Benjamin Todd

Once you have valuable skills, you'll also need to learn how to sell those skills to others and make connections.

This can involve deliberately gaining credentials, such as by getting degrees or creating public demo projects.

Or it can involve what's normally thought of as networking, such as going to conferences or building up a Twitter following.

So it's true, all these kinds of activities build your career capital too.

But all of these activities become much easier once you have something useful to offer, which is why we put the emphasis on building skills first.

Getting good at something useful usually involves a combination of the following four ingredients.

1.

Choose valuable skills to learn.

We covered some broad skill types that we think are valuable for doing good in the previous chapter.

Organization building, communication and community building, research, earning to give, and government and policy.

2.

Find skills that are a good fit for you.

Those that match your talents and that you can learn fastest, which we'll cover in the next chapter.

3.

Practice.

Getting good at most jobs takes years, if not decades.

You shouldn't expect to excel right away.

This also makes it vital to find good mentorship, to do something you can stick with for a long time.

And 4.

Increase your chances of being in the right place at the right time.