A year ago I started writing this Wednesday Weblog. Originally, it was going to be published on another day, but I didn't finish in time, so it became Wednesday. Every week for the past 52, including today, at 4:30-ish in the morning, this leaves the cloud and makes it to hundreds of readers, and then to an equal or greater amount of readers on social media.

If I ever slow down enough, it is my intention to collect some of the good ones, there have been a few, and put them into a book. Not sure when, and not sure how, but it will happen.

The biggest surprise? I had 52 things to write about. Admittedly, Ripped Jeans might have been a stretch, but several issues generated a lot of feedback and might be repeated in the coming months if I get lazy.

I really do appreciate it when you read one, and enjoy the comments and the reactions when people are moved to respond. This is a work in progress and I don't really know how to categorize it. It is kind of a 'column' like you would read in a magazine or a newspaper, but not really. It is kind of a story vehicle, but it doesn't always have a lesson. What it really might be is the attempt of someone who has supervised for almost 50 years and only has himself to talk to about things, using you as someone to share ideas with.

So thanks for reading and being there to share with. I hope that I can do this for 520 issues and that it gets better and better, because after all, why bother without aspiring?

Talent comes without a guarantee. Whether it is singing, dancing, writing, painting, speaking, building, listening, hitting a baseball, throwing a football, dribbling a basketball, leading, teaching, swimming, playing the guitar, weightlifting, or solving mathematical equations, talent does not guarantee success.

In my opinion, talent is way over-rated and quite frankly, not much good on its own. Those of us who are fans can rattle off the names of talented players who never succeeded, or talented musicians who were one or no-hit wonders. And of course, you’ve been around plenty of people in your life who maybe had more talent than you do, but they are less successful. How can that be?

I think we wish for the wrong thing when we wish for more talent. I wish I had more athletic talent and was more photogenic. After all, my primary goal was to be a Catcher for the Boston Red Sox and my secondary career aspiration was to be a television weatherperson (where I could be wrong 75% of the time and still be praised) but not only didn’t I have enough ‘talent’ for those things, but I lacked a few other attributes as well. 

In fact, right now as an aspiring marathon runner, it sure would be good to have bigger lungs and stronger legs, but the reality is that I, and you, pretty much have the talent we were born with. Sure, we can acquire skills, I’m not downplaying the importance of learning and development to success: it is very important. But you can’t teach height and you can’t teach speed, and you probably can’t teach good eyesight or hand-eye coordination.  

If talent is something many of us wish for, my question is simply ‘why?’ Do we forget that people with talent don’t always succeed? Do we not remember that talent level and success level are not the same? Don’t we know that people with limited talent sometimes have unlimited success and people with unlimited talent have limited success?

It is easy to forget that talent alone, is never enough. “Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men (and women) with talent” is a line from a famous quote by President Calvin Coolidge. So, if talent isn’t enough what determines whether or not it makes an impact? What ignites talent to achieve success? What prevents talent from being successful? 

Sometimes there are environmental or situational factors that affect the impact of talent. Snow on an important day can negatively impact talent, for a football player or a racehorse, for example.  Your mentor or boss getting fired might also affect the impact of your talent in a given year.  And although it is hard to believe when it happens to you, these situations are not the rule, they are the exception. 

What really determines the impact of any talent is: prioritization or working on the first things first. The skill/ability/willingness to ‘self-direct’ is the most important factor in determining whether your talent will have the impact you want. 

Work on the wrong things at the wrong time, and I don’t care if you have all the talent in the world, you will lose. Some people whine about spending time with their calendar or planning ahead or a million other things associated with prioritizing, but the reality is: if you are good at those things, your talent will flourish, and if you are not good at those things, your talent will remain a figment of your imagination because the outside world won’t recognize it. 

At the beginning of this piece, athletes with talent who didn’t succeed were referenced, and if you have been in the business world, you know someone personally who ‘wasted all that talent’. It could have been a peer, a direct report, a co-worker, or a supervisor. Show me that person and I will show you someone who was not good at self-directing, not good at priority setting and not good at time and task management. I didn’t invent the concept of prioritizing, but it invented effectiveness and efficiency, two of the greatest measurements of talent.

Is there a simple way to improve prioritization and self-direction and in effect ‘unleash’ your talent? Absolutely. Remember that learning and development is actually learning and developing talents. If you are great with a bow and arrow as a kid and don’t pick one up for 25 years, you are not great anymore. Here are a few things I believe are necessary to maximize your talents: the gifts you were given.

Work at it. There is no substitute for hard work. If you rarely give thought to your priorities, if you occasionally plan next month or next year, if you ‘get to things’ when you get to them, you are wasting your talent. 

Spend more time planning and prioritizing. Nothing modifies, crystalizes or focuses priorities like spending time thinking about them.  You can use Covey’s Matrix, that some attribute to President Eisenhauer, that creates an Importance and Urgent matrix, or another method, but there is no substitute for time spent evaluating priorities. 

Not happy with your situation? Spend more time planning and deciding what to do next. Remember: spending more time figuring out ways to maximize your talent benefits you first.

Ask Someone. Why is it so hard for most people to say ‘Is this the most important thing I should be doing’ to their supervisor or a co-worker? Guess what: everyone has the same question. 

Most people really do ‘guess’ at what to do next or what is the most important. Sure, sometimes it is handed to you on a silver platter in the form of an order or a companywide mandate. But most of the time, we’re just guessing about how to use our time. 

A great way to reduce the guesswork is to ask. The best person to ask is either the boss or a mentor. Most people who don’t ask the boss, don’t do so because they think it will be viewed as a sign of weakness i.e. “I should know.” Wrong answer. 

The boss would rather have you ask than do it wrong. The boss would rather have you ask and work on the right thing, than not ask and work on the wrong thing. Remember, it’s your talent, and getting inside information that saves wasted time benefits you first.

Stop. Drop. Roll. Remember elementary school when you thought the school was going to burn down any day because you were always having fire drills and learned to stop, drop, and roll? It is still good advice.

As an adult, ‘stop, drop, and roll’ means that when a career, project, department, team, or whatever is ‘on fire’ and not productive or impactful. Stop. Put out the ‘fire.' Drop everything until it is out. Then roll on when the fire is out. Nothing drains talent more than un-extinguished fires.

When you are forced to use your talent for firefighting, unless you are a fire-fighter, it is drained below the effectiveness line. Someone with talent, who is facing a situation that is on fire, has to focus on putting the fire out because it is always first things first, and until you get the fire out, you don’t have the time to make an impact on anything else. Some make the mistake of reducing the blaze. Don’t. Put it out completely. If you cut it back, it is going to come back on the next lap. Stop. Drop. And Roll. Still good advice.

If you won a million dollars, there is no guarantee that you will invest it wisely and turn it into two million. Talent is the same. It comes without a guarantee. Whether it is singing, dancing, writing, painting, speaking, building, listening, hitting a baseball, throwing a football, dribbling a basketball, leading, teaching, swimming, playing the guitar, weightlifting, or solving mathematical equations, talent does not guarantee success. Prioritization and working on first things first, is the way to ensure your talent makes an impact. Every time.

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