spent his childhood hiding from the Nazis, watching the world through a hole in the wall. He became a very keen and patient observer, watching the changing light and the changing seasons this way.

Eventually, this helped him become a very good scientist, as he would patiently observe experiments and see small changes. His powers of observation led him to making some real breakthroughs in the field. Now, a Nobel Prize is kind of the culmination of a life. But when I interviewed Hoffman, he was actually at a writing retreat working on his poetry. As a second career, he had started writing poetry that was also based on his patient observations, seeing small changes in the world.

This man's core competency was being a watcher, a skill that helped him survive as a child and then brought him fame later. Now, we are not all chemical and poetical geniuses, of course, but we do all have certain skills. We also have certain zones of genius. So what are yours? What makes you feel alive? What makes you feel like you are making progress? I love writing.

I love talking about counterintuitive and exciting ideas. I like performing. What do you like? Look at how you are spending your time. How much time do you spend on these matters? How much time do you spend on everything else? I believe over time we can find ways to spend more time on the things we do best and less time on other things.

These days, I really try not to do things like run errands when I could be writing. Sometimes people ask me about doing things like coaching, but it's not really something I do best or better than others would. I'd much rather be writing or speaking to a big group. What about you? Find your core competencies and you are well on your way to spending time well. It is worth the time it takes to figure this out because knowing what you do best is

will help you spend your 168 hours well. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening. And here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.

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