The Advantage Compass
A 25-MINUTE PERSONAL STRATEGY SELF-ASSESSMENT
Personality tests tell you who you are. This one tells you where your hours went — and where to move them next.
WorkshopSkill · The Advantage Compass — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0workshopskill.com/enWho here is busy all day, every day —
and would struggle to say what all that busyness is building?
WorkshopSkill · The Advantage Compass — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0Two kinds of self-assessment
- Tests measure traits. They label you — and a label is used once.
- The Compass measures allocation. It locates you — and a map is useful every month.
- Not “who am I” but “where do my hours actually go?”
The two axes
Every block of your work sits somewhere on this cross.
WorkshopSkill · The Advantage Compass — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0The four quadrants
Quadrant 1 — the golden track
- Strength in service of your vision.
- Hours compound: every hour makes the next hour more valuable.
- Healthy share: 40%+. On a first run, most calendars hold 15% — that is information, not a verdict.
Quadrant 3 — the firefighting track
- Strength in service of today’s pain. Efficient, praised — worth less every month.
- Firefighting is a season. A season never re-examined becomes a career.
- The test question: does this work make next year easier, or harder?
Quadrants 2 and 4 — the edges
- Q2, the learning zone: fix a weakness only until it stops blocking the golden track — good enough, then stop.
- Q4, the burnout trap: costs energy, produces mediocrity, proves nothing. End it, don’t improve it.
The four known distortions
Name the distortion you can see in your own last two weeks.
WorkshopSkill · The Advantage Compass — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0The demo — my own two weeks
| Quadrant | Hours | Healthy share |
|---|---|---|
| The golden track | 40%+ | |
| The learning zone | 10–15% | |
| The firefighting track | under 30% | |
| The burnout trap | under 5% |
Include the embarrassing share. The story is the delta, not the score.
WorkshopSkill · The Advantage Compass — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0The live audit — put your two weeks on the dial
| The golden track ___h | The learning zone ___h | The firefighting track ___h | The burnout trap ___h |
Add hours per quadrant — the dial fills live.
Three questions, in order
1. Which single Q1 block is worth protecting first?
2. Which Q3 obligation could be delegated or automated within a month?
3. Which Q4 commitment should be ended, not improved?
WorkshopSkill · The Advantage Compass — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0One move, one date
- One concrete change, dated, with a check-back in two weeks.
- Not a life plan. One move.
Re-run monthly
- The first re-run’s job is honesty about the baseline, not improvement.
- The delta between runs is the real score. A compass you consult once is a horoscope.
Three ways to run this folder
- Solo, with an agent — 25 minutes via SKILL.md, or a live FormLM form — scoring automatic, every re-run comparable.
- Teaching the model — This deck plus the facilitator notes; the PDF edition rides the lectern.
- Workshop, offline — One A4 answer sheet and one workbook per participant; the poker deck per table.
- Variations: the quarterly audit · the career crossroads · the team allocation.
A field tool, not a validated psychometric instrument.
It does not diagnose. It locates.
Anyone who promises more than that is selling something.
Scan for the digital edition — the live form, the printable kit, the model poster. Swap this QR for your own code (QRCode-AI) or FormLM link — see the white-label guide.
Print the deck · run the audit · re-run monthly
WorkshopSkill · The Advantage Compass — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0