We live in a time of constant change and extremely rapid technological progress. Some professions are disappearing and new professions are being created.

You will probably be forced to change professions during your lifetime. Most people will not retire in the same profession in which they started their career.

The big challenge for professionals in the modern world is that they never run out of options if they are forced to change careers. In other words, our goal is to always have good alternatives if we need to look for a new job or a new source of income.

The risk of the modern world is not just being unemployed. The risk is becoming obsolete. Being obsolete means having no options.

Optionality

What is Optionality? Optionality is a strategy to always increase our number of options.

In the context of our careers, the objective of the Optionality strategy is to guarantee that as a professional you will never be considered obsolete. We want to ensure that you will always have job offers and will always be able to find alternative sources of income.

In general, it is considered natural that a person’s options are reduced as they get older. We consider it normal for a professional over a certain age to become outdated and have much more difficulty getting a new job.

Thanks to the strategy of Optionality, we can achieve exactly the opposite: the older we get, the more alternatives we will have. We will never become obsolete, we will always be in-demand professionals.

Developing New Skills

To increase our number of options, it is necessary to constantly develop new skills. The secret is that while knowledge may become obsolete or a specific profession may disappear, our abilities never lose their value.

Skills serve as multipliers of our potential. Nowadays a large number of people have access to university studies that give access to good jobs. But if you want to really stand out in your profession, you need to develop a series of other skills that differentiate you from other professionals in your field.

This is the meaning of your Unique Value Proposition = How do you stand out from other professionals? Why are you different?

For example, most people are afraid of public speaking. If you can develop the ability to give talks, you will have an advantage over other professionals.

Another example, many competent professionals miss opportunities to be promoted because they never developed their team leadership attributes. Thus you can increase your chances of being promoted by investing in acquiring leadership skills.

Skills are Transferable

As we discussed earlier, most people will be forced to change careers during their lives. This means that part of their knowledge and experience may become useless in their new jobs.

Depending on your current occupation, some knowledge or experience may become irrelevant when you are forced to look for a new job. But skills that have been useful in the past generally continue to be valuable when a person makes a career change.

For example, if you have developed the ability to negotiate, this will be beneficial in a wide variety of situations. A person who knows how to defend their interests will always have an advantage over other people who are less assertive.

An aptitude, once conquered, will never become obsolete. Throughout history we have seen the disappearance of many professions and the emergence of others. But human abilities such as soft skills have been basically the same since time immemorial.