Main Idea
When you think of someone with great skills, who do you think of? Are you jealous of the skills that person was given? Do you think that there is no way you could have those skills?
Expansion of Idea
When you look at great athletes or musicians or business people, most of us admire their skills. We think that we could never be like them. And we probably can’t be like them. I can’t swing a bat like Albert Pujols. I know I can’t sing. (My wife would second that.) I have no musical rhythm. Yet, I do have skills. Each of us has skills to do our job. The main point, that is overlooked when you look at the great athletes, is how much time they put into maintaining and sharpening their skills. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Outliers in which he looked at some of these extreme success stories. One of his conclusions is that 10,000 hours is a very magic number. Once someone puts that much time in his skills, really good things happen. The really great athletes put that much time in earlier than the average athletes. This unrelenting push to improve is a big part of what makes the truly great athletes what they are.
The same is true in business. When we invest, push, train, work and do everything we can to sharpen our skills, good things happen. For those people who don’t do this, they are completely dependent on the economy, their company, their boss and life in general. There is one other thing that most of us tend to forget. I was discussing this with a client the other day. We look at the stock market or our house and we can easily get depressed because our investments may be falling off a cliff. That can be really depressing.
However, our single most important financial asset is our own earning power. If you add up what you are going to make from now until you retire, it will probably dwarf your savings or the equity in your house. We need to focus on improving our skills to maximize the value of that asset. We can’t control the stock market or our investments, but we can control where we invest our time. From a financial planning standpoint and from a general success standpoint, this should be our number one priority.
Questions to Ask Yourself
How would you rate your skills to do your job?
Are my skills the best that they could be?
How would your coworkers rate your skills?
What needs to be improved?
How can I expand my skills?
Are there new skills that I need to learn?