“It’s much harder as well to define ’soft’ skills. I seem to spend a lot of time introducing and, dare I say it, facilitating meetings and creating groups of people. I enjoy it too – be nice to do it as a job!”

Search Monster.com for ‘Social Anti-entropist’

As for ‘soft’ skills, aren’t they what was once put on CVs in such forms as:

A people person.
A consummate organiser.
Blah-blah-blah…

It’s much harder as well to define ‘soft’ skills. I seem to spend a lot of time introducing and, dare I say it, facilitating meetings and creating groups of people. I enjoy it too – be nice to do it as a job!

“I am left these days wondering what my strengths truly are”

This is maybe something you can find-out yourself.

Write what you think are your strengths on a piece of paper. Put the piece of paper in a desk drawer. Leave it there for a week, then take it out and read it again. There should now be stuff there you agree with, stuff you disagree with, and things you need to add.

If there’s general stuff there you could discuss it with pals, specialised stuff can go to the gurus.

“and what I should be doing to enhance them
(perhaps as the best way to cover up for my weaknesses.)”

All depends on what they are. With me my memory was a weakness – I’ve found memory tricks to tip it up to a strength. I know that’s running against the ‘strengths to cover weaknesses’ thang – but some weaknesses are just undeveloped strengths.

Now memory is a basic thing – we’ve all got it. If your strength is something self-discoverable, like logic – study, learn, and hone it. Think about it daily, apply it to the things around you – live it.

If your strength is something professional, like programming you’ve already studied it. Keep yourself apprised of developments, think of how to expand the envelope of what you do with it, look for other things you could be learning that would add to that strength.

Of course, sometimes you just have to chill – don’t get so wrapped up in improving your strength that you discover ‘super stress’.

>How do you define your strengths?

That which I do well.

>How much does peer review factor into your
>result?

If it’s basic human interaction stuff, i.e. ‘he’s a nice guy’ – a lot.

If it’s specialised stuff – not a lot. That said, if I were working in a job where I could used my strengths to full effect (and I may be delusional with that last statement) then peer review would be more important – but I might also leave me with a tendency to rest on my laurels…

Any game can be done over the net. I can’t sustain interest in a PBM though. It would need to be interactive – via text chat, audio or video.

There are services designed to facilitate this IIRC

To define your strengths and weaknesses you must organise another game of Timelords.

I wonder if that can be done over the net?