Transferable skills

Way back when, I used to train dance and performance semi-professionally. Anyone who meets me today would never guess, but when I would take a pilates or martial arts class, I would be arguably better than an average person of the same experience level. 

Why? Because I already had coordination skills and knew precisely where my body was in space in relation to other bodies in that same space.

Fast forward a couple of years later, in the trenches of being a freelance writer. When I would apply to some gigs, sometimes I’d get a rejection saying I’m not the right kind of a writer. They were looking for a particular kind of specialization, and I wasn’t it, or they just didn’t see that I was, in fact, “it”.

Now specializations are a thing. But they are a thing that has something to do with knowledge. And knowledge, friends, is something attainable, especially when you know what you’re doing and where you need to look.

Today, I don’t perform modern dance on a stage anymore and I’m sure my knees would say thanks if they could. Instead, I started to work in marketing and events, then on computer games, and then on software products, all in the capacity of, basically, a writer.

How did I manage all those quick leaps? And how did I learn stuff in marketing that helped me be a narrative designer and how did narrative design help me be a UX writer… not to mention how useful screenwriting ended up to be when there’s a sudden need to produce a video, but make it very fast.

Here’s the thing. When I learn something new, I spend a lot of time on a single skill and that’s expensive because it’s time you never get back. It better be worth it, right? So I never learn something that I can’t apply to many other aspects of my work. Wherever I look, I look for connections. Here cometh the lesson:

Context to a writer is what physical space is to a dancer. As in recognizing what’s the situation and what it needs from you. It’s the key that unlocks your brain. 

A lot of people like to work on repeat and think others do too, that’s what’s good with specializations. But specialists are not that safe of a bet. You need to be on the lookout for people who know what to do when they see something new. This is what it means to have a transferable skill.