What are the 5 most common questions that you need to ask yourself for self assessment?

The subject appeals to me. I believe self-assessment is good as well as bad. Quite often self-assessment is like self-medication. And we all know self-medication is not good. Most of us practice self-medication with little knowledge or no knowledge. A lot of people suffer because of self-medication. I have seen many people suffering from kidney failure as they kept on taking painkiller tablets without medical advice. Self-medication is not advisable even if you are a doctor. Because then you are both a doctor and a patient, chances are there that you may get influenced by your condition.

The problem is two-pronged. Firstly we may make mistakes in our assessment so there is a risk of wrong treatment. Secondly, we are not trained or educated to deal with the conditions properly. We need expert guidance. All the self-assessments we do are critical and crucial because they are connected to our lives and the people & environment we are associated with. Wrong assessment and wrong treatment both could be hugely damaging. Most often we are biased in our self-assessment either positively or negatively. Either we over-pamper ourselves or we are coercive to ourselves. And as I said we have knowledge or education on how to deal with the findings even if they are right. Please do not take these things lightly. They could be life-making or life-breaking.

Author Chetan Bhagat

Suppose you are too critical of yourself, possibly you would suffer from a lack of confidence. And suppose you are overpampering yourself, you will fail to spot areas for improvement. So the lens needs perfectly placed and from time to time calibration of the measuring instruments is required. Secondly, the parameters are also dynamic. There are good assessment centers that take the values based on multiple screening processes adjusting individual and isolated spikes.

I would suggest whoever is capable and wants to develop the finer aspects should attend some professional assessment center and attend training wherever required or possible. Positioning yourself effectively is a skill that needs to be attained and sharpened. We may have raw materials. But to achieve our maximum potential we have to go through the transformation process. We may do it ourselves, but in the process, we would consume valuable time following the trial and error method.

Anyway coming back to your question. What are the 5 most common questions you ask yourself for self-assessment? Quite often we make mistakes and waste invaluable time in rectifying our weak points. It is not at all necessary to focus on the minuses. It reduces our confidence. All the time we become concerned and conscious about weak areas. No matter what we do, very rarely is it possible to make weak points our strongest strength. And even if we do possibly we will be nowhere near someone for whom that skill is a natural strength.

So instead of focusing on our weaknesses, we need to focus on our strengths and find at best 2–3 areas of natural strength. And we need to work on them. To be highly successful in life just one strength could be enough. If you find academics is your natural instinct, that itself is enough for your success. If you find writing is your natural passion. Look at Chetan Bhagat, he is alminea of IIT Delhi and has an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. But he has excelled as an author. He is extraordinarily brilliant. But possibly he has discovered his passion for writing many letters. The same with Raghuram Rajan. He discovered his passion for economics much later after doing his B. Tech (Elec.) degree from IIT, Delhi, and MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad. but turned up to be a full-time economist.

They are extraordinarily brilliant and could have been successful in any chosen field. But they opted for their passion. Possibly those were their natural strength and passion. they might have taken time to discover that. Just imagine if they hadn’t discovered their passion possibly they would have ended up being among some fine technocrats and we would have lost a brilliant author and a brilliant economist.

Sorry, I have again digressed from the question. Your question is too open-ended to give a proper answer. I need to know for what level you want to assess yourself, where are you standing, what you want to accomplish, and what your chosen field is. See the questions for self-assessment will vary depending on where you stand. It is extremely difficult to give generic questions. However, I will try my best.

1. Who you are. Have you identified yourself purely as an individual separating yourself from all your roles, responsibilities, relations, stature, position, academics, surname, and family tree? This assessment is very essential because here you are analyzing your naked self - your likings, dislikes, passions, hobbies, skills, competencies, etc.
2. Have you identified your goal or aim in life purely on your strengths, likes, dislikes, and passion? Because one may not achieve the highest degree of success if the goal and dream are not yours own. You can not live the life of others. Quite often people say that I want to fulfill my father’s dream. That is rubbish unless you make them your dream and fall in love with them. Falling in love with your dream and goal is essential for a higher degree of success. It is very important to know your goal completely - both subjectively as well objectively. And finally locking your goal. Have you locked it? This locking should be like a laser-guided missile where the target is locked. No matter how much you maneuver, it will hit you.
3. Have you identified or worked out a roadmap to reach your goal for or achieve your dream? Without a roadmap dreams and goals are just wishes statement. It would not take you anywhere.
4. Have you identified and taken stock of your resource base? Have you done the gap analysis with what you have and what you need? The gap could include everything from competency, skills, money, connection, infrastructure, technology, training, manpower, coaching, etc. Practically anything and everything. This needs to be extensive and as exhaustive as possible without leaving anything to chance. Are you aware of the statutes and qualifying criteria?
5. Do you have a viable and feasible system or plan in place to meet the gap? How sure are you that the plan in place will work in a time-bound manner?
6. Have you assessed the risk area including the unforeseen ones, challenges, and competition that you are going to face? Do you have a process in place with an adequate buffer or protection? Are you aware of the statutes and qualifying criteria? Have you visited the past failure and success stories and their reasons?
7. Do you have an execution process in place to achieve your goal? Finally, all the above would be meaningless unless you dedicate yourself completely to execution.

Now your goal could be anything - cracking IIT, IIM, CSE, Medical, CA, getting your dream job, practically anything. Things can not go wrong if you have taken care of all the above. Most of us fail in the first two steps itself. We do not know ourselves. And if we do not know ourselves how would we correctly identify our goal?