Accurate Self-Assessment: How To Measure and Improve Your Performance

By David Owasi & Evgeny Gotfrid

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”― C.G. Jung

Completing my degree in computer science ranks along with my proudest accomplishments! Computer science is a hard discipline to master because learning to program can be quite difficult (at least for most people), it is akin to learning a new language.

It requires thinking like a computer, extreme attention to detail, mastery of logic and mathematics, a really good memory, abstract and outside the box thinking, and the use of creativity and intuition.

All of these didn’t come naturally to me as it did for some of my colleagues, I struggled in my first year and a half of classes and barely scraped by. With no apparent improvement, I was desperate and strongly considered switching my majors. I had a choice — I could make changes or switch to something else.

I made some changes, I started to engage in candid conversations with my instructors and some high-performing classmates to get feedback and find out what I was missing. This process began my journey into self-assessment as a tool to measure and improve performance.

Accurate self-assessment is the process of identifying your inner resources, abilities and strengths as well as acknowledging and accepting your limits.

The conversations especially with my high performing peers were valuable. I quickly discovered that even though I was excellent at understanding and relaying concepts from a big-picture perspective, my Achilles’ heel was in the details. When I thought about it deeper, I discovered that I seem to lose interest in details when I couldn’t see how they applied to the real world.

In the short term, I needed to adjust both my study style and habits to improve my performance as a student. I had to spend more time working on understanding the specifics to improve my performance.

Renowned psychologist Daniel Goleman describes Accurate self-assessment as the process of identifying your inner resources, abilities and strengths as well as acknowledging and accepting your limits. This ability is based on the desire to receive feedback and new perspectives about yourself and is motivated by the desire for continuous learning and self-development.

From experience, a key indicator of success is how one interacts with their weaknesses. Individuals who struggle with poor performance are often closed to acknowledging their mistakes and will often get defensive when someone shines a light on that gap. This prevents them from creating meaningful change when it matters most. Successful individuals instead embrace the opportunity to get better.

A key indicator of success is how one interacts with their weaknesses.

Micheal Jordan is widely regarded as the greatest basketball player the game has ever seen, however, he briefly retired in 1994 after the death of his father to play minor league baseball. He had played baseball in high school and was a promising talent, but opted to pursue basketball.

Making the transition from basketball to baseball at this level was no easy feat, but Jordan was able to put aside his ego and relentlessly seek feedback from his coaches during practice to improve his skill level. Curt Bloom described his performance that season “I saw him struggle for a few months, but I also saw him become a ballplayer right before my eyes. Two more seasons, he would’ve been a legitimate extra outfielder for the White Sox, maybe even a starter!”.

Being competent in self-assessment will help you to be aware of your strengths, weaknesses and blind spots. It will help you to be reflective, learn from experience and consistently stay open to candid feedback and new approaches. Self-assessment skills help you to truly dedicate yourself to continuous learning and self-development.

Strong performers intentionally seek out feedback.

Strong performers intentionally seek out feedback. They want to hear how others (especially individuals with the right expertise and experience) perceive them, they realize that this is valuable and usually free information. This may be part of the reason why people who are self-aware are also better performers. Ultimately, self-awareness helps you in this process of continuous improvement.

How You Can Begin?

An important tool to improve your self-assessment skills is learning how to ask yourself the right questions. To begin, use the following three questions to identify weaknesses and strengths, and then add another 2 questions for each section yourself respectively.

1. What activities/tasks do I dread/procrastinate? Why?
2. What activities/tasks take a lot of energy out of me?
3. What have I been told I am not very good at?
4. What activities/tasks do I look forward to? Why?
5. What activities/tasks do I find energizing?
6. What have I been told that I am good at?