Table of Contents
New Rules for Success
Even if you don’t want anything to do with the creator economy, your job is constantly being impacted by the transformative forces of disruptive technology. Fast-growing fields such as AI and no-code are ushering in a new era of automation and increasingly democratizing access to online building and income generation.
The standards of employability are rapidly changing. With new tools and processes coming up every week, your job might look completely different in just a few months. Those who cannot adapt quickly are replaced, and they struggle to find other opportunities. Learning quickly, actively looking for new trends in your market, developing a network of experts, and building a strong personal brand are all invaluable skills in the market today.
These are the rules for success if you want to find long-term professional success in this new age of rapid change and forced adaptation.
Stay Humble
With a dynamic technological landscape that is constantly changing, there is always something new to be learned. The traditional path of going to college and graduate school to master a subject is already outdated, and this carefully structured educational path has no place in today’s world where new-age skills should be quickly learned and mastered.
The first step, then, is to change our attitude and accept that there is so much to be learned. This also means that we have to stay humble about what we know, since learning is a continuous process that has no end. This constant thirst for learning opens us to new kinds of teachers (YouTubers, young people, influencers), and educational material (online forums, social media handles).
Stay curious, stay humble, and always be willing to learn something new.
Stay Nimble
You might be an expert in a field today that might quickly get outdated or irrelevant next week. As you learn each day, keep an eye on the latest trends in your market, and complementary fields. Building a skillset that spans subject areas related to your main field of focus is often the easiest way to build a personal moat.
As a long-term goal, aim to build a set of skills in a number of fields and build capabilities in all of them. This way, your job has multiple descriptions, and even if one of them becomes obsolete, you have several other skills that are useful to explore a new path.
Deliberate Learning
As you start building your career moat, you will quickly realize that success is a factor of engineering serendipity. It’s all about being in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills. The problem is that this usually only makes sense in hindsight, and there is little you can do to plan it out actively.
However, the one sure way to engineer serendipity is spending an hour a week on deliberate learning. This means setting aside time from your busy schedule and giving yourself space to learn something new from a book or online course.
What should you learn? It helps if the subject is closely linked to your primary field of work, but it can also be completely unconnected from it. The dots will connect only in hindsight, so for now, make sure you increase your serendipity surface area by developing interest and skills in new fields.
Network of Experts
The last ingredient for professional success today is to have a circle of acquaintances and friends comprising experts and thought-leaders in your subject area. These are the people who will propel your career forward and present you with life-changing opportunities. And with the right connections, you are set on a path that will eventually lead you to become a leader in your field.
Traditionally, people relied on universities to cultivate this network, which is why the top colleges are considered “top”: with a network of the best students and alumni in the field, they can offer career-making opportunities for their students. However, universities are losing their networking credentials, and new forms of professional networking are already taking shape.
The first place to build your network is on Twitter, where the world’s thought leaders are consistently active, and they support and invest in new ideas. Next, take a look at cohort-based courses and educational communities that are bringing the top people in their field together. Finally, there are also professional communities exclusively designed for expert networking such as On Deck.
Summing Up
These are the four rules for success in today’s dynamic landscape. You will note that the emphasis is always on learning, and on attitude change: humility, open-mindedness, and curiosity are all qualities that can be learned and implemented.
