I’ve been reading Peter Diamandis’ book Bold and am really enjoying it. Peter has a great ability to distill complex ideas down to simple thoughts. He’s also quite impressive himself — doing impressive work in space exploration, technology and longevity research and also creating the famous X prize.

Certainly a fan of dreaming big, he cites interesting research that may help you think about achieving your own “moonshots” or maybe more realistically, figuring out how to find a company that will help you unlock a greater level of productivity and passion:

Locke’s thinking relies on three elements — when all three elements are in place, great things can happen.

The first element is attainability — individuals need to believe they can actually achieve the goal.

The second element is self-efficacy or belief in the strength of ones own skills.

The third element is the key one — goal-committment. The greater the alignment between your personal values and the outcomes of the goal, the greater your own motivation and likelyhood of achieving that goal.

When applying this third concept to organizaitons, you can see why so many people are frustrated. Few organizations have a very clear purpose to start with. The ones that do may not align with the personal values of the individuals.

So if you are frustrated at work — are you sure your personal values are aligned with the mission of the organization?

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

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My goal has always been to be versatile and have flexibility in my career. In today’s economy it’s the only way I know how to prepare for the future.

Many jobs that people have today didn’t exist ten years ago. My last three jobs didn’t exist before I had the role. The workplace is changing — fast.

So instead of having a strategy where I aim for a specific role or company I focus on building skills.

At work I volunteer for things that are outside of my current skills. In multiple roles I have volunteered to teach trainings or develop training material. When I first did this I didn’t know what I was doing. Over time it became a strength.

Outside of work I’ll volunteer to speak and present so that I can become a strong public streaker.

Throughout my career I’ve also taken a deliberate strategy to work in different area. I’ve worked in finance, manufacturing, strategy, research and talent roles.

I don’t have a clear goal for where I expect these skills to take me — I just hope to have more options and flexibility later in my career.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post Skill building as a career strategy appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.