desperate for change

I recently came across this trip report about a college investment club’s visit to Omaha to see Warren Buffett.

There are a lot of take away messages about investing and about life. I’ve read about Warren Buffett in other articles and books but those often focus on his investment success and his friendship with Bill Gates.

One message that the students came with struck me: “Stay within your circle of competence.”

It is important to recognize your strengths and weaknesses. In the game of life, you want to be in areas where you have an advantage. When you are in an area of weakness, ask questions and get help.

In our modern society, we value highly professionals with specialized skills: dentists, lawyers, software programmers, plumbers, auto mechanics, etc. We all have our designated roles to play in this world.

Do you have an arena where you can step into, where you know you can beat everyone else? That’s where you need to be.

When I was still at school last winter, I checked out the career planning programs at the counselling services. I started off with a quick 15 minute drop-in appointment with a counsellor who told me about the different sessions and personality tests that they offered. Sign me up please!

One of the “live” sessions that I attended involved various exercises using various types of cards. One exercise was called the Skills Card Sort, which involved taking a stack of about 40 cards. Each card has a skill (as a verb) and a short description. Then we had some time to sort the cards by our strength in that particular skill.

Here are my top 21 skills (randomized):

• motivate
• invent
• analyze
• listen
• synthesize
• implement
• entertain
• organize/plan
• coach
• evaluate
• initiate
• compose
• design
• coordinate
• maintain records
• budget
• estimate
• delegate
• monitor
• problem solve
• expediate

I think part of finding something that we like to do involves playing to our strengths. What skills are you good at? In what arena do you excel at? What skills not in my top 21 can you think of for yourself?