Do What Others Won’t – adamtcroft.com

I’m quite certain that you already know about “soft” and “hard” skills.

If you’re an average reader of mine – you’re excellent at acquiring “hard” skills, and you range from awful to exceptional at acquiring “soft” skills.

But, I can probably count on one hand the number of you who know of – much less actively use – the most lucrative, advantageous “skill” that I know of.

It’s so rare, in fact, that I’m not exactly sure if one even gets taught how to do it. It requires observation, skepticism, discernment and practice to uncover.

Simply put – it’s the ability to do what others won’t.

And, I don’t just mean going crazy and working harder than everyone else. Instead, I’m speaking of being critical of your surroundings and strategically going against the grain.

Let’s walk through some examples –

Complaints

Undoubtedly people you work with complain. It’s a modern, first world human, apex trait. We love to complain about stupid things that do not matter.

The best example of this, for our sake, is office gossip.

In a former office of mine, I got along extremely well with the vast majority of my coworkers. We looked out for each other, enjoyed each other’s company, and did great work. However – when interfacing with another team, we always ran into problems.

The other team over promised, and under delivered.

The other team never made deadlines.

The other team abused power and always jockeyed for more.

The other team never looked out for our interests.

In short, the other team was our public enemy #1. They were everyone’s favorite complaint target due to the ease at which we could drop rude jokes and make our whole team laugh.

But, at one point, I was put in a situation where I realized it would potentially be advantageous to work well with them. It was either that, or come into work every day for an indefinite period of time and become increasingly frustrated.

But to do this required me to test my assumptions – to question myself and the honesty of my teammates in a discerning way.

What I discovered was confusing and – at first – I didn’t like it.

Because, in all honesty, the other team wasn’t objectively doing anything wrong. They were running their ship the best way they knew how – and weren’t receiving much assistance from anyone else. In fact, the other team was working hard and receiving grief for it – from us, and others!

If I turned to look at the situation from their perspective, they were killing themselves only to receive no help or synergy from teams like mine. Because of that, they had difficulty making deadlines, communicating their needs, helping external teams, and were always jockeying to keep their boundaries intact and not be crushed by an external team.

Were they doing things poorly that adversely affected others? Without a doubt.

Were these things as heinous and intentionally manipulative as my team had made them out to be? No, in fact, it was the exact opposite.

But, to befriend the other team… to help them… socially would put me at odds with my own team. I’d be fighting an uphill battle and initially it would be perceived as if I were a traitor and helping those who were hurting my team.

Any rational adult reading this will say to themselves “Bah! That’s childish – I would never see someone in my office like that!” But, think about befriending the person you dislike most in the office, and what your friends would say to you.

But, in such a case, doing what others won’t will turn you into a leader.

In this case, I got to build a bridge between teams – breaking down barriers and helping my larger company become better. It required learning other people’s work and process – which made me a better employee and an ambassador to both teams in the process, as there was a lot of learning to be had.

So when people are complaining regularly – listen, don’t join in. Usually, if you act the opposite way of their complaints, there’s a lot of headway to be made.

It’s a Waste of Time

I think, if I took an informal and unscientific poll, I’ve probably built an entire career around wasting time.

At one point, my theatre degree was a waste of time.

Working hard to get into entertainment instead of “getting a real job” was a waste of time.

Learning how to properly run a business, legally setup a company, read tax law, and vet CPAs and lawyers was a waste of time.

Continuing to buy courses and investing more in education post-college than I ever did in school was a waste of time.

Writing every week, multiple books, definitely was a waste of time.

Even taking lower paying gigs and making lots of mistakes early in my career – so much wasted time.

That is, if you consult most of my friends and family who have no idea what I do for a living. Most of them are just thankful that I have a full time job now and I’m doing something (no, they don’t know what I do even if I explain it to them – they never have and they never well, it’s okay).

If you’ve been around a while, you know this lesson well. Achieving weird career goals takes plenty of willpower in sticking to your guns and doing what others won’t – because an audio-based career path has no true map of exactly how it’s accomplished. It’s more often stumbled into than painstakingly crafted.

But the lesson you probably didn’t pick up is that this process never actually stops.

Once you get the audio career, most of us stop trying to achieve something beyond our usual capabilities. At one point, plugins, microphones, audio software, recording techniques – all of those things were weird and hard.

But, then you learn them. Certainly there’s a never-ending well of esoteric audio knowledge that you can master – and if that’s your thing, useful, or even interesting then go for it.

But there’s probably another skill that you’re interested in that you’re embarrassed to start. Maybe you feel like you should know more of it than you do and you’re uncomfortable publicly acknowledging your ignorance to even one person. Maybe it’s just outside the norm and you feel like if you bring it up, someone will turn it into a sarcastic joke.

That is the thing you should pursue.

This ends up with a practice called “skill stacking” – taking different, seemingly unrelated skills and blending them together into one extremely unique palette.

Keen observers will notice that I’ve done entertainment audio, architectural AV, voice recording, writing, and programming. Throw these things all in a pot, stir them together, and you cook up – well – me and nobody else.

It could be that you know audio, djimbe drumming, salsa dancing, and fire breathing – which turns you into a sound recordist/designer with incredible timing and a knack for recording in dangerous situations.

There is truly no limit to what wild things you can throw together to effectively build your experience into something extremely special and worthwhile to a great number of individuals.

But you know what most people do when they’ve become gainfully employed and are making an acceptable amount of money?

They go home and watch Netflix at the end of the day, and then they talk about what they’re watching at work with their friends. They stop reading and educating themselves on anything outside of the news and their entertainment of choice.

But when you do what others don’t – the field becomes ripe for you, and all of the new expertise you’re gaining by spending your time on more useful things.

Practice

So there’s two simple examples for you to think about. At first, this is a weird, difficult habit to get your brain into. Most of us are used to complaining or resting on our laurels – even making excuses as to why we can’t all the time.

But once you see an instance in the world around you were things may not be quite the way that others say they are – you’ll have a hard time seeing the world the same way again.

Instead, you’ll have attained a superpower where you see what others can’t.

That, of course, means you’re only a step away from doing what others won’t.

And the more you do that – the further you’re going to get.