Prioritize strengths
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Highlights
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The three bucket model transposes product management into a resource allocation problem. You spend no time on distractions, do the least work possible to fix showstoppers, and pour the rest of your creative energy into gamechangers. That’s what gets you sales.
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Products aren’t limited to physical goods or intellectual property. In many markets, the product is you. In labor markets and dating markets, you’re selling yourself. People sometimes think of their own lives as works of art; to an economist, works of art are products traded on art markets. Any time you can abstract something to a product, you can use the three bucket model. If the product is you, then the gamechangers, showstoppers and distractions is how you allocate effort to engineer yourself.
- The most successful people I know overwhelmingly tend to follow this pattern too. They patch their weaknesses, but they know weaknesses are a bad foundation to build upon. So they invest the most energy in maximizing strengths. Your weaknesses are your showstoppers. You have to patch them just enough for the invisible hand to press "buy", but it’s your strengths that get the market interested in the first place.
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In a knowledge economy gamechangers matter a great deal. But our culture hasn’t caught up yet.
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Weaknesses are universal, but strengths are unique. Everyone can get better at communication, organization or dieting. Solutions to universal problems are easy to productize, so productivity, coaching and wellness industries are set up to help you minimize weaknesses. Solutions to unique problems are hard to productize, so there is little emphasis on maximizing strengths. Yet to be successful in a knowledge economy, spend most of your time doing that.