Strengths and Liabilities

Looking at the results of the strengths finder I find that my strengths like ideation and learner and input also keeps me distracted and un-focused. I remember that I should team up with another whose strength on focusing. Last weekend, I used up all my library privileges as well as both my sons. So I borrowed books on Asian furniture, Malaysian and Philippine interior design and architecture, Alan Greenspan's 'The Age of Turbulence', Tim Ferris's 'The 4-Hour Work Week', 'The Elements of Style', Winston Churchill's 'The Strategic Alliance' and DVDs on Indian classical music, documentary on lake Victoria in Africa and a movie on Filipino - Chinese.

Aside from that, I have committed to read my stack of old newspapers and magazines which I neglect to throw away until I have read them. All these to satisfy my so-called strength of input and learning. It is as if I am afraid that I will miss something. So reading Tim Ferris book is very enlightening. I should not work too much but instead work smarter is essentially the message. I have too much in my plate though I would think that it was a strength rather than a weakness. In fact, I am actually stagnating because there is too much input without the corresponding output. Embarrassingly, my output is only my blog and my Toastmaster speeches. How pathetic is that? I remember a line from Joseph Conrad about feeling like a drowning man which seems to fit my situation.

So my strength actually a liability because I lack focus and would like to do many things that I end up doing nothing. So maybe the trick is to learn how to manage or control your strengths rather than your weaknesses or liabilities. This is one area that was not discussed in the books by Marcus Buckingham or the Gallup websites. I wonder if there are other people who have the same problem. In fact to restate my situation, how to make turn my strengths into productive and focused effort instead of dissipating my energies into unproductive ventures. Is this the insight that I should learn from the strength finder exercise?