Tuesday, 10.23pm
Sheffield, U.K.
If everybody is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction. – Sam Walton
One of the good things that happened last year was getting an academic paper published.
This taught me a great deal about the process of writing, in addition to statistics, peer review and research design.
It was also one of the hardest things I’ve had to do – not because it was difficult but because it required time on task.
When writing a blog post I can write 500 words in 20 minutes.
I might only get out 100 in a 2 hour session working on a paper.
That’s because each sentence in a paper is critically read by a reviewer.
And I do mean every sentence.
That kind of scrutiny is invaluable – it helps you work and rework your ideas until they are as clear as possible.
I can see the difference between my first draft and the later versions of the work – and the hundreds of hours that went into it.
But those hundreds of hours are where the learning is.
I am trying to work out how to communicate this idea on platforms such as LinkedIn where there are a number of people who talk about their products and services and how it will make things easier for us.
For example, just buy a set of templates And you’ll get better at writing.
Or buy a software product and it will take care of all your problems.
The key selling point here is ease of use – this will make it easy to do something.
But if something is easy to do it also has very little value per unit.
In essence it’s a commodity and its value will tend towards the marginal cost of production.
If writing can be done by a machine it will cost pennies – and make pennies for the owner of the machine.
Many pennies, perhaps – but the writing you buy from the owner of the machine can only be resold for nothing.
The point I’m making is that if something is easy to do it’s often not worth doing.
For you and me anyway.
If we want the time we spend on learning a skill to have value we need to focus on skills that are hard to do.
That’s when we have a moat, an advantage, something that confers a competitive edge.
No edge lasts forever, of course, so we need to keep learning.
And this is where the problem of selection comes in.
We have a finite amount of time so we have to invest our hours in skills that are rare and valuable that give us a competitive advantage.
And that means getting focused, niching down, really getting clear on where you add value with what you do best.
The other advantage of finding a niche is that it’s easier to partner with others.
If you try and do everything then you don’t need anyone else and they’re unlikely to be happy working with you.
Partnerships are based on having complementary capabilities.
And with the headwinds we’re facing in the economy right now good partners can be the most valuable people you can find.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
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