Motivated Skills Audit
Redesign work around skills that energize rather than drain you
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 98%
The Motivated Skills Audit classifies work by two questions: are you good at the activity, and do you enjoy doing it? Skills that score well on both are motivated skills. Activities someone wants to develop are developmental skills; disliked and unimportant activities are low priority; and skills performed competently but without enjoyment are burnout skills. The person maps a typical job, observes energy patterns, and checks whether enjoyable skills make up roughly 80 percent of the day. Gaps become the basis for a manager conversation about stretch projects, delegation, project teams, or task trades that preserve output while improving sustainable performance.
Origin
Kristin Sherry uses skill categories within UMAP to separate natural competence from the activities that actually motivate a person.
Core principles
- 01Competence and enjoyment are separate dimensions
- 02Repeated energy loss can reveal burnout skills
- 03A healthy role should predominantly use enjoyable skills
- 04Work can be reshaped through projects, delegation, and task trading
How to run it
- 1
Inventory the work
Break a normal week into the specific skills and activities you use. Describe the work at the activity level rather than by job title.
Pro tip Review both a high-energy day and a low-energy day.
Watch out Do not assume every source of fatigue is a skill-fit problem.
- 2
Classify each skill
Sort each activity as motivated, developmental, low priority, or burnout based on competence, enjoyment, and desired growth.
Pro tip Use energy after the task as evidence, not just whether you can complete it.
Watch out Do not call a skill motivating merely because others praise your performance.
- 3
Measure utilization
Estimate the proportion of your day spent using skills you enjoy. Treat a result below roughly 80 percent as evidence that your preferred skills are underutilized.
Pro tip Use a one-week time log if memory is unreliable.
Watch out The threshold is a diagnostic target, not proof that every unwanted task can disappear.
- 4
Design the trade
Identify stretch projects that use motivated skills and draining work that could develop someone else. Propose delegation, task swaps, or team opportunities that still get necessary work done.
Pro tip Explain how the change benefits the team, not only your energy.
Watch out Do not simply refuse essential work without a workable alternative.
- 5
Review the energy shift
After changing the mix, compare your energy and output with the baseline. Keep iterating until motivating work predominates without harming delivery.
In the wild
A manager discovers that one team member dislikes a recurring task while another wants experience in it. She arranges a trade: the second employee takes that task for development, while the first picks up work better aligned with their motivating skills. Both remain accountable for the agreed output.
→ Necessary work is completed with better energy and development fit.
Common mistakes
Equating ability with motivation
A person can be highly competent at the very activities that burn them out.
Assuming the role cannot change
People often declare themselves powerless before trying a specific conversation with their manager.
Is it for you?
Best for
Employees or founders who perform well but finish work depleted or underutilized.
Not ideal for
Cases where exhaustion is primarily caused by sleep, health, workload volume, or conditions outside task fit.
From the transcript
“our preferred or motivated skills are things that we're good at and we enjoy doing them”
“the trap people tend to fall into are those burnout skills because you're good at them but you don't enjoy doing them”
“you should spend about 80 percent of your day doing skills that you enjoy”
From the episode
Kristin Sherry: Find Your Dream Job
Kristin Sherry