What is your biggest weakness?

What is your biggest weakness?

I ask this not in the interview-question sense, but genuinely. Because knowing your biggest weakness – really knowing it, not the sanitised version you give to recruiters – is one of the most useful pieces of self-knowledge you can have.

My biggest weakness is starting things I don’t finish. I have more half-built projects than I can count. I’ve got better at it, but the tendency is still there.

Knowing this has helped me in a few ways:

1. I’ve learned to build finishing into the structure of a project from the start. If I can’t see how it ends, I don’t start.
2. I’ve learned to partner with people who are completers. They finish what I start.
3. I’ve learned to be honest with collaborators early about this tendency, so they’re not surprised by it.

Your biggest weakness, known and owned, becomes manageable. Hidden, it derails you.

What’s yours?