Is It Worth Becoming Good at Skills That You Only Need in the Short Term?

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:05.000 | And our first one today comes from Sabine.

00:00:09.000 | Sabine asks, "When you're in the stage of building career capital,

00:00:14.000 | is it worth becoming good at skills that you would like to eventually stop using?"

00:00:21.000 | So if we go on to the elaboration here, Sabine says,

00:00:24.000 | "I still have four years to study until I can legally be allowed to be hired

00:00:28.000 | in my ideal work. In my current situation,

00:00:31.000 | fundraising is a skill that would allow me to get access to the niche expert sooner

00:00:36.000 | so I could easily find out their stories, how they got where they are now,

00:00:39.000 | and what skills I should focus on to become so good I can't be ignored."

00:00:44.000 | So the basic idea here is Sabine does not want to be a fundraiser long-term,

00:00:51.000 | but in the current situation, that skill would be useful to be good at,

00:00:56.000 | could open up access to people from which learning could be done.

00:01:01.000 | I would say a moderate yes is probably my answer here.

00:01:07.000 | By a moderate yes, I mean it's completely reasonable as part of your career journey

00:01:13.000 | to build up skills in the moment that are very valuable at this current stage

00:01:17.000 | just as part of your efforts to differentiate yourself as reliable,

00:01:22.000 | someone who can deliver, someone who is valuable.

00:01:24.000 | That's always a good thing.

00:01:26.000 | And if one of the primary ways you can do this in your current position is fundraising,

00:01:29.000 | I think it's fine. Let's do this well. Let's get good at it.

00:01:32.000 | However, the reason why I say this is a moderate yes is that there is a big trap lurking.

00:01:40.000 | If you're really good at getting good at things, and listeners to this podcast probably are

00:01:43.000 | because we talk about it all the time and we talk about deliberate practice,

00:01:46.000 | you might start to get really good at this.

00:01:48.000 | And when you start to get really good at something like fundraising,

00:01:51.000 | that is where you're going to be directed, and you're going to get a lot of praise for it,

00:01:54.000 | and more importantly, you're going to get a lot of money for it,

00:01:56.000 | and you're going to get a lot of cool positions, and you're going to have that momentum behind you,

00:02:00.000 | and it can be difficult to then say, "That was just temporary.

00:02:06.000 | What I really want to do is this completely unrelated skill."

00:02:10.000 | When things are going well, it's difficult to move off of that path.

00:02:14.000 | Now, in my book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You," I talk about this.

00:02:18.000 | I call it one of the two autonomy traps.

00:02:23.000 | The first autonomy trap is trying to make a bid for a lot more autonomy in your work

00:02:28.000 | before you have the skills to back it up.

00:02:30.000 | So this is the classic 22-year-old saying, "I'm going to go out on my own

00:02:33.000 | and start my nonprofit that's going to save the world,"

00:02:36.000 | the problem being you don't have the skills or the understanding or the connection

00:02:40.000 | to actually run an effective nonprofit yet.

00:02:42.000 | The second autonomy trap, which is what's relevant here, is that once you actually get to a place

00:02:47.000 | where you have the career capital to have a lot of control, you're so good at what you do

00:02:53.000 | that there's going to be incredible pressure to keep doing it.

00:02:56.000 | We might as well call this the law partner trap.

00:02:58.000 | It happens a lot to lawyers.

00:03:00.000 | You come out of a good school.

00:03:01.000 | What do I do now? I'm smart. I'm accomplished.

00:03:04.000 | How do I keep proving to the world I'm good?

00:03:06.000 | Oh, law school is hard to do. Okay, I'll go to law school.

00:03:08.000 | Look, everyone's impressed. I got into Harvard Law.

00:03:10.000 | This is very impressive. Okay, great.

00:03:12.000 | Oh, I did well in law school. I know how to do this.

00:03:14.000 | Look, I'm getting praise. That's great.

00:03:16.000 | I got a job in a big law firm. Those are competitive.

00:03:18.000 | I have a big paycheck.

00:03:20.000 | They're starting me. My first year associate salary is $170,000.

00:03:22.000 | That's a lot. I feel good.

00:03:24.000 | People know unambiguously that I'm impressive.

00:03:26.000 | Okay, I'm going to try to do my work well.

00:03:28.000 | Okay, hey, I'm getting more cases. Hey, I'm about to go for partner.

00:03:30.000 | Well, that would be really prestigious.

00:03:33.000 | Here we go. Now it's seven years later.

00:03:35.000 | I'm partner. I'm high six figures, low seven-figure salary.

00:03:39.000 | And wait a second. I am completely stuck here.

00:03:43.000 | I've just been following this path getting better and better

00:03:46.000 | because that's what I'm used to doing.

00:03:48.000 | And now I realize I'm working 100 hours a week and miserable.

00:03:51.000 | And what can I do? We have a lifestyle that's built around this.

00:03:54.000 | There's no easy transference of the skills.

00:03:56.000 | And now I'm just sad.

00:03:58.000 | That's the second autonomy trap.

00:04:00.000 | So there's a long way of saying be wary of that.

00:04:02.000 | Sure, do what you're doing now well.

00:04:04.000 | It's always better to be doing what you're doing well than be doing it wrong.

00:04:07.000 | Be reliable. Deliver.

00:04:09.000 | Deliver at high levels of quality.

00:04:11.000 | I always give that advice to people who are new in their career.

00:04:14.000 | But I would start right away thinking about what are ultimately the skills

00:04:18.000 | that you can build the long career on,

00:04:20.000 | the skills that are going to give you those interesting options.

00:04:23.000 | Once you actually get good at it, have that in mind right away

00:04:28.000 | and try to get that parallel track going right away.

00:04:31.000 | Because I got to tell you, things that are valuable,

00:04:34.000 | if you start doing them at a high level,

00:04:37.000 | they will get sucked into a path in which you are being pushed

00:04:41.000 | with great force to keep doing that at a higher and higher level.

00:04:44.000 | So do what you do well, but be wary about only working on a skill

00:04:48.000 | that you really don't want to do.

00:04:51.000 | [Music]

Is It Worth Becoming Good at Skills That You Only Need in the Short Term?

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