Been reading Timothy Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Work Week recently. Tim Ferriss always has solid information about lifestyle design and I often transmute that knowledge to benefit my filmmaking.
There’s an interesting bit in there where he runs contrary to the majority of self-help rhetoric and theories that we often see as self-evident in filmmaking.
Emphasizestrengths, Don’t Fix Weaknesses
Ferriss says that you should “Emphasize strengths, don’t fix weaknesses.”
That’s very different from what’s taught in filmmaking circles, but it caught my eye as an interesting idea, so I wanted to open some discussion up here.
I’m not sure I agree with the ideal. Here’s the quote:
“It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre. Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair.”
Fixing Errors
So many people get obsessed with fixing their errors in filmmaking. They have to eliminate all the useless things that they’ve learned over the years that create those bad habits we all try to avoid.
Remove all the clutter and errors, which is basically “fixing your weaknesses.”
This is one of the biggest gifts we have when we put our intellect to use.
It seems to me that the optimum would be to work on both – emphasize your strengths, as well as fixing your weaknesses. But Ferriss’ whole thing is saving time, so he speaks about not having the time to fix all the chinks, he’d rather just save time and promote his strengths in better ways.
Thanks for reading!
