>>Eat well. Sleep. Maintain relationships with people you care about. Work hard, pay attention to what you're doing and think critically. That's all there is to it.

That’s my takeaway.

Hmm, I don't know...These sound like good advices to do your job well and might even lead to happiness (which is good of course). But if your goal is to have a successful career maybe this would be more useful: Word hard on the right things, pay attention to what the others are doing and praise your own work uncritically :)

The question is: “what is your definition of success?” or “what is success to you? or “what do you think will make other people say you are successful?”

For a lot of uninspired and uncreative people, it’s mostly about the 3rd question, and it’s money, just money...

And they probably subscribe to a blog saying to blog everyday, and that’s how you get poor quality, uninspiring blog.

>>praise your own work uncritically

Am I not supposed to be critical of my work, and review it not pulling any punches, without being economical with the Truth?

Agreed, that article could not be more vague.

I don't argue with the main point, which is "broaden your skills."

But the rest is debatable and not such good advice. Some of the items given in the "skill list" used as an example are absolutely unusable as it. "writing"? writing what, there's a huge difference between being able to write novels and writing technical documentation for instance. I also have a grip on "productivity", that's not a skill, that's the ability to apply a skill. A better pragmatic definition of a marketable skill, I think, would be the ability to write it on your résumé, and only a subset of the ones discussed in the article fit this definition.

>The template is simple: Write generic advice that sounds nice, and is never controversial. Make sure it's super vague so you don't have to take any accountability for it, you can move the goalposts of what you're saying

In technical terms, what you are suggesting is that the article is making a claim which is unfalsifiable. But actually it is falsifiable. All you have to do is find a person who has diverse skills but is unsuccessful.

Finding a single counterexample works in mathematics to disprove a theorem, but not in this situation. It is silly to claim that having diverse skills guarantees success. The article doesn't even claim that; it explicitly mentions increasing the odds of success. To "disprove" this claim, you'd need to design and run a study that looks for a statistical relationship between success and skill diversity, both of which you'd have to quantify somehow.

It doesn’t guarantee it, it doubles the probability, and it is stackable. So there is a metric to measure (somehow).

Now, the author is probably just bullshittng things out of his fingers, an assumption I make based on the lack of any evidence being provided.

Nonetheless, since stackability and doubling at each turn mean you can trend toward 100% very quickly, then you can look at people you see as very successful, no matter what is your favorite measure of success, and observe for yourself.

Now I like “social impact” as a measure of success, but it’s a lot easier to go with “f’ing rich people” because data is being compiled every year by different business magazines. So when you take the list of Billionaires, you can realize that only one thing, sometimes two, where involved.

Now if someone would like to apply a statistical analysis to this, I think it would favor The null hypothesis, which is: there is no relation between the number of skills stacked and the amount of money in ones’ bank account

>Now, the author is probably just bullshittng things out of his fingers, an assumption I make based on the lack of any evidence being provided.

Also based on the author talking about "doubling probability". What does that even mean?

> All you have to do is find a person who has diverse skills but is unsuccessful

I know many people like this, but I suspect the No True Scotsman fallacy would get invoked.

They’re clearly not skilled enough at their diverse skills.

It’d be a bit like me trying to sell myself as a master of multiple instruments.

>> I suspect the No True Scotsman fallacy would get invoked

> They’re clearly not skilled enough at their diverse skills

One of my skills is accurate predictions, it turns out.

I think these articles have value, but in moderation. It's like watching TED talks - watch too many, you become the antithesis of productive. Focus too much on productivity software, you lose sight in what matters. Focus on your life, people you care about, and work hard. But you should be your biggest critic, don't expect someone else to do this for you.

Per the topic itself.

I tend to enjoy many things, so skillstacking is something I naturally pursue. My take on this topic, is just to create value as much as possible. Not just for others, but yourself as well. Things like learning new software, building tools people use, workshops you can use to make DIY projects, and long term relationships.

Sure there will be mistakes, you will write cringey things like "Read over 500 books" in your about page, but it's still progression. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

> Write generic advice that sounds nice, and is never controversial. Make sure it's super vague so you don't have to take any accountability for it, you can move the goalposts of what you're saying.

Worked for Agile ducks

Well in fairness some Agile is controversial.

I've only ever heard it sold as an ala-carte solution, where you can freely pick-and-choose the least controversial bits. Agile-lite by default.

I think you meant Fragile (tm)

Great comment. For the article writer it seemed like a numbers game or checklist. Learn X languages (whatever 'learn' means here) or read X number of books. IME, what you learn and read is more important than the raw numbers.

I'm selective in what I will devote a large amount of time doing. If I'm reading a book for something other than downtime enjoyment, I want to make sure it's a book that I will get something useful out of (bonus points to books that provide enjoyment and usefulness).

Breadth of knowledge is useful, but someone also needs depth in something.

The SMBC comics this morning was about a Turing test for non-fiction literature, but it would apply to this also

> For example, I don't want someone who can write "Hello, World!" in 30 programming languages.

Would anyone consider this being "ok" at 30 different things? That is just reductive to the point of not making any sense. In the scope the post is talking about "programming" would be one thing. So 30 different languages would be irrelevant. And being able to write only "hello world" would not even qualify as being "ok" at a programming language.

But you can't publish a medium post which reads pay attention to what you're doing. You have to crappify it.

"10 ways in which billionaires pay attention to the right things".

There, now your post has a Medium-worthy title.

It's just this "empty" content that every blogger is spewing these days just to publish something.

> just to publish something

Every blogger knows there is no money in "content mill" style writing. they publish this pseudo-self help stuff to generate leads for their ebooks and training seminars.

so good advice will be: just read technical articles that develop your skills

Also he's just plagiarizing Scott Adams's notion of a "talent stack."

I was going to say the same, no attribution at all, and dubious claims about how your success will increase.

I believe the talent stack is a valid principle, but it doesn't just double your success if you go to toastmasters and learn how to present and at your job you have neither a commission nor any customer contact.

He does attribute, right in the second line of the whole piece:

>> The more skills we have, the more odds we have to become successful. I like how Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, explains the concept of Skill Stacking ...

My bad, skimmed it very quickly and didn't see that.

I searched the page text for Adams before I posted and saw nothing. I guess I missed it too somehow or the page was updated.