The Career You’ll Love

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success, he stated that to achieve mastery in an area, it generally takes about 10,000 hours of serious learning, practice, and skill development.

I think it’s a valid conclusion, but there’s more to the story.

If you want to be famous for something, to be at the forefront, you have to establish yourself as world class. You want to be one of the best violinists? 10,000 hours. You want to make a living as a pro golfer? 10,000 hours.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

Nobody likes a braggart.  But there are times where you need to promote yourself – to your boss, to potential customers, to future employers.  How do you promote yourself in a way which doesn’t come across as shameless and inauthentic?

Here’s the trick:  You promote in a way which is well-founded, or where promotion isn’t the primary message.

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There’s more than a little fuzziness around the concept of “soft skills.”  “Hard skills” are thought of as those technical abilities which often lend their name to an entire profession:  designing, architecture, repairing, nursing, and so on.  These are easy to identify because there’s a specific body of knowledge around each, and they’re the kind of things that our schools teach.

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There’s been a lot of chatter in recent years about “your personal brand.” Even though the idea can be sometimes used in a rather cynical fashion, I’ve found it to be pretty valuable for myself.

Here’s the idea:  People will formulate ideas about who you are and why you might be valuable to know (or employ).  What happens if you drive that intentionally, rather than just have it happen at random?

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