skills

Geek Job Guru: Behold, The Secret Art!

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Monastery

Ever watch a movie, play a game, read a book where someone whips out a “Secret Art?” The unknown spell, the forbidden magic, the forgotten technology? At that point you pretty much know Things Will Get Real (or the writer is about to yank something out of their hindquarters, but let’s stay positive here).

Secret Arts are a constant of fiction. There’s this idea that there are hidden powers, things forgotten or wisely locked away, ancient secrets more powerful due to their primordial connections, and so on. The idea of a Secret Art speaks to us, of something powerful and coherent – yet mysterious.  It can’t be common or easy, and that too is part of it’s power.

And in your career, there are plenty of Secret Arts you can use.

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Geek Job Guru: Skill Spread

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What lets you do your job and carry out your career? Well you could say your position, connections, etc. But I’m talking actual productivity, and what lets you actually do things is skills.

When it comes to skills, that’s a huge part of our career. We measure them with tests. We get certifications to show we have them. We get rated on the job or by clients. We seek them out or develop them. In short, a big part of your career is the ability to do something.

So more skills is good for you because it’s good for your career. Ehancing skills is good for you because skills are good.  And so on.

Now we geeks in many ways are people with multiple careers. Sure we have what pays the bills, we also have our hobbies, and many of us have something in between. Your average highly active geek-type is probably doing two or three jobs at any time, and in many cases only one of them actually pays the bills.  Sadly for some that’s “barely” pays the bills, so enhancing what we can do is even more important.

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Behind The Scenes And Loving It

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So at the start of June I finished editing Serdar‘s next book, Flight of the Vajra.

Now you’ve heard him talk about it here, so you may be curious. All I can say is, yes, actually, it’s really good and will be well worth your time. I won’t go into much detail as it’s A) his book, and B) I want to discuss about how it relates to your career because that’s what I do here.

I’m a big, big advocate of using hobbies in jobs as you’ve kind of guessed by the fact i’ve been at this blog for five years. One of the things we miss though is that some of our hobbyist/amateur skills are relevant, but not spectacular.

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