Coaching practices for I Pour Most of My Effort Into Shoring Up the Things I'm Bad at and it Crawls Poor to Barely Okay While the Things I'm Genuinely Good at Sit Untouched and I Wonder If I've Had the Whole Development Math Backwards
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For I Pour Most of My Effort Into Shoring Up the Things I'm Bad at and it Crawls Poor to Barely Okay While the Things I'm Genuinely Good at Sit Untouched and I Wonder If I've Had the Whole Development Math Backwards, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I pour most of my effort into shoring up the things I’m bad at and it crawls
- I’m doing twelve things at a passable level and none of them well, and I’m starting to think the answer isn’t to try harder across all of them but to do far fewer and actually be good at those.
- I’ve been putting in the hours for ages and I’ve completely plateaued
- I throw myself at a dozen unrelated things and a few years later I’ve got nothing to show for any of them
- I spend so much energy trying to fix my weak spots that my days feel like a grind against my own grain
Practices that may help
- Invest more development effort in your strengths than in your weaknesses
Move from average to excellent in your strength areas rather than from poor to average in your weak ones.
Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical - Less but better
Channel your effort into a few vital things done excellently rather than many done adequately.
Essentialism, Made Practical - Practice deliberately, not just repeatedly
Target weaknesses with full focus and feedback, not comfortable repetition.
Grit: Passion and Perseverance, Honestly Assessed - Organize effort under one top-level goal
Arrange your day-to-day goals as a hierarchy serving one overarching aim.
Grit: Passion and Perseverance, Honestly Assessed - Use your signature strengths in a new way
Identify your top character strengths and deploy one of them differently each day.
Positive Psychology, Made Practical - Locate your growth edge before each session
Identify the exact sub-skill where you currently fail 20–40% of the time.
Growth-Edge Training: Practicing at the Edge of Your Ability - Use constraint-based drills to isolate one component
Remove degrees of freedom so attention concentrates on a single weak sub-skill.
Growth-Edge Training: Practicing at the Edge of Your Ability - Apply the 80/20 rule
Find the few tasks that produce most of the value, and make those your frogs.
Eat That Frog, Made Practical - Use a challenge-calibration partner or coach
Have a more skilled observer set the challenge level — your own assessment is biased.
Growth-Edge Training: Practicing at the Edge of Your Ability - Multiply time and resource investment in the vital few
Once you know your high-leverage 20%, invest more time and energy there — not less.
The Pareto Principle: 80/20 for Personal Productivity
Related concerns
- Developing Capability
If you lack the physical skill or stamina a behavior requires, practice it in low-stakes conditions until it is automatic.
Build physical capability through deliberate skill repetition
- Do Fewer Things Better
Channel your effort into a few vital things done excellently rather than many done adequately.
Less but better
- Do More Of What Works
Once you know your high-leverage 20%, invest more time and energy there — not less.
Multiply time and resource investment in the vital few
- Edge Of Ability
Growth-edge training means consistently working just beyond your current comfort zone — where challenge slightly exceeds current ability. Research on skill acquisition and deliberate practice supports this as the most efficient zone for learning, though finding and staying at the edge requires honest self-assessment and structured feedback.
- Good Enough Practice
Aim for 60–85% success rates in practice — not perfection, and not near-failure.
Calibrate practice difficulty so it is challenging but not overwhelming
- Growth Edge Training Practicing At The Edge Of Your Ability As A Caregiver
Growth-edge training means consistently working just beyond your current comfort zone — where challenge slightly exceeds current ability. Research on skill acquisition and deliberate practice supports this as the most efficient zone for learning, though finding and staying at the edge requires honest self-assessment and structured feedback.
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