Skills, Skills, Skills

Yesterday, I learned about what it takes to have a successful life.

You have two options if you want to have an extraordinary future.

You can:

1. Become the best at one specific thing.

For example, you could become the best in the world at basketball (like Michael Jordan did in the NBA). Or you could become the best in the world in business, medicine, engineering, and so on. The problem with this approach is that it’s extremely hard or even impossible to accomplish this. Fortunately, there’s option #2.

2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

As Scott Adams describes it, he’s better than most people at drawing and making jokes. Therefore, he combined the two skills with his business background in order to create the Dilbert comic strip.

And there are seemingly infinite ways to acquire more than 2 skills. You could combine anything from cooking to marketing to construction to anything.

Also, Adams advises people to become good public speakers. This is an easy skill to acquire with some practice. As he says in the post, “If you add that talent to any other, suddenly you’re the boss of the people who have only one skill.”

Creating a diverse skill set is important because “capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix.”

So, build up three skills that you are better at than 75% of the world.

Success will follow.