Know yourself

If you find yourself repeatedly failing to be effective in a role, it might be that you don't fully understand what your role is.

Problem

  • You find yourself uncertain about what you should be doing at a certain time period.

  • You find yourself trying repeatedly to do something but you're not getting the results you want.

  • Your teammates struggle to work with you, or struggle to predict how you would behave or act.

Recommendation

  • Understand demand - Assess whether or not you are clear on what role you should be playing. What does the situation require?

  • Distinguish needs vs. want - Understand that there is a difference between the role you or your team needs versus the role you want to play. Sometimes, these are two different things and you need to find the balance of what role to play "now" versus what role you want to play "later".

  • Accept change - You may have played a role before that no longer suits you now. You may play a different role next year. This is normal. Know that a lot of things change in life, and that knowing oneself is continuous.

  • Be gentle and kind - You will be a constant companion to yourself until you die. Be kind to yourself. The journey is long- you might as well make yourself a friend along the way.

Effective use

  • Balance - By knowing clearly what role you can play and should play, you can better find situations or teams that will work best with your toolkit. This would mean a technologist would partner up with a businessman, and a farmer would partner up with a salesperson.

  • Clarity - Once you have clarified what role you want to play, you'll be able to quickly disqualify distractions, or questions that might cause you to lose focus.

  • Peace - There are various elements of chaos outside of oneself, at play in the world. Many things are outside of our control. But knowing one's self, inclinations, desires, and preferences enables you to maintain order within your mind and your realm. This enables you to have stability as you go out and face the challenges of the world.

Misuse

  • Experiencing distractions and dawdling - When you don't know what role you should play, you end up getting distracted and wasting a lot of time. There is a fine line between dawdling (mindlessly wandering without directions) and being lost- which can become frustrating.

  • Overwhelm - When you repeatedly play the wrong role or force something against your nature, it can feel like things are stacked against you.

  • Misalignment, miscommunication with teammates - By picking a role (e.g. position 5 support) and then suddenly playing differently from that role (e.g. roamingposition 4 ganker), it is very likely that your teammates will misunderstand or be confused about how to work or integrate with you.

References

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