the non-adult-skill-that-helped question after years reliably surfaces the unglamorous transferable skills, communication, patience, judgment, rather than any technical trick, which tells you that the durable advantages come from general capabilities more than industry-specific tactics. so the durable advantages are general skills like communication and judgment, not tactics. so recognize that the durable advantages come from general transferable skills like communication, patience, and judgment more than industry-specific tactics, because the non-adult-skill threads reliably surface those general capabilities as what helped most, so the operators who last built the general skills rather than relying only on tactics, which means the general transferable skills are the durable advantages, since the non-adult skills that operators credit are consistently the general capabilities rather than specific tricks, and the pattern that communication, patience, and judgment matter more than tactics tells you where the durable advantages come from, making the general skills the real edge, because the non-adult skills that operators credit for helping most are reliably the general transferable capabilities rather than industry-specific tactics, and the consistent surfacing of communication, patience, and judgment as the skills that mattered tells a newer operator that the durable advantages come from developing those general capabilities rather than only accumulating the industry-specific tactics that matter less than the transferable skills over the long run of a career.
funny how the skills people keep naming are writing, sales, patience, none of it adult-specific. tells you the business mostly rewards being generally competent rather than knowing some secret industry trick.
shutting up and just watching for a while is underrated. a lot of what works comes from actually seeing what happens instead of acting on what you assumed would happen. that part carried straight over for me.