James Altucher’s Career Advice: Always Focus on Your Strengths

Answer by James Altucher, author and blogger, on Quora.

Let’s say Michael Jordan at his peak was on your basketball team. There are ten seconds left in the game and you have the ball and you are down by one. Do you throw it to Michael Jordan or do you throw it to the worst player on your team? Both are wide open and ready for your decision.

If I were your coach I’d fire you if you threw to anyone other than Michael Jordan at that moment. He’d take the ball and score and you will win.

Always focus on your strengths. They are your strengths for an important reason. At one point you were passionate about them (and perhaps still are) and so dived into the subtleties enough to make yourself a master of those strengths. That’s why you are strong in them. The weaknesses are there because you have no interest in them, are no good at it, and for many reasons, may never be good at it. You may have new passions in the future. And those passions will turn into strengths eventually. But weaknesses don’t turn into strengths.

In business, for example, I have problems focusing on just one thing. Which is probably why I will never again try to be CEO of a company where that company becomes my only focus in life. Is that a weakness? Sure. Do I care? No, because I like spending time on many interests.

Also, I know I am not the best investor, to be honest. I like to invest where people smarter than me have invested. And where CEOs who are smarter than me are running things. I’m good at understanding big demographic changes. So I pick those. Then I find the CEOs and co-investors within those demographic shifts that are better than me at what they do.

In other words — delegate your weaknesses. Then for all practical purposes, your weaknesses and strengths will side by side make you an enormous success.

This question originally appeared on Quora: Should I invest in my weaknesses or keep on focusing on my strengths?

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