Summary

The article advocates for the application of the barbell method to career development, suggesting a balanced approach to learning that combines honing immediately relevant job skills with acquiring unrelated skills for a unique competitive edge.

Abstract

The concept of the barbell method, originally an investment strategy, is proposed as a framework for career resilience in the face of automation and job market volatility. The method involves dedicating the majority of one's learning resources to mastering skills directly applicable to one's current job while allocating a small portion to learning unrelated skills that could provide a unique advantage. This approach is intended to safeguard against job obsolescence by fostering a diverse skill set that can adapt to future career landscapes. The article emphasizes the importance of combining disparate skills to create a unique and irreplaceable professional profile, citing the potential for career pivots and the creation of new job categories. It also references the work of authors Nassim Nicholas Taleb and David Epstein, suggesting that the age of hyper-specialization is ending and that a generalist approach, complementing AI's narrow capabilities, is increasingly valuable.

Opinions

The author believes that the barbell method can be effectively applied to career development to mitigate the risk of job displacement due to automation.
There is an opinion that learning a skill outside one's professional domain can lead to a unique skillset, making an individual more valuable and less likely to be replaced by algorithms.
The article suggests that the future of work will favor generalists over specialists, as AI and machine learning take over narrowly defined tasks.
The author posits that the pandemic has accelerated the need for a diverse skill set, making it crucial for professionals to adapt by learning complementary skills.
It is implied that investing time and effort into learning unrelated skills can lead to new career opportunities and potentially the creation of entirely new job categories.
The author expresses that combining knowledge from different fields can provide a competitive edge and future-proof one's career against the uncertainties of the job market.

Apply the Barbell Method to Future-Proof Your Career

Or risk being replaced by an algorithm

Ever since I read Antifragile, I am intrigued with the barbell method that the author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, talks about in that book.

For those of you who haven’t yet read the book (highly recommended) it is a method of investing where you have a large part of your investment in very conservative investment products and the rest of your investment is allocated to small but very risky investment products.

That way you can benefit from the safety of conservative investment products with potential of windfall from the very risky investment products without having any huge downside (since your investment in those products is small).

While this method has benefits to a savvy investor, I think it can also be applied to build great careers. Here is how this can be applied to future proof your career.

Allocate most of your learning budget (time, money and efforts) into learning skills that would be immediately relevant in your job. Yet you must also dedicate a minuscule portion of your learning budget to learning something that is not at all related to your job or profession but may give you a unique advantage in your field.

Let me make this clearer with the help of an example. Let’s say you are in the marketing profession and you can benefit from learning about content marketing, SEO, digital marketing and many other allied skills. But if you also decided to learn python programming (something not at all related to marketing) you might end up being the one of the few marketing professionals with such a unique skillset.

I am sure there are some people trying out that strategy today. Linkedin Learning has a course on it. However it would require significant time and effort to learn something totally different from your day job.

But if you are willing to spend some time and effort daily you will eventually pick that skill.

The pandemic has upended the future of work in more ways than one. If we do not invest in learning new skills that combine to create a unique yet very useful skillset, we are likely to be replaced by machines.

Will a robot take my job?

We all have been hearing about the impending jobocalypse and it is real now. Research contends that one quarter of jobs in US alone are at the risk of automation.

Much of these jobs at risk of automation are not be blue collar jobs. They are white collar jobs like accountants, back office operations jobs, journalists and traders. Al and Machine learning, combined with algorithms, will make many jobs partially or fully automated.

In light of this you are likely to be laid off if you do not develop unique skillsets that machines cannot replicate.

This means combining disparate skills together. Like combining knowledge of user experience with writing to become a chatbot experience designer. Or combining hard skills like programming with creative skills like sculpting to become a 3D printing expert.

Having a unique combination of skillsets like these will help you pivot to new careers. Also, you will not have much competition, both form the machines and the masses.

The key is to pick something that you can sense would come in handy in the near future and is also likely to future proof your job.

The Age of Generalists is here

The days when we could rely on hyper specialisation to keep working in our own niche and remain viable in the job market till retirement, are gone. The pandemic has not only accelerated automation efforts but also the nature of jobs itself.

Author David Epstein talks about this in his book Range. He contends that increasing hyper specialisation is not good for your career any longer. AI is becoming good at stable structures and narrow world. If we need to work with AI we need to learn to complement its abilities by going broad rather than narrow. We need to spread the repertoire of our skills so that we can be relevant.

“In a wicked world, relying upon experience from a single domain is not only limiting, it can be disastrous.” ― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Applying the barbell strategy

Now that we have established that we need to create a unique combination of skillsets that give us a competitive edge, let me explain how to apply the barbell strategy to help future-proof your career. Here are the main steps.

1. Identify areas which are outside your domain yet likely to become relevant in the near future or have potential to become relevant 2. Explore multiple areas which pique your interest, yet have very low correlation to your current skills or job. 3. After the initial exploration, identify which of the areas you would go deeper into 4. Seek experts in these new areas and ask them how they think knowledge of that subject could be applied in your profession or how your current skillset can be combined with this subject to create new career opportunities 5. Block some time to start the process of building your skills in the new area. 6. Once you have learnt enough to practice start exploring ways in which you can use the new found skill in your current job or career. 7. Keep exploring other disparate skills to add to your repertoire.

I am sure that the barbell strategy is not only a sound investment strategy but can also be applied to prevent the risk of a “black swan” making your career redundant. It might help you actually create a new category of jobs that never existed before.