Be the diamond, not the dirt

Skills are worthless in the wrong context.

Context

Context is the environment where your skills are most measurably valued. Where they’re worth the most. Where they generate influence. Where they provide satisfaction.

Where, not what

As AI and agentic skills replace tasks and roles faster than imagined, the question becomes where you build skills, not just what skills.

Context matters

Marketing and branding skills are pretty worthless for a small business.

Those exact same skills, for a company that just lost its CEO and is about to go into a pre-IPO roadshow, are worth a FORTUNE.

Hence, context matters a bunch.

Agree to disagree

You might say it’s not for everyone. It’s not accessible, only very few people meet that opportunity. I’d agree to disagree.

Lazy people deserve no break. They’ll be obsolete the fastest.

Desire and drive often trump lack of skill, and even luck. Everyone can get ahead somehow.

AI is such an amplifier, and the gap between those keeping up and those who aren’t is getting larger. You can acquire insanely valuable skills now, skills that compound as you augment yourself with agents.

Invert

So how do you figure out the right context, and stick with it? Context doesn’t just mean the opportunity you find yourself in. It’s also your field, your specialisation, your focus, your priorities.

Frankly, I don’t have the answers. What I do have is a dear old trick from Charlie Munger. It narrows down the field, which is half the job done. Turn the question around: what’s the wrong context?

The wrong context

Any context that thrives on skill that can be turned into a Claude skill.

One where you’re likely to be replaced by automation, easily and quickly. One built on an information gap that’s easily discovered. One where the value of the skill is easily measurable, like ads optimisation.

One with a huge amount of data available: those will be the first to fall to AI. One that requires very little human consideration. One where you consume more information than you produce.

The operator

I’m not trying to find a context in which AI has no utility. The opposite. It has great utility, but that utility is largely driven by me, the operator. Take me out of the equation and the quality of whatever I’m producing drops immensely.

That’s the right context. But if I’m immensely valuable to a handful of businesses and THEY get wiped out, I go under alongside them. There’s levels to this.

To some they’re dirt, to others diamond. Be the diamond, not the dirt.