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The main thesis is that you shouldn't worry so much about the things you're not good at, as the things you have talents for. You need to be aware of your shortcomings, and ensure they don't compromise your performance, but you should be attempting to accentuate your strong points: don't be a rounded individual, stay sharp!
It's often easy to be cynical about this literature, but that's partly to avoid confronting things about yourself. On the other hand, the way it tells you to look for your aptitudes is to find those times when you focus on the future, not on the present, which is pretty much the opposite of when I've found happiness: to me, satisfaction is much more about being subsumed in the moment than wondering about times elsewhere. But that might be more to do with enjoying yourself than figuring out what choices you should make in order to excel. And thinking about it, spending your time rectifying your flaws and neglecting your strengths isn't likely to make you great at anything.
Looking back at my university career, I often did the opposite; I worried that I wasn't good at certain areas of mathematics and spent more time on them, when (according to this book) I should have dropped them and concentrated on what I was good at.
I was pretty good at drinking, come to think of it. And dressing up in women's clothing. And growing a beard.
Not all three at once. Perhaps it's not good to play to your strengths simultaneously.
But with calls going backwards and forwards about the next job, I'm worrying that it won't be something that fits perfectly with what I'm good at. Probably I'll be able to perform fairly well at it (I've done pretty well thus far) but fairly well isn't something to aspire to. So for the next few weeks I'll be striving to figure out if the next job is the right one, or if I should take the easy option and go sit on the beach for six months. Or go to sleep. I'd like to go to sleep for a bit.
Not that sleeping is much of an ambition, or a skill that differentiates you from the masses. But then I thought of my key strengths: I like inflicting my opinions on others, I like being rude, and I like sitting down.
"You should be a manager" my girlfriend said.
Perhaps I'll just settle for being competent at something, and shying away from trying to be great. If I had a better idea of what my dreams were, maybe that would be clearer.
(I had a dream this morning that I was playing tennis after a major flood, on a court covered in the carcasses of drowned animals and washed up grouper fish, when some worms fell out of a tree and landed on my arm, and I jumped enough to wake up my girlfriend as well as me. Not all dreams are there to follow.)
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