Page 221 - The Drucker Lectures

202 [ The Drucker Lectures

people? Or am I a loner? And what are my values? What am I
committed to? What is my contribution?
As I said, this is unprecedented—except for the superachiev-
ers. Leonardo da Vinci had whole notebooks in which he asked
these questions of himself. And Mozart knew these things and
knew them very well. As perhaps you know, he’s the only man
in the history of music who was equally good at two totally dif-
ferent instruments. He wasn’t only a great piano virtuoso; he
was an incredible violin virtuoso. And yet he decided that you
can only be good at one instrument, because to be good, you
have to practice three hours a day. There are not enough hours
in a day. And so he gave up the violin. He knew it, and he wrote
it down. And we have his notebooks. The superachievers always
knew when to say “no.” And they always knew what to reach
for. And they always knew where to place themselves. That’s
what made them superachievers. And now all of us will have to
learn that.
It’s not very difficult. The key is to do what Leonardo did and
Mozart did: Write it down and then check it. The key is that
every time you do something that is important—and this is from
the fourteenth century; I’m not telling you anything new—write
down what you expect will happen. And then come back and
ask, “What were the results of this decision?”
It’s also easy to learn what your strengths are by putting
down the results. And let me say that most of us underweight
our strengths. We take them for granted. What we are good at
comes easy. And so we believe that unless it comes hard, it can’t
be any good. That’s nonsense. We also don’t know what we need
to improve, what our defects are, what we are not good at, what
the good Lord has not endowed us with. Yes, in extreme cases
we know. I didn’t need any feedback to know that I am not a
painter. The first time I took a crayon in my hands at age 2, I
think I knew it. But those are extreme cases. In between? You