What will be your most important skill in the coming decades?

Original post: @thedankoe

Compiled by: Dr.Hash (Cyber Hash)

In the next 10 years, most skills may become irrelevant.

Everyone's saying that, is it true?

But if you're a highly proactive person, this isn't a problem at all. Why? Because your success doesn't depend on any particular skill. You're not the kind of person who focuses solely on one area. You don't limit yourself to pursuing high-paying jobs or impressive academic credentials. You have your own vision and understand that in this era, you can learn any skill and acquire any knowledge to achieve the life you want.

Unfortunately, if your parents didn't cultivate this "initiative," they may not be able to pass it on to you. Unless you go through a deliberate process of learning and reflection, you have a long way to go before you truly feel in "control of your future."

Therefore, the most important skill is initiative. This ability is crucial now, ten years from now, and even until your death. Because if you can set your own life direction, take the necessary actions to achieve your goals, and resist the various temptations and distractions of today's world, you won't face the risk of being "replaced" (and even if you are, it doesn't matter, because you can quickly adapt to a new environment).

Next, I'd like to share five core ideas about "agency": what it is, why it's more important than ever, and how to practice it to achieve the life you want.

I. Initiative: The ability to operate without a license

"Only those who persist in resistance can discover the truth, not those who conform."

— Krishnamurti

To understand what a highly motivated person is like, we must first define what it is.

Initiative is not about blindly following others.

Conformity means that your thinking still depends on societal standards.

Conformity is a stage of cognitive development in which your thinking is completely influenced by culture, and the standard for judging truth is "whether it is popular" and "whether others accept it", rather than based on your own direct experience or independent thinking.

Upon closer examination, this may be the biggest threat to a good life.

When you are born, your mind is like a new computer. It has a basic operating system, but no data on the hard drive. For the first 20 years of your life, you don't think independently. That's okay; nobody starts out that way. No matter how independent you think you are, often it's just another form of submission.

Research indicates that approximately 50% of the population is in a conformist phase, meaning that half of the population lacks the cognitive foundation for genuine agency.

Compliance stems from the survival instinct. Humans not only need to survive on a material level (reproducing genes like animals), but also on a psychological level (spreading beliefs, opinions, and information).

If you're employed, your agency in that field is very low because losing your job would threaten your survival. So you have to comply.

If you have deep-seated beliefs that bind your identity to a specific religion or political party, your agency will be limited because your concepts of good and evil come from culture, rather than from personal examination and exploration.

In the tech and business worlds, people love to talk about "high dynamism," but this often comes at the cost of conforming to popular culture.

Even the letter itself carries a certain degree of submission. In a sense, we are all submitters.

So what does true agency look like? How can we cultivate this ability within ourselves so that our emotions, finances, and life opportunities are not controlled by others?

(1) Highly motivated individuals can act without permission.

"Having agency means that you are the subject of the sentence, not the object. It is a tendency to take initiative rather than to wait passively."

— Devon Eriksen

The word "activity" literally means "being in a state of action or operation".

When used to describe a person, it means "the tendency to take initiative to achieve a goal without external prompting, instructions, or permission."

But when we observe successful people, we find that success is more than just taking action towards a goal. Anyone can start a business, but that doesn't guarantee success. In fact, most people fail because they lack a crucial element:

If something doesn't work, you reflect on the situation, make adjustments, and keep trying until you reach your goal.

Therefore, autonomy is not just about action, but also a firm commitment to iteration. Learning and practice go hand in hand. Make mistakes and correct them, instead of retreating to your comfort zone just because "this method doesn't work."

Yes, I'm talking about those who give up after writing an article for two weeks.

(2) Highly motivated people treat life as an experiment.

People with low initiative often exhibit a "working class mentality".

They are assigned tasks, often accompanied by a certain status or certificate, which makes them crave recognition from others, leading to limited decision-making.

Highly proactive people are scientists of their own lives.

They had an idea.

They set their goals. They develop a hypothesis about how to achieve those goals. They test, adjust, research, and strive to get closer to their goals; they will fail, many times. But because it's an experiment, failure is part of the process. They expect to fail, because how can they find an effective method without trial and error?

This is a major misconception about success today. People are used to being promised things like a high-paying job or a business that promises quick riches.

They did what they were supposed to do step by step, but when they inevitably failed, they thought it was impossible and blamed everyone except themselves.

(3) Highly motivated people believe in the value of difficulties.

You want to be more proactive because you believe these actions will bring positive changes to your life. You are trying to achieve a goal. There are three types of goals:

• Simple goals: things we do every day, or things we can accomplish with our existing skills.

• A challenging goal: something we can't do now, but can eventually do if we acquire the right skills and resources.

• Impossible goals: either completely impossible in reality, or seemingly impossible until we accomplish a series of “difficult goals”.

People with low motivation often have a biased view of difficult goals.

For example, in Seligman's dog experiments, the dogs were exposed to unavoidable electric shocks, making them feel a lack of control over their environment. Later, when placed in a situation where they could easily jump over a small wall to escape the shocks, the dogs did not attempt to do so. Even with an escape route within reach, they simply howled and endured the shocks. Similarly, achieving your desired life goals may be difficult, but you are trained to believe it is "impossible," so you don't even try. Your brain doesn't even allow you to consider the option. You silently endure the electric shocks along your predetermined life path.

However, initiative can be practiced, but the specific steps only make sense when you have a deep understanding of how it applies to the world today.

II. AI is not a threat to highly dynamic individuals.

You can now acquire any knowledge you need to achieve any goal you desire.

However... people still did nothing.

This is the key point.

Success is easier now than ever before, but those destined to fail still won't succeed. It's never about "access" or "equal opportunity," but about agency. Highly proactive people will outpace others tenfold because they act without needing permission, and the barriers to action are virtually nonexistent now. If you can't achieve a large goal due to a lack of money or resources, you can set a smaller, stepping stone goal to acquire those resources.

Everyone is worried about the same thing, and frankly, this fear stems from their inability to think clearly.

Here's a typical example: Everyone is saying, "There's too much AI-generated content, and human creators have no chance."

First, AI is a tool.

Tools need to be used by people for specific purposes.

Of course, anyone can have AI generate a viral article, or extract a thousand clips from a podcast and have AI sort them by viral potential. But what's the point? You might get a bunch of likes and followers, but can you monetize that? Is there loyalty? Is there anything that truly supports the brand? Yes, you can let AI do those things for you, but then you're doing something completely different. You're learning. You're orchestrating the realization of a larger vision, which isn't much different from doing it yourself. You're still the decision-maker.

Of course, AI can generate beautiful images on command, but there's a world of difference between "someone with a vision who uses AI as a tool to realize that vision" and "someone who just wants to quickly create an image." Many artists use AI to create initial drafts, then fine-tune them with Photoshop, injecting their own style. Overall, AI reveals what's truly important in the creative process.

When you let AI make all the decisions for you (in other words, you let it guess what works based on thousands of opinions on the internet), there is no main thread. No theme. No personality. No vision. No context. That's the essence of being a creator: a context creator, not a content creator. Without context, content is meaningless, and so is anything generated by AI.

Aside from the mind-numbing content and memes (though some are genuinely funny), their only purpose is to keep you on the platform to be exploited by ads.

Have you figured it out?

99% of AI-generated content will become garbage, because if the content is effective, its value is already there, and whether it is AI-generated or not is irrelevant—because it is most likely carefully arranged by a human who has injected their own personal context into it.

When building a business, you must have a brand mission; AI is just there to help you execute it, and you need to continuously iterate.

When writing a book, you have to control every tiny detail, and on top of that, you have to get people to read it (audience, marketing, sales), the book itself won't do any of that.

When creating art, you must first have an idea that you are trying to bring into reality.

In other words, nothing has changed; people simply dislike new things, and these new things illuminate what was always important. If you can't create art with AI, you weren't an artist to begin with. You're just good at using tools like Photoshop. Tools will be replaced. Vision and agency won't.

III. Why Generalists Will Win in the AI Era

"Schools were created to enslave the brightest minds, keeping them narrow-minded by promising them the prestige of specialization, so that they would not overthrow the real rulers."

Whenever I write about being a generalist, a jack-of-all-trades, or having multiple interests, someone always jumps out to tell me I'm wrong (and never provides any coherent argument as to why being an expert is better).

They quoted Shakespeare's classic line, "A jack of all trades is a master of none." But they didn't know that this famous quote was taken out of context; the second half is, "But oftentimes better than a master of one."

Some might think of Shakespeare as a professional playwright, but he was actually a polymath. He had to have a profound understanding of human nature, language, classical literature, stagecraft, religion, philosophy, military tactics, music, navigation, the natural world, social structures, the body and medicine, and so on—the list is long. He was an integrator, using his diverse interests as a strength.

The CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, Darwin, Jobs, or any visionary or strategist who achieves great success all have a specific vision, which they then learn and take the necessary steps to realize. Don't confuse a specific vehicle or niche market with "specialization."

Specialists rely on a single skill. Skills evolve and are replaced as technology advances. We may not see it clearly now, but Photoshop revolutionized the art and design industry. AI is doing the same thing, and those "experts" who rely on skills rather than true artistry will be furious, as you've already seen. In contrast, generalists focus on a goal, doing what's necessary (including changing that goal) to survive in any field.

Let me break this down further: humans are the creators of tools, and we can survive in any ecological niche because we can adapt.

If you put a lion in Alaska and a polar bear on the African savanna, they will die. But if you put humans anywhere, they will build shelters, sew clothes, and hunt for food because they can make plans and put them into practice.

The reality is that, in order to educate the large influx of immigrant children in the 19th century (a necessity for industrialization), the United States adopted the Prussian education model. This wasn't education at all; it was a weapon of mass obedience. Its design aimed to produce obedient soldiers, compliant citizens, civil servants, and law-abiding workers through mandatory attendance, teacher training, student testing, and grade-level divisions. Sound familiar?

Society expects you to be simple, predictable, and easy to categorize.

Why?

Because this is in their best interest. This is in the best interest of the organization. If you understand systems theory, you'll understand that systems evolve to the form most beneficial to the ultimate goal—in this case, society, this means keeping you weak and foolish, whether intentionally or not. This doesn't need conspiracy theories to explain; systems naturally shape themselves according to the desires of those at the top of the pyramid.

What should you do?

If slaves are expected to do only one thing in their lives, thus shutting down their minds to learn more (specialization), then you, as a free individual, are destined to do many things in your life. Rebel against the path predetermined for you at birth.

Pursue an education based on your interests. Use your abilities wisely.

IV. Five Human Abilities

Although agency is good, we are still bound by the laws of physics.

This raises another major concern that fluctuates with the AI hype cycle:

Will artificial general intelligence render human intelligence irrelevant?

Let's clarify our thinking by asking a few questions.

Are human capabilities finite or infinite? As highly proactive generalists, are we capable of learning and doing anything, as long as our genes don't limit us? We adapt to and thrive in various fields by relying on knowledge and tools. A fundamental question about human capabilities is: are there limits to what we think and how we think?

If the main limitations are the brain's processing speed and memory, can't those be enhanced? Wouldn't that become even more possible when AGI emerges? Won't we become AGI? Aren't we already AGI? Aren't we living among superintelligence?

It's interesting to speculate on these things, but that day is still a while away, so I'd like to focus on the near future.

Humans have five basic abilities. Can artificial intelligence render these abilities irrelevant?

1. Calculation (Mental Level)

Is there a limit to our computing power? No, because once you have a portable general-purpose computer, computing anything is just a matter of time and memory. We already have that. Even if AGI or aliens possessed it, they would have the same computing power as us and wouldn't have a significant advantage over us.

You might say that AGI calculates faster, but that doesn't speed up the physical transformation process, which is the process of building things. You can have an idea to build a particle collider, but you still need the resources to build it.

2. Transformation (physical level)

Transformation is creation. With the right knowledge, we can turn raw materials into rockets.

Human hands and bodies seem particularly adept at creating anything by following a specific sequence of operations. We build spaceships and telescopes. This means we can create "tools for making tools." We are generalists, creating tools to adapt to any environment. We are not animals confined to a single ecological niche.

The question is: are there any limitations when these basic operations are chained together correctly?

The answer is also no. If a human could remotely control a gorilla, given enough time, that gorilla could build a rocket by following the steps. This isn't about relying solely on a gorilla. Imagine if Elon Musk were controlling that gorilla. What would he do?

The key is time. Transformation takes time, and the singularity doesn't change that, just as the Enlightenment or the Big Bang didn't. Time is a compression algorithm that prevents everything from happening simultaneously. The Enlightenment and the Big Bang obviously didn't directly launch rockets into space. In other words, AGI may be able to calculate faster than our brains, but that doesn't mean it can build physical objects faster than humans. You can have an idea for building a rocket, but you still need to acquire the resources to build it.

So far, AGI's concerns seem to stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of reality itself.

Beyond computation and transformation, there are variation, selection, and attention, which relate to exploring the "space of ideas" (i.e., the unknown) or how we create knowledge. We can compute and transform, but are we limited in the knowledge that enables us to do so?

Knowledge has two functions: first, to make specific things happen, preferably good things rather than bad things; second, to capture patterns in reality.

This allows us to store information efficiently, instead of having to start from scratch every time. We understand macroscopic concepts, such as sunrise and sunset, and the changing of the seasons.

Without this understanding, our lives would fall apart. Pattern recognition allows us to plan based on proximity. We know we'll freeze to death in cold environments, so we use our knowledge of "jackets" and "hotels" to stay warm while traveling.

Imagine the realm of ideas (or the unknown) as a cosmic map with bright and dark spots. Bright spots represent the areas you've explored. Dark spots represent the locations of your potential.

This map is the surface area of an idea, which can be discovered and its effectiveness tested against reality. When the results don't bring you closer to your goal, or even push you further away, the problem is exposed, and you must correct the errors towards your goal.

3. Variation

Is there a limit to the number of new ideas we can come up with in order to survive and pursue our dreams?

With computation, we can roam the entire space of ideas. With agency, we can take any step in that space and eventually (after countless bad ideas) stumble upon a good one. Through creation, we can move in unique ways, such as flying over a forest instead of walking through it.

Therefore, we can understand anything, create anything, and discover endless new ideas to solve endless problems. AGI can do the same. We are all bound by the laws of nature, but any possibility within those laws is within our grasp.

4. Select

We can come up with any idea, but can we find a good one?

The potential problem is that without learning from mistakes, it's difficult to achieve cumulative progress. If you want to build electric cars but have to start all over again from building gasoline cars, that's no fun at all. As a species, we wouldn't be very advanced that way either.

As a general-purpose control system, we can navigate in conceptual space more efficiently and avoid getting lost. We will correct errors. There is no fundamental difference in this respect.

5. Attention

Another aspect of humanity that is taken for granted is our ability to shift focus by changing perspectives.

When a problem arises, where does your attention go? If you want to build a rocket, will praying to gods and Buddhas help? Or can you switch perspectives and look at the situation in a way that allows you to perceive opportunities?

While this is a major human problem (paradigm lock-in and ideological dependence), we do have the ability to shift our focus when problems arise. We can seek peace through spiritual lenses and progress through scientific lenses.

Identifying with a purely spiritual philosophy is no different from becoming an incomplete system, one that cannot solve certain problems. Spirituality is an excellent tool, but it is not a panacea.

V. How to truly practice initiative

You develop agency by practicing the agency of others until you can create your own. In other words, you follow the rules until you can create your own rules, which means that the highest quality of agency is knowing when to break free from constraints.

Overall, agency is not a trait, but an art.

The best way to observe this art is through games.

Painting allows us to record what we see.

Music allows us to record sounds.

Stories allow us to record narratives.

Games allow us to record our agency.

When playing games, you almost always start with a goal: to win. From there, you have various tasks, but these tasks must be performed in order of experience. You start at level 1, level up to level 2 and above, and once you reach a higher level, you can go back and use all your knowledge and skills to devise how to achieve the next goal.

The higher the level, the more interesting life becomes, because you can choose the next challenging yet meaningful goal. It's no longer something assigned to you like in the tutorial phase. This is precisely why you feel like your life is out of control. You reach level 10 (childhood, school, work) and then you get stuck. The game isn't fun anymore because the game designers don't benefit from you leveling up, so they incentivize you to stay there. You're trapped in a cycle of boredom and anxiety because all the tasks are repetitive and mindless, and any further challenge overwhelms you because you don't know how to learn. The most important boss battle of your life is: following your own path.

How do I begin practicing?

First, you just need to find a goal to pursue.

Any goal is fine. Because nobody truly knows what they want. Instead, they deeply understand what they don't want and use that as their future goal. From there, you have a direction to move forward. Set a goal to make that direction more realistic, and then follow these steps:

Study how others succeed. You can find this information on YouTube, social media, courses by well-known creators, or from mentors.

- Try different methods. Implement the processes you've learned and see if you get results. (By the way, most methods may not work for you, but that's okay).

- Identify patterns, principles, and key points. Record the most important parts of everything you try. These are often the keys to achieving results.

- Create your own process. Adapt what you learn to your unique lifestyle and circumstances.

- Pass it on to others. Teachers learn more than students; if you can't explain it clearly in a way that benefits others, it means you haven't truly understood it yet.

This is also why I love social media.

First, that's where attention is. You can't build a lifelong career by broadcasting on the radio or sending handwritten letters to potential clients. Obviously, you need to write content.

Beyond serving as a low-barrier, low-risk, and low-cost platform for doing what you want, learning and initiative are built into it. This is the greatest game of modern times.

You can learn about initiative from other people's content, guides, and courses.

You can conduct experiments in public and get direct feedback—you can quickly identify what works and what doesn't.

You are forced to learn a set of future-oriented skills.

You need to really figure out what you want to talk about on the internet.

This is your chance to decide how to use this information.