Guest Post: You are More Than the Sum of What You Know by Alice Cable

She's probably said it before, but in the podcast This is Working with Daniel Roth, Brené Brown states that when it comes to your career "nothing is wasted."

That's absolutely true, but it's also a bit more complex than those words imply.  I know this, because I used to take the concept that 'everything you've learned is useful' a bit too far.  

Here are some myths that have been fully busted.

Myth #1: "Well, that was a waste of time and money...."

Brene Brown says, "Two Words: Nothing Wasted." 

I struggle sometimes with being embarrassed by my music history degree (with a double-major in French Horn performance).  I don't bring it up, I don't have my diplomas on the wall anywhere.  Even with my hesitancy, I'm still able to admit that the organization, research, and interpersonal skills I developed as a grad student have served me as a professional adult.

The specific content knowledge I had at that time rarely comes up (and more on this later), and indeed I've forgotten a lot of it, but the analytical methods, and understanding cultural contexts, and other bigger concepts have stayed with me anyway.

Myth #2: I'm an idiot for having gone down that path.

Each career move made sense at the time. I suspect that most of your moves also made sense, even if they didn't work out.  You made the best decision with the options and evidence available to you, right?  We must be gentle with ourselves about the choices we made.  We can also try to encourage the people around us to not make the same mistakes we made, but we're an ornery species: we hate taking advice.

Myth #3:  I need to use all these skills because if I don't, then my experience/education becomes a waste of time.

This is the part that I really got wrong.

I used to assume that, as I advance or pivot in my career, there will be some secret job that would actually use all the skills I've accumulated and I just need to look in the right place. And if I can't find that special unicorn of a job that uses all the skills I have, then I need to invent the job.   Because I don't want my degree or experience to go to waste, or atrophy, or whatever. 

My dad used to say that learning is "money in the bank."   He might have meant that education would lead to higher paychecks.   But he also used to say that the only relationship you will have your entire life is with yourself, and the point he was making at that time was that you have to take care of your own physical and mental health.  Your education-or-experience is something that nobody can ever take away from you.  You might forget your skills, or the social studies lessons from seventh grade, but so far we don't have the technology for anyone else to take your memories from you.   So, in my dad's 'money in the bank' metaphor, your mind is the bank.  Skills and knowledge are the Benjamins and Dollars that fill up that memory bank. 

Bonus Reasons Learning Isn't Wasted:

And now we come back to the content knowledge, otherwise known as the liberal-arts-degree-conundrum.  As I get older, I'm able to understand that what I've chosen to learn enriches the life that I have.  This stuff won't help me to survive in the wild, but learning it nourishes my brain and contributes to understanding people and the world around me. Learning things you don't use is the difference between surviving and thriving.

I'd even extend this to the shows and books that are just for fun.  I've learned about ethics and philosophy and how to be a good person from The Good Place, Ted Lasso, and Star Trek, to name a few, and  I encourage you to reply in comments about things you've learned when you were 'wasting time.'

By the way, if you have various interests and a patchwork-quilt of experience, I recommend you check out "How to be Everything" by Emilie Wapnick, as well as staying tuned to Penney Leadership.  Emilie Wapnick is famous for coining the term "multipotentialite," which means that there are a lot of things you can be when you grow up and some of them simultaneously.   Carole Ann, meanwhile, helped me identify some common threads between seemingly unlike patterns, and helped me simply feel better about a weirdly winding road of a career.  Now, I can easily say that "I like to fully understand ideas and then share that information with other people."

I want you to know: You are more than the sum of what you know. A job can't possibly encapsulate all of you.

Now it's time to share what you've learned that you didn't expect to learn!

Alice Cable is a nonprofit swiss-army-knife and an informal educator. Throughout her education and career, the common threads have been sharing information in an engaging and relatable way: whether it's through teaching, customer service, marketing, or strategy. She lives in New Hampshire and is obsessed with "making stuff."