I spoke to a friend over the weekend who is changing direction: he’s walked away from one successful thread of his career and is heading in an entirely different direction. Different industry, different skills, really starting out anew.
Few people have the desire, confidence, or opportunity to switch direction so radically. Most of us restrict ourselves to movement within the system and space that we know.
Partly this is because it’s the most familiar, logical, and safe thing to do, and partly because our knowledge and experience tend to funnel down into specific areas. The very expertise we build may blind us to alternatives.
Essentially we end up operating within the space we are comfortable in, surrounded by the space that is familiar, that we can see, and wrapped up in the space that is strange and unknown to us. Three layers, the first two of which we may inhabit easily.
Use your sixty seconds today to think about boundaries, the edges of our skills, knowledge, experience, vision.
Which things have you spent years learning, which spaces do you visit most regularly, where does your ‘familiar’ exist?
None of us need to be masterful in multiple domains, but there is value in being able to visualise where the edges of systems lie - systems of organisation, or of our own knowledge and comfort.