Born not Made
3 Minute Read
I’m a big fan of what are sometimes called self-help books, in the most part they are genuinely helpful. Books that could fall into this class span a range of sub-genres ranging from business to psychology and philosophy and even psychotherapy. Sometimes a combination. If we tread carefully, we can all take a fair bit from a wide range of these titles.
But tread carefully we must, because before long we could have followed an author on Instagram, ventured onto their YouTube, followed a random link and before we know it will be being yelled at by a highly motivated individual that ‘there’s nothing to stop us but ourselves.’
But in some contexts stop ourselves is exactly what we should be doing and to understand why, let’s take a brief detour into the world of cycling.
If, like me, you’ve spent time on a bike you may well have come across Global Cycling Network (GCN) whose excellent YouTube channel covers everything from how to wash your bike to the best way to cycle an Alpine pass. I have spent a long time talking about my favourite video entitled: “How Long Can You Hold World Hour Record Pace?”
If you’re a cyclist, it’s here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVO5ILQfx0Y) 10 minutes long and although about 4 years old, a must watch.
Otherwise – let me summarise. The world hour record is the amount of km the current holder has managed to ride in an hour. It’s about 56km and to do it requires holding a power output of c440 watts for, well, an hour. Very, very, hard to do.
In the clip the host, himself a useful amateur, makes an attempt along with a beginner and a current (anonymous) pro. To break it down, the new cyclist lasts 46 seconds, the host manages 3mins 50 seconds and the pro 46 minutes.
The key point here is that while, with training, a new amateur could get to the level of an experienced one, there’s no way your typical amateur could get to the level of a pro, even if they trained all their life - the pros have genetic factors that make them outliers on any performance graph. They are born that way and have trained (yes with massive dedication and commitment) an innate strength.
Most self-help books, and nearly all business biographies are written by people who are outliers (in one way or another) and their stories are all somewhat post rationalised.
For all of us there are one or two things we can be very good at and many things we will be average at and a few things we will be not very good at all at. The key is to focus on developing our innate strengths, make sure we’re functioning well in our more average areas and minimising, delegating, outsourcing or automating in our weaker areas.
Cognitive strengths are as innate as physical ones. Beating yourself up about a weakness or trying to be world-class at something that’s not an innate strength is as ludicrous as me thinking if I spend more time on a turbo trainer, I could become a (veteran) pro cyclist.
So, if you’ve identified a weakness, you’re responsible for taking steps to mitigate it by delegation or outsourcing. Then create conditions where you can do jobs at which you’re okay to the best of your ability. And train the hell out of your strengths.
But don’t be beating yourself up about ‘motivational content’, made by outliers, who may well be world class at screaming aphorisms from the stage but then probably lose their car in a multi-story and shout at their assistant, that’s the bit you don’t see.
Check your strengths here:
