A hyper-connected world means the talent pool you compete in has gone from hundreds or thousands spanning your town to millions or billions spanning the globe. This is especially true for jobs that rely on working with your head versus your muscles: teaching, marketing, analysis, consulting, accounting, programming, journalism, and even medicine increasingly compete in global talent pools. More fields will fall into this category as digitization erases global boundaries—as “software eats the world,” as venture capitalist Marc Andreesen puts it.
A question you should ask as the range of your competition expands is, “How do I stand out?”
“I’m smart” is increasingly a bad answer to that question, because there are a lot of smart people in the world. Almost 600 people ace the SATs each year. Another 7,000 come within a handful of points. In a winner-take-all and globalized world these kinds of people are increasingly your direct competitors.
Intelligence is not a reliable advantage in a world that’s become as connected as ours has.
But flexibility is.
In a world where intelligence is hyper-competitive and many previous technical skills have become automated, competitive advantages tilt toward nuanced and soft skills—like communication empathy. and, perhaps most of all, flexibility.
Excerpt from: Mind Over Money: The Psychology of Money and How To Use It Better by Claudia Hammond
