Those eggs – not in one basket, please!

Dilbert and good career advice? They don’t seem to go together but Scott Adams has some wise words for those who intend to get ahead in life.

Either:
1. Become the best at one specific thing OR
2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

That might sound simplistic or defeat the whole notion of being a ‘specialist’ to get ahead. Yes, career-wise, being a jack of all trades doesn’t make you indispensable – but only if you’re mediocre at all the many things you ‘know’.

You can do technical writing – but is it good technical writing or creative massaging of copy-and-pasted text? You can speak a few languages but can you converse in them or only know how to order specific dishes (I plead guilty to that when it comes to Cantonese)?

I can do a lot of things – but I don’t claim to do them all well. So I can write and have the potential to do better (that’s why it’s an awesome skill to have if you even have a smidgen of talent). But what else is there?

Sadly, I don’t think scaring PR n00bs on the phone is a marketable skill. I will go back and attempt to pick up one of the essential skills for world domination.