Master a One-to-Many Skill

My best career advice is to get obsessed with and master “one-to-many” skills - writing, speaking, and video. In that order.

Writing is the foundation. Writing pulls ideas out of your brain and brings them into the physical world. From there, it requires you to revise your message until it’s as clear, simple, and short as possible. The writing process itself sharpens your thinking and reveals new ideas.

Writing requires the least production of the one-to-many skills. It’s as simple as typing words into a blogging platform and hitting publish. The hardest part is sitting down and actually doing it.

Writing transmits well through time. Even though their bodies are long gone, the writings of Homer, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, and the other great authors will endure forever.

Speaking is the process of turning your ideas into sounds.

Video is the visual and audio medium for communicating your ideas. It’s the most complicated in that it requires equipment: a camera, a microphone, and some editing software.

All three skills are forms of telepathy. You are transferring ideas from your head into someone else’s. You want to do it as simply, clearly, and in as few words as possible. And you want to be persuasive.