Who, me? Find out who you actually are
You can't read the label from inside the jar — this interrogation surfaces what drives you, what drains you, and the strengths you can't see, recorded as facts you can build a strategy on. Adapted from Chapter 11 of Hidden Multipliers: To Thine Own Self Be True.
- Input
- Yourself, honestly — plus answers from a few people who know you well (the skill assigns them the outside-in questions).
- Output
- A WHO-ME.md led by 'The shape' — a synthesis of your most salient characteristics counterbalanced against each other — over the full map: each fact with concrete evidence and the contexts where it helps or hurts.
What this is about
The right strategy — for a product, a company, or a career — depends on things you already do exceptionally well. It also depends on things you want to keep doing for years. But "know thyself" has been a hard task for two and a half thousand years. You are biased. You carry baggage. You have spent years acting out who you think you should be. Meanwhile, the most powerful facts about you are often invisible to you. For example, an extrovert moves through a party with ease. The extrovert cannot explain "how," because for them it is not a technique.
This skill helps you see what you cannot see about yourself. It walks you through the book's self-discovery prompts (even when I was a kid, I would ___; whenever I ___, I get lost in the work and feel energized when it ends). Then it asks the anti-questions (when I'm faced with ___, I feel it in the pit of my stomach). It also assigns outside-in questions as homework for people who know you: the perfect-scenario question, the personal-hell question, and the question that finds your edge — what are my strengths I can't see because they come so naturally?
This is a strict interrogation, not a survey. For every self-flattering label, the skill asks for the real episode behind it. For every polished motive, the skill asks one required follow-up question: "what is the less presentable version?" Money, fame, and the wish to prove a point are all acceptable answers here. The skill records each finding the way the book requires: not as a strength or a weakness, but as a fact of your personality. For example, "competitive" helps you on a sales call. It hurts you in a team meeting. The skill records the contexts where each fact helps and where it quietly hurts.
Example invocation
You can invoke the skill like this:
/asb-who-me I'm deciding what company to start next, and I keep
picking ideas that impress other founders instead of ideas I'd
actually love running for a decade. Help me figure out who I am first.
The skill interviews you in short rounds. Each round has a prompt, an
episode, and a follow-up question. It builds WHO-ME.md as you go.
The file records your drives, your dreads, and the tensions between
them. It also records homework for friends who can see what you
cannot see.
One practical note: tell the skill where you are working. Name a directory, or point to your existing files, when you start the skill. The skill then keeps all the method's files together in that location. If you do not name a location, the skill asks before it creates anything.
From the source
Two sources form the foundation of this skill:
- As in Chapter 11 of Hidden Multipliers: To Thine Own Self Be True (sections "Finding Yourself" and "Outside-In") — hiddenmultipliers.com — this chapter supplies the drive prompts, the anti-questions, and the three outside-in questions. It also supplies the rule that each attribute is a fact. Whether it is a strength or a weakness depends on the context.
- Pivot Points — this published article explains why "strengths and weaknesses" is the wrong frame. It gives the pivot-foot image for building around your fixed facts. It also explains when to invest in changing a fact — rarely.
Supporting articles each add one part of the method:
- Finding Fulfillment — this article describes the Joy/Skill/Need circles and their traps. It is the source of this skill's energized-or-wrecked check, which finds burnout that hides behind good results.
- Being who you are, while becoming better — this article gives the counterweight: accepting your facts does not mean you stop trying to improve. The drive to improve — the "motor" — is itself a trait worth recording.