Truth Bomb Tuesday: Just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean it’s not valuable.
There’s a paradox in economics. It is the idea that value of something is connected to how scarce it is, not how useful it is.
Take water for example. Water is about the most useful thing on the planet. Without it, we are dead within days.
And yet, it’s practically free because it literally falls from the skies. There’s such an abundance of it, that its price goes to zero.
Abundance = cheap.
This is the same reason why diamonds are expensive. They have limited industrial uses, but attract a hefty price because there’s an (artificial, google it) shortage of them.
Scarce = valuable.
I was thinking about this the other day because I saw a particularly beautiful old Queenslander pub.
High ceilings, wrap around veranda on the second floor. Feature fire place. Decent snitty and chips.
And it was made of timber. Like pretty much everything that could have conceivably been timber, was timber. Floors, walls, banisters, stairs. Everything.
And we’re not talking cheap pine here. We’re talking solid hard-wood timber. The kind timber that makes a builder blush these days. Lovely old timber.
And with all that gorgeous timber on display, it was beautiful.
But it probably wasn’t built to be beautiful. It was probably built to be cheap. 100 odd years ago, when they were still pulling cedar out of south east Queensland, timber was cheap.
And it was cheap because it was abundant.
But then, after the logging was done, solid hardwood timber became scarce. And as it became scarce, it became expensive.
And that’s why these old pubs are practically irreplaceable. Not in their original form anyway.
Anyway, the point I’m ambling towards is that if you want to make something amazing, you don’t necessarily have to use scarce resources.
And this is something I see a lot with the people I work with. People don’t value the skills they have if they’re abundant and come easily to them.
People who are natural people people – who are happy to call someone up and have a chat – they don’t value those skills and wish they had better number crunching abilities.
The number crunchers on the other hand can’t fathom how you can get on the phone with someone without rehearsing in front of the mirror for a couple of hours first. To them, people skills are the skills worth having.
And you can see this play out in my career too. I’ve always been a pretty comfortable public speaker, but I never valued that. It seemed too easy to even call it a skill. It wasn’t until someone showed me how I could turn my natural talents in to my current career that things really took of.
So this is my advice – to you and to everyone. Take a look at your natural talents. There might be things that come so naturally to you that you don’t even realise they’re a skill.
And just because it comes easily to you, doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. There’s somebody out there who is going to think that it’s nothing short of a super-power.
And then once you’ve figured that out, build your investment strategy and career around the talents you have in abundance.
It will seem like it’s too easy. But that’s ok.
Life is allowed to be easy you know.
DB.