A Very Particular Set of Skills

That’s what you need in today’s job market.  Does a degree help?  Sure.  But it’s not enough on its own.

What employers and customers want are skills.  They want to know you are capable and competent.  Can you get the job done and in a meaningful way?  Do you have a high standard for excellence?  Do you serve well?  Are you passionate?  Do you deliver value?  They won’t care much where or how those skills were acquired.  Be it in formal training or over a very long career. 

But you’re going to have to deliver.  And the better your track record of delivering, the more you’ll be worth.

One more thought- is it better to be a specialist or a generalist?  I hear that a lot, but the answer is actually dependent on a very different question; who do you want to work for?  Large companies, where resources abound, will want specialists.  Their economy of scale makes it possible for them to pay a lot for a narrow task and they will want the best of that breed.  But if you’re sights are set on smaller organizations, go general.  The more you can do, the bigger your value to a company that has limited resources and needs more “bang for the buck.”  That can help you find your place in this job market as well.

Input Sabbatical

I love ideas.  New ideas, new concepts, new perspectives.  Innovation and invention are my drugs and, like any good addict, I've invested a lot of time and energy into getting my fixes.  But also like any drug, too much can do you harm.

Lately, I've found myself in that very position.  For a while I've been riding a great "high" of ideas.  My notebooks are overflowing and it seem as though every project I have has a buffet of new thoughts or directions to choose from.  It's been fun, it's been exciting, but it's become overwhelming- paraylyzing even.  I'm unable to get anything closed out, or move anything forward, because the vision, or the path keeps changing.

So I had to stop.  I had to stop reading my blogs, my Twitter feed, and anything else that I normally turned to for inspiration.  I need to back off the new ideas.  Because the ideas I already had need to ship.  Remember- if you don't ship, you're not accomplishing anything.  Many good ideas have died in wait because we wouldn't ship until it's perfect.

So I took an idea sabbatical.  Instead of finding new ways, new ideas, and new perspectives, I'm focusing on shipping what I have.

Because we can always improve it later.  It can be refined, improved, or polished down the line.  If you wait for perfect to ship, you never will.

So if you're finding youself overwhelmed and falling behind because you keep refining the process, consider an idea sabbatical.  Block out the new ideas just long enough to ship the ones you have.  You have to clean your plate before you go back for more.

(PS- that's not permission to ship something sub-par and clean it up later.  Standards still matter.  This is about how ideas evolve.  Quality still matters.)