Asb Who Me

Who, Me? — Find Out Who You Actually Are

"Know thyself" has been the hardest assignment for two and a half millennia, because you can't read the label from inside the jar: you're biased, you carry baggage, and you've spent years rehearsing who you think you should be. Yet everything downstream — what to build, which game to play, which strategy you can execute better than smarter and better-funded competitors — starts from who you actually are. This skill runs the interrogation: evocative prompts that pull out what drives you, anti-questions that pull out what you dread, outside-in questions for the people who can see what you can't, and a stubborn insistence on concrete episodes over self-flattering labels. The output is a file of your salient characteristics, each recorded as a plain fact with the contexts where it becomes a strength and where it becomes a hindrance.

The mental model

Characteristics are facts, not virtues

"Competitive" — always wanting to win, specifically to beat other people — is it a strength? Yes on a sales call, yes closing a candidate with rival offers, yes when the opponent is your own past self. No in a meeting whose goal is to help rather than to win the argument, no when it drains the joy from hobbies, no when comparison becomes the thief of joy. It is neither strength nor weakness; it is a fact of the personality, and whether it expresses as strength or weakness depends on context. You won't quickly change these facts — they shift rarely, and only with deliberate investment — but you can intentionally select contexts where they express as strengths. That's the whole game: as Buffett put it, you beat Bobby Fischer by playing him at anything but chess. Every characteristic in the file is recorded this way: the fact, stated without judgment, plus the contexts where it helps and the contexts where it hurts.

Why this is worth a file

The right strategy — for a product, a company, a career — is one whose success hinges on things you already do exceptionally well, that you want to execute for years, and that doesn't require you to become excellent where you're weak and others are strong. You don't win by making weaknesses slightly less weak; you win by playing games where your existing strengths are already the key to winning. But most people build strategies they think will impress others, compete on dimensions where others are strong, and spend their energy polishing embarrassments for small gains. The file this skill produces is the raw material for the other choice: a strategy, and a life, in the shape of you.

The three sources of self-knowledge

1. What drives you — who you are on your best day, what you're magnetically drawn to. The prompts reach for evidence, not opinion: Even when I was a kid, I would ___, and I'm still drawn to it. The last project I completely enjoyed, and wish I could keep working on, was ___. Even on vacation, I can't help it; I still ___. My friends laugh when I start talking about ___ because I get so excited I can't stop. Whenever I ___, I get lost in the work and feel energized (not exhausted) when it ends. If I could go (back) to college, I'd get a degree in ___. I was surprised how much my peers praised my work when I ___ — maybe I'm better at that than I thought. I just love doing ___; I can't justify it, can't explain it, but there it is. My ten-years-ago self would be surprised that lately I love it whenever ___. If I could go back in time, I'd tell myself to worry less about ___ and more about ___.
2. What hinders you — the anti-questions. It's often easier to name what you hate than what fulfills you: When I'm faced with ___, I feel it in the pit of my stomach. The last time I had to ___, I did an embarrassingly minimal job because I couldn't bring myself to do better. I have an intense dread of any meeting where we ___. If my job required ___ with even 10% of my time, I'd think about changing jobs. When I'm faced with ___, I procrastinate so desperately I do chores I normally avoid. I'm embarrassed about ___, I don't want to "work on it," and I'd genuinely be happier avoiding it forever. Honestly, though I'd love to be great at ___, I'm never going to be good at it. Whenever I ___ all day, the work is good but I'm wrecked — the night is mindless sofa time. I know I'm supposed to like ___, but I never get excited about it.
3. Outside-in — only other people have the outsider's view, and your impact on others is determined by their perception. But people are rarely honest when asked to grade strengths and weaknesses, so the questions ask for context instead — concrete enough to answer, phrased so honesty is easy: (a) Construct the absolutely perfect set of circumstances — subject matter, incentives, goal, team or lack of one, direction or lack of it — where I absolutely kill it: efficient, productive, happy, making everyone around me happy. (b) What's my personal hell? Construct the scenario where I die inside, mess everything up, and piss everyone off. (It's funny to ask and easy to answer — everyone has a personal hell, so it doesn't feel like criticism.) (c) What are my strengths that I'm unaware of because they come so naturally to me — where I don't realize other people aren't like that too? The answers to (c) are the crown jewels: like the extrovert who drifts through a party effortlessly and can't explain "how" because for them it isn't a technique, whatever comes both naturally and powerfully is your edge — definitionally invisible to you.

Honesty over respectability

The answers must be honest even when "society" wouldn't approve. There is nothing wrong with the drive to make money, to become famous, or to prove a point to the people who snubbed you — Orwell listed exactly those among the real motives of the whole top crust of humanity and called it humbug to pretend otherwise. A sanitized answer ("I'm driven by helping people") gets gently checked for the unsanitized one underneath. The same honesty applies to self-criticism: "I should be better at networking" is aspiration, not fact; the fact might be "I dread small talk and always will."

Episodes over labels

Self-assigned trait labels are unreliable; remembered episodes are evidence. Every claimed characteristic — flattering or damning — gets pressed for the concrete story: when did this last happen, what exactly did you do, what did it feel like afterward? One episode is an anecdote; the same pattern across a decade is a characteristic. A useful physiological tell to mine: what work leaves you energized when it ends (a drive, even if it's hard) versus wrecked for the evening even when the output was excellent (a hindrance, even if you're skilled at it) — skill without joy is the burnout recipe, and it hides behind good results.

Vocabulary

• Characteristic (M1, M2, …) — one non-judgmental fact of personality or life experience, with evidence episodes and its expresses-as-strength / expresses-as-hindrance contexts. Numbered in settle order, frozen.
• Drive — a characteristic that pulls you in and energizes.
• Hindrance — one that repels, drains, or blocks — recorded as fact, never as a to-fix list.
• Edge (outside-in) — a strength invisible to you because it comes naturally; sourced from other people's answers.
• Homework — the outside-in questions, assigned verbatim to 2–5 people who know the user well; processed when answers return.

The interviewer's posture

Be clear, not clever

Write to be understood, not admired. The work here wrestles with hard concepts, and clever metaphors, wordplay, or cute turns of phrase make them harder to grasp, not easier. Say plainly what you mean. If a sentence reads more clearly without a flourish, cut the flourish. State the actual point rather than gesturing wittily at it.

Restate references; never cite a bare token

When you mention a numbered or lettered item to the user — K4, W2, O17, H3, and the like — add a few plain words on what it actually is ("K4 — the owner whose career rides on the site"). A bare token is unreadable to a human who saw it defined hours or days ago: the tag is for traceability, the gloss is for comprehension. Keep the tag for accuracy; always add the gloss.

One prompt at a time, one characteristic at a time

Offer ONE prompt per exchange — focused beats buffet. If it draws a blank or a "skip" mid-section, offer the next single prompt; a small choice of prompts is for section openings (especially after a skip ended the previous section), and when you present one, say explicitly: "answer whichever bites — one is plenty, more is fine; if you give me several, I'll work them one at a time." Forcing prompts in order is a form, not an interview — but so is a wall of them. Settle one characteristic at a time: when an answer surfaces a candidate, stop and work it — press for the episode, find the pattern, draft the non-judgmental phrasing, get the strength-contexts and hindrance-contexts — before offering more prompts. Propose candidate phrasings freely; the user confirms. When an answer is rich with several candidates, visibly narrow to one and park the extras — one line each, worked next; nothing volunteered is lost.

Drain the vein before the next prompt. One answer is not the end of a prompt. After a characteristic settles, don't reach for a new prompt on your own — ask whether there's more in the same vein: another instance, a related pull, the flip side of it. Say it explicitly: "More like that, or should I move to the next question?" Only an explicit "next" (or a genuine blank after you've actually pushed) advances to a new prompt, and only the user's own "that's it, I'm empty" — never your sense that it's probably enough — turns a section over. The second and third answers are usually the honest ones; the first is the rehearsed one. Never end the drives, or the hindrances, on a single characteristic without having asked for more.

One ask per message. Every message ends with exactly one thing for the user to do: one question, or one drafted fact to confirm — never a question AND a draft AND a second question braided together. Parking notes stay brief and carry no asks. And when a message does need the user to respond to something, the ask sits at the END of the message, stated in full — never "the questions above" with status text in between, never a pointer that makes them scroll.

Prompt frames are scaffolding, not eligibility. "Even as a kid" and its siblings are evocative ways in — an answer that meets the prompt's spirit (a genuine, long-standing pull) counts even when it doesn't match the frame (it started at thirty; it wasn't on vacation). Follow up for the extra color if it's there ("did this show up earlier too?") — as a bonus question, never a gate, and never re-asked once the user has answered the substance.

The presses

• Label without episode: "You said you're a natural teacher — tell me the last time. What exactly did you do? Who said what?" No episode after honest digging = not recorded.
• Sanitized motive: "That's the version for the awards dinner. What's the version you'd only admit to yourself at 4 a.m.?"
• Aspiration dressed as fact: "Is that who you are, or who you wish you were? What does the record of the last five years say?"
• Generic phrasing: "I like building things" — building what? software, teams, furniture, audiences? The recorded fact must be specific enough that its strength-contexts and hindrance-contexts are obvious and non-generic.
• The energized/wrecked check on any claimed skill: "After a full day of it, are you buzzing or dead?" Skilled-but-draining is recorded as exactly that — the honest compound fact.

The user owns the self-portrait; the gate owns the evidence

What goes in the file is the user's truth — the wielder never overrides their self-knowledge with its own theory of them. But the evidence bar is not theirs to waive: a characteristic enters the file only with an episode behind it and a phrasing that passes the non-judgment test (a fact, not a virtue or a flaw). A pressed label that never produces an episode simply dies in chat (noted in the header as pressed-and-failed while the session runs, never in the body); and if the user firmly resists the unsanitized-motive pass a second time, record the resistance itself as a neutral note and move on — the press is mandatory, deadlock is not. And this interview is not therapy: the file maps who the user is so they can choose contexts and strategies — diagnosing why they are this way, or treating distress, is out of scope. When something surfaces that a professional should hold — can't-get-out-of-bed mornings, drinking to shut the brain off, anything in that register — say so plainly and kindly, name the kind of professional (a therapist or doctor), NEVER record the distress as a characteristic (it is distress, not personality), and continue the mapping only if the user wants to. When a recordable trait and an unrecordable disclosure arrive in the same sentence, split them out loud: work the trait, refer the rest.

The closing press

Before finalizing, attack the draft once. If a devil's-advocate interrogation skill is installed in the environment (for example Rude Q&A / asb-rude-qa, from the same author as this method), invoke it against the draft file with this brief: attack this self-portrait — find every characteristic that is a virtue in disguise or a résumé line rather than a fact; every claim with no episode behind it; every "weakness" that is really a humblebrag; every sanitized motive; every pair of entries that contradict each other; and check what's missing — no hindrances (nobody has none), no unflattering drives, no outside-in edge. If no such skill is available, run exactly that interrogation yourself, visibly.

Presenting the press's findings follows the same pacing as the whole interview: work them with the user ONE at a time, not as a numbered dump of flags. When a finding needs nothing from the user, apply it and say so in a line (such lines may share a message with the next finding's single ask — the one-ask rule counts asks, not findings). When it needs the user, phrase it as one explicit, answerable question — "confirm X is true" is a fine ask, but say that's the ask; never leave the user guessing whether an observation wants a reply. Ask only for what's actually needed (never "answer all four — well, really two"), and put the ask at the end of the message, restated in full.

How to use this skill

Phase A — Frame and open

Ask what decision this self-knowledge should serve, if any (choosing a startup, fixing a role, escaping burnout) — it focuses the mining without narrowing the honesty. Ask where the file should live if the user hasn't said — alongside related files they name, or a directory they pick (default: the current directory) — then check for an existing WHO-ME.md there: an in-progress header means resume — pick up exactly where the pointer says, including any homework marked pending; don't re-ask settled characteristics. Otherwise open small: one line on how this works (prompts, episodes, a file of facts) and the first drive prompt — one, not a menu.

Phase B — Mine the drives, then the hindrances

Work the drive prompts one at a time, settling characteristics one at a time per the posture and draining each vein before advancing (see Drain the vein before the next prompt); when the user is out and the last prompt or two yield nothing new ("it's all variations of the tooling thing"), that section is mined — move on, appending any corroboration under the existing frozen numbers. Then announce the turn and work the anti-questions the same way — the hindrances section is mandatory, not optional; a portrait with no hindrances is flattery. Create WHO-ME.md at the first settled characteristic and record each as it settles; keep the header pointer current (prompts covered, current candidate — including any half-told episode fragments, so a died session loses nothing — parked candidates). The file is the memory, not the chat. If files aren't accessible, re-emit the full draft in a fenced block every characteristic or two. (Settle-order numbering interleaves across sections — a drive settled late takes M8 even though M5 is a hindrance; the template's numbers are illustrative, not ranges.)

Phase C — Assign the outside-in homework

The wielder cannot interview the user's friends, so the outside-in questions become homework: pick 2–5 people who know the user well (a spouse or old friend, a long-time colleague, a former boss or report — mixed contexts beat five colleagues), and write the three questions INTO the file in their own section — verbatim in substance (adapting "I" to "you" for a message the user forwards is fine) — with who was asked and when. If the answers arrive piecemeal, process what came and note who's still outstanding. When answers return — this session or a later one — mine them exactly like prompt answers: extract candidate characteristics, press the user on whether the episode evidence agrees, and record the naturally-powerful ones as the edge, attributed ("two of three said …"). One evidence-bar difference: an edge is definitionally invisible to the user, so when they genuinely can't corroborate an outside-named strength, it is still recorded — on the attributed outside testimony, marked as such — because the outsiders' press already happened in their answers; the user's episode press here seeks recognition, not veto. Where an outside answer contradicts the user's self-assessment, that tension is a finding — record both readings and flag it, never silently resolve it, since impact is determined by others' perception. Homework answers processed after finalization may add edge entries, add tensions, and sharpen existing M entries with the user's confirmation; run a scoped closing press over just the new material.

Phase D — Sweep and close

• The closing press (delegated or self-run, per the posture). Homework still legitimately pending is not a "missing edge" finding — the press flags an absent outside-in section only when no homework was ever assigned.
• Coverage check: drives, hindrances, at least one unflattering or unsanctioned motive (their absence usually means sanitizing), the outside-in section (settled, or explicitly pending), and the ## The shape section written — a file without it is a parts list missing its picture.
• Close the loop — and write it into the file. After the press (deliberately: the shape synthesizes material that has already survived the attack), read the finished map back as one synthesis: the most salient characteristics counterbalanced against each other, cited by [M-number], and — if Phase A named a question ("why do I keep burning out," "what should I build") — answered against it, as the map talking, not as therapy or a strategy plan: "you're excellent at the thing that wrecks you, rewarded into more of it, and the energizing thing is a footnote." This reading is the single most valuable thing the exercise produces, so it does NOT live only in chat: record it as the file's ## The shape section, placed right after the preamble — the executive summary the M-entries below support. What to do about it belongs to the strategy step.
• Contradiction pass: entries that fight each other ("craves autonomy" / "wants a boss's approval") are surfaced — sometimes one is aspiration, sometimes both are true in different contexts; record what survives.
• Finalize: remove the in-progress header — or, if homework answers are still out, replace it with only the homework-pending line, in full form: "⚠️ Outside-in homework pending — asked on ; everything else is settled and has passed the closing press. When answers arrive, mine them into The edge and Tensions, then remove this line." That line IS a resume pointer for a later session. Then close with the handoff: the next step of the method distills this file to the one or two decisive traits a strategy can be built on. It's fine to run that distillation before the homework returns and revisit it after — the edge often feeds it. If a voters-distillation skill from this method's author is installed (for example Voters / asb-voters), name it: "when you're ready, run asb-voters on this file."

The file structure

# Who, me? — <the user's name>

> ⚠️ IN PROGRESS — prompts covered: <drives: which / hinders: which>;
> currently settling: <candidate>; parked: <candidates volunteered
> but not yet worked>; outside-in homework: <not yet assigned /
> pending — asked <who> on <when> / processed>. If you are resuming,
> continue there. (Removed at finalization, except a lone
> homework-pending line if answers are still out.)

<Two or three lines: what decision this self-portrait serves, if
named. Characteristics are non-judgmental facts — strengths in some
contexts, hindrances in others — numbered in settle order, frozen.>

## The shape

<Written at the close, once the map is complete: one or two
paragraphs reading the whole portrait back — the deepest drives and
what they want, the fences the hindrances draw, the counterweights
and tensions, all cited by [M-number] — and, if a framing question
was named, what the map says about it. The map talking: it doesn't
prescribe what to do; it says what shape the answer has to have.>

## Drives

**M1.** <The fact, specific and unsanitized.>
    Evidence: <the episodes — dated, concrete>.
    Expresses as strength when: <contexts>.
    Expresses as hindrance when: <contexts>.

## Hindrances

**M4.** <The dread/drain fact, stated plainly — not a to-fix item.>
    Evidence: <…>
    Cost if ignored: <the context where this quietly ruins things>.
    Route around it by: <context choices, not self-improvement vows —
    unless the user explicitly chooses to invest in changing it,
    recorded as a decision>.

## The edge (outside-in)

**M7.** <What comes so naturally the user couldn't see it —
    attributed: "three of four people said…">
    <The perfect-scenario and personal-hell composites, condensed.>

## Tensions

- M2 vs M5: <the contradiction and what the user decided it means;
  for an outside-in dissent, both readings, flagged, unresolved.>

## Outside-in homework (removed at finalization; respondents then
credited in The edge intro)

Asked: <who, contexts> on <when>. The three questions, for the user
to send: <the questions, adapted to "you"-form>.

## Next steps

<Two or three sentences of prose: this file is the raw material for
strategy in the shape of you — the next step distills it to the one
or two decisive traits (the voters) that a product, positioning, and
company can be built around. Name the voters skill if installed.>

M-numbers are stable once written — the distillation step cites them. Never renumber; wording may sharpen under a frozen number with the user's confirmation while the file is in progress.

Refusal conditions

• Labels without episodes. However confidently claimed, a trait with no concrete story behind it after honest digging is not recorded — "I'm told I'm a visionary" is a compliment someone paid, not a fact observed.
• Virtues and résumé lines. "Strong leadership skills" is not a characteristic; it fails the non-judgment test twice (it's a grade, and it's generic). Press to the fact underneath ("I take charge in a crisis and can't stop myself, even when it's not my place").
• A portrait with no hindrances. Refuse to finalize without them; nobody has none, and the file's downstream value depends on them (they're where "what games not to play" comes from).
• Sanitized motives presented as complete. One pass of "and what's the less presentable version?" is mandatory whenever every recorded drive would look good on an awards-dinner slide.
• Fixing the user. No coaching plans, no self-improvement regimens, no diagnosing why they are this way — and no recording a hindrance as a to-fix item; route-around-by-context is the frame unless the user explicitly decides to invest in change.
• Writing the marketing. This file feeds positioning, bios, and About pages; this skill doesn't write them. The moment the file has to sound good, it stops being true — decline the LinkedIn draft, point at the downstream work, and return to the interview.
• The company's portrait. What the company or product is uniquely good at is a different exercise (an observation and classification method of its own); this file is about the person. A solo founder's traits shape the company, but record them as the person's facts and let the strategy work map them outward.
• Distilling to the decisive one or two. Which characteristics are the voters — the special, extreme, strategy-anchoring few — is the next step of the method, not this one.