Stop over-fixing weaknesses and redeploy time to your strength zone

Decades of workplace surveys show a sharp split between people who use their best abilities most days and those who don’t. The first group reports higher energy, better relationships, and stronger performance. The second group drifts, drains, and doubts. If you look closely, the difference is not 40 hours of passion. It’s often a small but consistent shift in how hours are used. One engineer I coached moved just two hours a day from generic meetings to designing prototypes. His coffee cooled more often on his desk because he got lost in the work. His output doubled in eight weeks, with fewer bugs.

Why does that small change matter? Self‑Determination Theory says humans need three things at work: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Strengths time touches all three. You choose how to work, you feel effective while doing it, and your best work helps other people. That combination doesn’t just feel good, it strengthens motivation loops. In one micro‑anecdote, a customer support lead replaced a weekly 60‑minute status deck with a 10‑minute live demo of her team’s best fixes. The room leaned forward. Tickets dropped 12% the next month.

I might be wrong, but most "fix your weaknesses first" plans fail because they burn a lot of fuel to create only basic competence. Little progress feels like pushing a car uphill. By contrast, moving a slice of time into strength work creates quick wins, and quick wins change beliefs. When people see their best abilities produce visible results, they volunteer for more of it. Mood rises, and so does ownership.

The science behind this is simple: what you practice grows, and what grows gets repeated. Habit formation ties to cues and rewards. Put your best work at the same time, in the same place, with a clean cue (calendar block), and close each session with a visible result (a shipped artifact). Over time, those sessions become automatic anchors in your week. That’s job crafting in practice—reshaping tasks, relationships, and perceptions to better fit you and deliver more value.

Start by reviewing last week’s schedule and score each block by energy, not just minutes. Pick one recurring drain and redesign it to use a natural advantage, then propose a 90‑day experiment that shifts 20% of your time into that kind of work with two clear metrics of success. Protect a 60–90 minute strengths sprint three or four times a week with your phone on Do Not Disturb, a short checklist, and a ship‑something goal so you leave each session with proof of progress. Put the review date on your calendar and get buy‑in now so the change sticks. Give it a try tonight.