10A. Response to "Freak Factor"

David Rendall’s “FREAK FACTOR: Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness.

Overall this essay talks about the misconception that anyone different or not part of the crowd is wrong, and therefore erroneously needs to change. Furthermore, it discusses in part how people put too much effort into attempting to eradicate their weaknesses; when in fact they should focus on improving their strengths.

2) What's My Problem?

This suggestion is particularly meaningful to me because it's something that I've noticed time and time again. In school, in the workplace, and just in general, people seem to believe that if they have weaknesses, these problems need to be addressed and handled quickly. But I find it refreshing that these weaknesses aren't really problems at all - in fact, they point to the strengths that we all have.  The man who doesn't respect authority often is the man who starts his own business and takes charge.  The one who is disorganized is creative.  And the list goes on and on.  These so called weaknesses are admittedly problematic in typical workplaces...but when given the opportunity to flourish and work on their own, such problems reveal great strengths and the ability to succeed.

4) Forget It: Don't Try to Fix Your Weaknesses

This also is intriguing to me because we are all expected to correct and remove whatever "weaknesses" we have. However, David makes some strong arguments against dismissing your weaknesses and focusing instead on your strengths. First, it's slow and difficult to make progress on adjusting a weakness. In order to make a difference, you would need to put a lot of time and energy into the process.  Secondly, it hurts. It's painful and - plainly - not fun to try and get better at something we're bad at. Thirdly, fixing a weakness is distracting. The time that we spend on making a weakness less weak could be spent on activities that complement our strengths or increase our skill in things we are good at.  Finally, and most importantly, David suggests that any attempt to fix a weakness will fail. Even if we are able to turn a negative trait into a neutral or slightly positive one, it's not a powerful strength. At best it's a mediocre strength that really isn't useful for anything.

6) Focus: You Can't Do Both

This final example brought up an interesting real life example: commercial stores.  The focus of the discussion was on the idea that as a business (and therefore as an individual), you can only focus on fixing a weakness or building a strength. Unfortunately, many people try to do both at the same time, and the result is largely that they fail at both. The example used was of Walmart and Target. Walmart's strength is low prices; its weakness is low quality products and unhelpful employees. Target's strength is the opposite: good quality products and employees, but at a higher cost to the consumer. Both stores focus entirely on building their strengths, while ignoring their weaknesses, which is something we should all strive to do. Kmart was used as an example of a store that tried to both promote its strengths while working on its weaknesses at the same time. The result was a mediocre store with mediocre products - and consumers decided not to shop there.  Likewise, your interactions with people will result on how you approach your strengths. Make yourself valuable, and don't try to be great at everything - you'll just be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none.

As far as the creative process goes, my strength is that I can work well on my own. I've started my own business, and as such I am able to work with clients to completely produce video products. As such, my weakness is linked to working well on my own in that at times I find it challenging to work with others. I prefer to do things my way because I know it will work for me, and I can keep track of scheduling. It's hard to delegate tasks to other people, trusting that they can get the job done.