Ignore your superpower
What's your superpower?
This is a question we ask often in the world of strategy. It's not a bad question. I wonder if it's misleading.
A superpower feels grandiose. But also inherited. It's something you had little control over. If anything, you can channel it.
A superpower also feels single-minded. It's why so many of us use this this analogy. Own one thing. Then execute it over and over.
However.
There are many ways to be the hero in your story. Superpowers are one version of events.
I prefer a different analogy: the utility belt. Less Clark Kent, more Bruce Wayne. Sure, you inherited the family fortune, but you channelled it to build things.
“You can either experience the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The choice is yours.” Unknown
To build a utility belt requires discipline. Experimentation. Having ok results 90% of the time, so the remaining 10% can kick ass.
One of the great tools in my utility belt? Books. Cliché . But not just strategy books. Boring. No, any book that gives me shortcuts.
Books on philosophy. Psychotherapy. On occasion, poetry. Stuff that cultivates greater self-awareness, not self-aggrandisement.
Books that don't feel too complicated. That cut through. Complicated books are an author's problem, not a reader's problem. They’re also a reflection of the author’s self-aggrandisement rubbing off on you.
Me? I much prefer books that are simple and memorable. Because we might want to be less interested in being absolutely correct, if that comes at the expense of our views being noticed. And then acted upon.
It may not feel like a superpower, because anyone can pick up a book and read (or listen to it, if audiobooks are more your thing).
But the right set of books, like the right set of tools, can make one hell of an utility belt.
