Last week I had an opportunity to hear a lecture by best selling author Marcus Buckingham. Buckingham is the author of “Now Discover Your Strengths” and he is currently doing a nationwide book tour for his new book “Go Put Your Strengths to Work”. His premise is that the best way to increase your effectiveness is to leverage and emphasize your strengths instead of your working on your weaknesses. It is really a rather simple concept, but when surveyed, the vast majority of people think that working on or fixing weaknesses is the best route to improvement. I began thinking about how this applies to living in your home and it became crystal clear that most individuals and families spend far too much time nagging each other (or we mentally beat ourselves up) to do things around the house that are not our strengths.
Instead, we should be assigning home tasks to the people that are best suited to those tasks. If no one in the home has the task as a strength, then fill your home improvement ‘bench’ with other, outside people to help. For instance, if there is no one in the house that is good at clearing clutter and getting rid of stuff, hire a professional organizer that is an expert. National Association of Professional Organizers has a free referral service on their website http://www.association-office.com/napo/referral/index.cfm. Think through all of your other daily rituals and home improvement duties, assign tasks to the person in the family that is best suited to those tasks, and then find a vendor, contractor or helper that is an expert at the other things that need done around the house. Some conscious thinking about this is a sure route to harmony at home.
