Weaknesses

Today, I will attempt to answer the following question:

To what extent should one try to improve on the areas one falls short on?

At first sight, it seems like the answer should be “always”. It is a common paradigm to learn and identify one’s weaknesses, and using this knowledge, to work on one’s weaknesses, such that it no longer is such a weakness. However, this view relies on the common notion that weaknesses are absolute. I would like to place this notion into contention, and in doing so, perhaps obtain a more concrete answer to the original problem.

There appears to be two types of weaknesses in a person’s skill set or character, inherent weaknesses, which are actual weaknesses which arise from physical factors or past background, and perceived weaknesses, which are weaknesses which arise as a result of one’s or others’ perception of one’s self. Here, we take weakness to be the opposite of strength: a weakness is something that can cause one to perform worse in a certain situation. For example, a lack of psychomotor coordination can be seen as a weakness, so far as it affects one in situations where dexterity is required. A lack of ability to obtain knowledge via visual means can be seen as a weakness, so far as it lowers the ability to learn from visual stimuli. A lack of social graces can be seen as a weakness, so far as it lowers the ability for one to interact well with others in a social situation. As they are all weaknesses arising in different circumstances, none of these should be seen as a greater weakness than another.

Now, I would like to consider the viewpoint that weaknesses are absolute. This viewpoint would assert that all weaknesses are actual weaknesses, which means that two people with exactly the same lack of ability in a certain situation would possess the same weakness. For example, the inability to draw lifelike portraits can be seen as a weakness. Someone who believes in absolute weaknesses would agree that this inability would count as a weakness in all people who possess this inability. Now, perhaps some will begin to disagree with me. Some would claim that the ability to draw lifelike portraits is a very specialized skill and the lack thereof should therefore not be considered a weakness. Yet, if you looked within the community of artists, especially the community which specializes in the painting of portraits, such a lack of ability should certainly be considered a weakness. Therein lies my contention with the notion of the absolute weakness.

Consider then, a more general weakness, such as the lack of empathy leading to one often making inappropriate comments in social situations. As the social situation is a lot more common than the artistic situation pictured above, one would be far more ready to admit that if one often makes inappropriate comments in social situations, he possesses the actual character flaw or weakness of a lack of social awareness. Now, I would like one to consider, wherein lies the difference between the two situations? Does the fact that one weakness arises in situations that are a lot more common make it more of an absolute weakness than one which appears less frequently? Upon further reflection one might realize that there is nothing which makes that evident. Although it may not be possible to imagine a human situation where that weakness may not be called into play, save the remote one of a person who spends his entire life on a solitary island, people will still readily call that weakness a character flaw far more readily than the inability to draw life-like portraits.

As can be seen, the distinction between what should or should not be called an absolute weakness is blurred, which leads one to feel that this notion of an absolute weakness is in fact, perceived.

Now, I would like to refer to the other end of the spectrum, perceived weaknesses, and put forth the notion that all weaknesses are perceived. To achieve that, I would first like to discuss the various ways in which a weakness can come to be perceived.

1. Perceived weaknesses arise as a result of expectations.

Where there are no expectations, there can be no weaknesses. Imagine if we captured an alien that landed on Earth, and put it in a social situation such as a party or a formal dinner, and noted that the alien failed to put on any social graces at all, or displayed any interest in any conversation. If a human were in that very same position, one would probably conclude that the human lacks social awareness, or social graces, and attribute to him or her the respective character flaw. However, due to a lack of preconceived notions or expectations about the social abilities of aliens, one will be less willing to impose these same expectations on the alien. In fact, if the alien nodded his head while we were speaking to it, we might consider it to be incredibly polite!

2. Perceived weaknesses arise from experience

Weaknesses can only arise through an observation of behavior. If weaknesses were absolute, it would be possible to deduce one’s weaknesses just through a thorough examination of the person’s physical and mental state. But as is empirically evident, any measure of strength or weakness has to arise from a series of measurements, which in itself requires experience with a person. And the more experience one has with a person, the more easily perceived these weaknesses are. That being said, it is likewise impossible to deduce the weaknesses of a total stranger. Hence, to you, that stranger has no weaknesses.

3. Perceived weaknesses arise from comparison

It is pretty much self-evident that a weakness arises from comparison. After all, how can there be a weakness without a corresponding strength? What I am saying though is that the weakness which arises in this way is perceived and not actual. If there was a skill which everyone could do to the same degree, there would be no notion of strength or weakness in that field. For example, no one would say “I can breathe better than you”, because breathing is an activity that everyone can do to the same degree. Likewise, it is important to realize this distinction, that the weakness which arises from comparison is perceived.

(Apart from the above, there are probably other reasons from which weaknesses can arise. Please feel free to let me know and I will be glad to consider them.)

As I have pointed out above, many of the ways in which we come to believe that a person, whether one’s self or others, has a weakness is through an act of perception rather than an act of matching an actual physical/mental state with a fixed map of states to weaknesses. As such, it is quite clear that a person may be perceived to have certain weaknesses in one society and a different set of weaknesses in another. We find this to be empirically demonstrable as well.

Having established that a wide variety of weaknesses, if not all, are perceived rather than absolute, I would like to return to the original issue, which is the way by which we should come to obtain a heuristic as to which areas of one’s character or skill set that one should improve on. First of all I would like to note that the italicization of the word “should” is a means of emphasizing that this heuristic is normative and relies very much on opinion. That being said, anything which I am about to suggest is and will remain only a suggestion.

Since weaknesses are perceived, the only way to eliminate a weakness is to eliminate the perception of the weakness. While changing one’s self by improving one’s character or practicing the weak skill serves to eliminate the weakness, it is crucial to note that the weakness can also be eliminated by changing the perception directly. This can occur if one convinces the perceiver(s) not to perceive the weakness as such, or if one changes his environment such that the new perceivers do not perceive that particular weakness. For example, moving to China will most likely eliminate the perception of one’s weakness at speaking English (although it may reveal a new weakness at speaking Mandarin). Hence, addressing the weakness directly is not the only way of eliminating it, contrary to what supporters of the absolute notion of weaknesses believe.

How then, should one go about deciding which weaknesses require the most attention? I would like to suggest three factors which may aid one in reaching this decision. The first I will call frequency, which refers to the frequency in which this weakness would cause one to perform less than optimally in any situation. A more frequent weakness would therefore cause one to incur disutility more often (but not necessarily to a larger degree). For example, the weakness of speaking broken English would be a more frequent weakness than the weakness of speaking broken Swahili for a person living in America. It could also be a more frequent weakness than the weakness of having a poor constitution, although having a poor constitution can cause disutility of a larger degree. It is also readily apparent that the frequency of a weakness differs from individual to individual, even when the weaknesses being compared are identical.

The second factor I will call the dependency factor. The dependency factor of a weakness is a measure of the number of people who perceive this weakness in one’s self, weighted according to how dependent one is on these people. If one’s employer or spouse perceives this weakness in one’s self, the dependency factor of the weakness is likely to be very high, but a lot less so if this weakness was only perceived by some people that one has met only once. The dependency factor is entirely subjective, perhaps even more so than the frequency, because it relies on one’s perception of how dependent he or she is on the people perceiving this weakness. The number of people who perceive this weakness is likewise adjusted by how dependent the person is on each one of these people. When calculating this heuristic, one should bear in mind that even people whom one does not regard one’s self to be dependent upon should still contribute to the dependency factor, even if only marginally, because it may be needed to break ties otherwise.

The third factor I will call ease of change. By this I refer not only to the ease of directly changing the weakness, but also to the ease of changing the perception, for example, by changing one’s living or working environment. It is clear that some weaknesses cannot be directly changed, such as those arising from a physical condition. Other weaknesses, especially those requiring the obtaining of a difficult skill set, can be considered to be very hard to change directly. Yet, in this factor allows one to take into account actions which would change the perceivers of the weakness and hence eliminate the weakness. For example, a person who has the weakness of being color-blind can change the weakness by taking up an occupation that does not require the unique identification of colors. A person who has the weakness of speaking with a lisp can take up an occupation that does not require much speech (or go for speech therapy courses, but for the sake of computing this factor, we will select what the person considers to be the easier change).

With these three factors in hand, one can then approach the original question with a certain level of confidence. I will propose several methods which one can go about deciding which weaknesses need to be improved upon the most urgently.

Frequency-based approach: Target the weaknesses which are the most frequent. As frequent weaknesses generate disutility in one’s self the most often, correcting them will lead to a significant improvement in one’s life and disposition, and hopefully increase the motivation one has to work on the other less frequent weaknesses.

Dependency-based approach: Target the weaknesses which have the highest dependency factor. As dependent weaknesses generate disutility in others, which one considers to indirectly result in the most disutility to one’s self, correcting them will lead to better relationships with the people one is most dependent on. This in turn will lead to a happier life, and hopefully more motivation to work on the less dependent weaknesses.

Breadth-first approach: Target the weaknesses which are the easiest to change. That way, one can eliminate the most weaknesses in the shortest amount of time. Those weaknesses may or may not be the most frequent or dependent weaknesses, but as people commonly believe, eliminating a weakness is always for the better, never for the worse.

Combined approach: Using a combination of the three factors, weighted according to one’s personal preference, target the weakness which scores highest on the weighted average of the factors. Needless to say, this approach has all the benefits of the previous three approaches. It also has the disadvantage of being the most inaccurate, because it is rather hard to identify a proper weighting that takes all factors into account.

Regardless of which approach one chooses to use, the hardest part is still the actual overcoming of the weakness itself. I have no suggestions regarding this, and how each individual goes about achieving this is entirely up to effort and determination. Nonetheless, I hope that the above discussion has helped one in obtaining a way to prioritize one’s weaknesses, and will certainly welcome any criticisms or suggestions.