Hey there, & happy Monday! (+ a warm welcome to the 12 legends who joined this newsletter since the last issue!)
The faster the world changes, the more relevant meta skills will become.
As I’ve outlined in “The Future Belongs To Generalists”:
“The first part of becoming a generalist are meta skills: skills that you can use in a variety of settings. Having these will allow you to dive into any topic, learn about it fast, and quickly build expertise.”
So today, let’s build a highly subjective “tier” list of meta skills that I believe are worth acquiring.
I've clustered meta skills into three tiers:
- Tier 1: Foundational Meta Skills
- Tier 2: Multipliers of Impact
- Tier 3: Specialized Meta Skills
Let’s dive in.
Tier 1: Foundational Meta Skills
A smart generalist is able to adapt to a wide range of problems, so to build out the foundation, we need skills that allow you to do precisely that. With these skills, you can break into any field and quickly form a good foundation of the topic at hand.
Rapid Learning
The number one meta skill to rule them all. If you’re a really fast learner, you can learn any skill on this list faster. I’ve always put great emphasis on “learning how to learn”, because it unlocks new abilities.
In a world changing as fast as it is today, learning new skills is crucial - five years ago, who would’ve thought that prompt engineering could be a thing? Today, the people using AI intelligently are way ahead of the ones that don’t.
Where to get better at it:
Problem Solving
Anywhere you go, you will encounter problems. And people love the guy that just quickly resolves a problem and gets shit done. I’ve always thought that “problem solving” was a weird skill - after all, you approach a problem and then you solve it.
But there’s a process to it, and knowing this process equips you with the ability to overcome any obstacle.
Where to get better at it:
Effective Communication
As generalist, you will be working with other people - and thus, communicate with them. Communication skills are a crazy amplifier for everything that you do: whether you build a business and need to sell, whether you manage a team and need to lead, or whether you run a campaign and need to draw people onto your side.
Communication skills consist of thinking, writing, and speaking. First, you need to think clearly about what you want to communicate, and then you have to identify whether to communicate in written or oral form.
I believe writing lies at the core: when you write out ideas, you are forced to verbalize them, which helps your thinking. And anyone can be a decent public speaker if they have a perfect script. :)
Where to get better at it:
Critical Thinking
When you enter a new domain, you will be facing a barrage of information. It’s up to you to make sense of it, and that includes questioning the things you’ve just learned.
The biggest value generalists can often bring is to provide an outside perspective to a bunch of specialists by questioning the way it has always been done, or offering up analogies from different domains that they’ve seen before.
Where to get better at it:
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Once you’ve nailed these foundations, it’s time to move to the second tier of meta skills: impact multipliers.
Tier 2: Multipliers of Impact
You can now learn any skill rapidly, solve any problem, challenge information that you receive and communicate all about these things. That already makes you a high-level generalist that can have a lot of impact in any domain.
But with this next set of meta skills, you gather the tools to make even higher impact in even more domains.
Personal Productivity
The first and most powerful way to multiply your impact is to have more energy to make an impact.
Personal Productivity includes getting very good at planning, working with intensity, doing so consistently, and managing your energy so you can work hard for the long haul. It’s a meta skill worth learning, particularly for generalists, in order to free up the time to do all the things you want to do.
I absolutely love productivity stuff (as you can probably tell at this point), and have read way too many books on this. Having a personal productivity framework unlocked a ton of freedom for me, which is why I’d rank it at the very top of the Tier 2 meta skills.
Where to get better at it:
- Oh, you know what’s coming: I’m launching an online course called Personal Productivity OS on Oct 15th. And that is - of course ;) - the best place to get better at Personal Productivity.
- Or you could also read the 30+ books on it that I read, but that’d cost double the money and 10X the time of taking the course.
Emotional Intelligence
Most generalist are high IQ; they learn things quickly, and can draw connections where others cannot. But since you will be dabbling in different professions, you will interact with others - and for that, emotional intelligence is an important skill.
It’s something that can be learned; I know this because I had to learn it myself. You can become more emotionally intelligent.
Where to get better at it:
Time Management
Just like having the energy to make an impact, you also need to have the time. Your time is the most valuable resource that you have, so you better learn how to manage it wisely - especially, if you already struggle to do all the things that you want to do because you’re so widely interested.
Where to get better at it:
Systems Thinking & Implementation
The better you become at thinking in and building systems, the more impact you can have. You can come into any context, learn about it, and then build systems to leave the place better than you found it. This makes your impact more sustainable, regardless of what you do.
Good systems thinkers build processes, they document, they automate. But they also identify mental models to conceptualize the world around them - and share those with others, so they can make sense of it too.
Where to get better at it:
Tier 3: Specialized Meta Skills
Nobody is a “true” generalist; we all have certain fields that we prefer moving in. For most of my readers, this is the field of business. So starting from Tier 3, we’ll add more specialized skills which are still relevant in a vast range of fields.
Tech Literacy
“You don’t have to like baseball, but you should understand the concept of what a pitcher’s ERA means. Approach life similarly.”
You don’t have to write code, but you should understand how software and computers work. Technology shapes our world like no other force right now, so you have to at the very least understand the first principles behind it.
Where to get better at it:
Negotiation
Everything in life is a negotiation: from your next job interview to telling your 10 year old that they need to stop computer games. The better you are at negotiating, the more impact you’ll have - and this particularly matters in the business world, where it’s part of the daily business.
Where to get better at it:
Leadership
As generalist, you will eventually fall into a role where you have to lead others. So while leadership might not be the most important skill to start out with, it becomes exponentially more relevant the more you move on in your career.
Where to get better at it:
Financial Literacy
Every manager in business has a budget. As does an entrepreneur. So while you don’t have to be a finance crack, you will have to understand the basics of it.
Where to get better at it:
Speaking of “specialized meta skills”, Marketing is another such skill that can be applied across a variety of ways. In a way, you’re always marketing yourself - and likely need to do so more as a generalist, as many people don’t quite grasp the concept just yet.
To get better at Marketing, I’ve partnered with Vassilena from Marketing Matters Weekly, who reads ~180 articles per week and breaks the best ones down for you. Very curated, highly insightful, and valuable for any business leader.
​Check out her work here.
You can break down these meta skills much further than this - but this is a good place to start on your path to becoming a better generalist.
Note that just being good at meta skills won’t get you that far, as you still need something to apply them to. Once you find a good application, while having exceptional meta skills .. oh, you’ll be dangerous.
Update to a previous newsletter
With time, topics evolve. When a new development regarding something I’ve written about previously happens, I will include it in this section.
Bryan Johnson’s AG1 Hit Piece
Bryan Johnson - the guy that does everything, and I mean everything, to extend his life - just released a “hit piece” about AG1.
I disagree with Bryan Johnson on a lot of things (because I like stuff like meat and alcohol), but here’s something we agree on: Athletic Greens (or AG1) is crazy expensive and it’s crazy people spend that much on it.
Johnson points out a lot of the things that I also mentioned in newsletter #32 - specifically, their insane influencer marketing strategy (which is out of this world imo). Still a lot to learn here, and curious to see what he will do with his own supplement company.
One question for you:
What meta skills are you looking to improve next?
Which skills are missing from this list?
Hit reply, and let me know.
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With ❤️ from Dominik.
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