If we ever had coffee and I asked you what your skills are, you’d probably tell me one of two things:

1. I don’t know what my skills are.

2. I don’t have (m)any.

The goal of this exercise is to create a list of our current skills so that we know what we have to work with, what might be missing and what we want to improve.

Step 1: Write Down Ideas

I don’t want your cards to be perfect. I just want you to write.Step 1 is all about quantity. One skill per card, as many cards as you can come up with. To get started, here are some questions you can answer about your skills:

What are you good at?

2. What comes naturally?

Step 2: Look for patterns

Now that you’ve got a few skills labeled you’ll start to notice something: Some of the ideas are related.

Group them in the way that works best for you. Maybe you want to group yours by “Skills I love doing,” “Skills I get paid the most for,” “Skills I want to improve” or “Skills I haven’t used in a long time.” Don’t worry if you don’t come right out of the gate with some patterns. If this is your first go-round with an activity like this, you shouldn’t be great at it yet. Try tweaking this exercise to make it work the best possible way for you.

The point of the note card exercise is to generate two different things: Hope and awareness.

Jon Acuff

P.S. You can read it here in detail. If you like it, his book Do Over will interest you.