How to Become More Competitive in a Gig Economy

Every Fall, Pacific and Atlantic salmon leave the ocean and swim upriver to spawn. Not all of them make it. There are miles and miles of river between the ocean and the spawn location. In this stretch, the salmon will encounter predators, changing water temperatures, obstructions and forks in the river, and changing salinity levels; all while traveling against the current.

It's not just strength, speed, intelligence, and luck that determine who makes it. The most successful individuals are the ones that can adapt quickly to a constantly shifting environment.

Many Steemit users are entrepreneurs, declining a steady salary and benefits in favor of freedom and flexibility. Today's job market is becoming more project-based, where individuals come together in clusters to complete a single project and then disassemble when the project has concluded. This practice is most common in the tech world, but is becoming more prevalent in traditional sectors like real estate, finance, non-profits and politics. Even traditional organizations are adopting "hybrid" models where salaried individuals shuffle and reshuffle into project-based teams within the organization.

So how does a savvy individual remain competitive and relevant in a gig-based job market?

Adaptability, in the wild, and in today's job market is the difference between success or failure, feast or famine.

So, what does this mean? You aren't a fish. How does a human become more adaptable?

There are three attributes that every individual needs to cultivate to be successful in a constantly-changing job market.

Skill

This one may be the most obvious. As the great Napoleon Dynamite said, "Girls only like guys who have great skills." And vice versa, of course. Traditional education systems train workers in specific, targeted fields for a lifelong career. To compete in the gig economy, you must stop being a worker and become a creator. A worker performs duties within a framework, accomplishing tasks and completing assignments. A creator shapes, builds, and innovates creating products, value, and concepts. To truly build skills, you have to learn to create. It doesn't matter what it is that you create: physical, digital, or intellectual. As long as you have the ability to create, you will always be in demand.

Assignment: learn how to craft something. Not cut-and-paste, Martha Stewart-style, stencil crafts, but something that takes time and skill to create.

Knowledge

Warren Buffett and his business partner, Charlie Munger, are some of the most successful businessman in the world. Buffett has famously attributed their success to his reading habit, saying, "read 500 pages like this every week. That's how knowledge builds up, like compound interest.”

It's not enough to just read anything. To be successful, you have to be strategic in your knowledge acquisition.

Buffett's business partner, Charlie Munger, once said,

"We read a lot. I don’t know anyone who’s wise who doesn’t read a lot. But that’s not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them."

Reading gossip columns, the latest self-help craze, or the latest smut novel isn't going to make you more competitive. To be effective in the gig economy, you need to have a basic understanding of a lot of different subjects. History, science, language, mathematics, political science.

Whether you realize it or not, all of the knowledge you have (accurate or not) combine to shape your worldview and your ability to understand new subjects. Your ability to program and work with code affects your ability to solve complex problems. Your understanding of scientific principles helps you to decipher new discoveries that might present new business opportunities.

Assignment: read a biography, scientific journal, or historical account. As you read, take notes of the main points and strive to take away at least one piece of information you can use in your everyday life.

Network

Perhaps even more crucial than what you do or know, is who you know. Your knowledge and skills are meaningless if you are an island. Numerous studies have shown that job applicants are more likely to be hired if they have received a referral. The gig economy is no different. In order to succeed, you have to make meaningful connections with a broad network.

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter do not equal meaningful connections. Establishing a solid network of people who will go to bat for you, push you to be better, provide references, and provide collaboration takes time. This means sacrificing working hours in favor of spending time socializing. For workaholics, this may seem counterintuitive, but this investment will never fail to produce a return. Aside from the direct benefit to your career, multiple studies have shown the health benefits of maintaining strong personal friendships.

Assignment: for the next month, aim to have coffee or lunch with one person each week. Don't settle for small talk during this time. Instead, spend that time really getting to know the person you meet with.

Avoid Complacency

Complacency is the greatest enemy of personal progress. Once you allow yourself to stagnate, to settle for the current project, to get lazy; the other fish will pass you, new obstacles will stump you, and the predators will catch you.

Benjamin E. Mays was a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. and a leader in his own right in the civil rights movement of the 1950's said this,

"The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities."