Something that I spend a lot of time thinking is — in a world where artificial intelligence can write code, design graphics, and analyze data, what skills will actually matter for humans?

In the past we’ve always defaulted to focusing on staying current with the latest tools and technologies in order to remain competitive. Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google's DeepMind, recently said "...the most valuable human skill for the future will be 'learning how to learn' as artificial intelligence transforms education, careers and daily life.”

But the deeper question is what do you learn and how do you go about doing it?

The answer isn’t the technical skills that currently dominate job descriptions, but the fundamental human skills that help you learn, adapt, and apply knowledge across any context.

This idea was reinforced for me while running weekly creativity sessions for the design team at the marketing agency I worked with in the early 2000s. I wanted to test a hypothesis that had been forming about the future of work.

I believed that "T-shaped people" or expert generalists with deep expertise in one area plus the ability to learn and apply skills across disciplines would thrive in an increasingly complex world. What started as targeted creativity and lateral thinking sessions was working well, but I wanted to see what would happen if we expanded these sessions company-wide.

The results confirmed my suspicion. Engineers brought systematic thinking to storytelling exercises, making narratives more logical and compelling. Marketers added narrative structure to technical problem-solving, helping communicate solutions more effectively. The magic wasn't happening within individual skills. It was happening at the intersections. Everyone was becoming more creative, not just the designers.

What I'd found wasn't just better training. I'd discovered the power of metaskills.

Why Your Technical Skills Aren't Enough Anymore

What started as an exercise in creativity taught me something much broader. I initially focused on eight core abilities that seemed essential for creative work: fluency, articulation, resourcefulness, responsiveness, flexibility, originality, resilience, and repurposing ideas. These felt like the right foundational skills at the time.

But as I watched people apply these abilities across different contexts: engineers becoming better storytellers, marketers improving their technical problem-solving, I realized I wasn't just looking at creative skills. I was seeing what others call metaskills: higher level skills that make learning any other skill easier.

The term isn't new, but my a-ha moment was recognizing that focusing on this specific set of transferable abilities could be the key to thriving in an uncertain world. These weren't just nice-to-have creative capabilities. They were becoming essential professional survival skills.

Imagine Leonardo da Vinci standing in his workshop, switching between dissecting a human body, sketching a new invention, and creating The Last Supper. His genius wasn't just in what he knew—it was in how he connected insights across completely different fields. Those higher-level skills enabled him to efficiently utilize and manage a wide range of competencies.

Sometimes I laugh when I see LinkedIn profiles with 47 endorsed skills (and yes, I’m guilty too). It's like a professional merit badge collection—impressive looking but ultimately meaningless. The person with 47 skills probably can't adapt as quickly as someone who's mastered the six metaskills I'm about to share. We've confused collecting capabilities with developing capacity.

Change Has Become the Only Constant

In the past, specializing deeply in one field was sufficient for building a stable career. You could master accounting, engineering, or marketing and feel confident about your professional future.

Today, that's not enough. Technologies evolve at incredible speed, industries change overnight, and skills that took years to master can suddenly become irrelevant. The hard skills of yesterday might be less valuable tomorrow.

Here's what I've learned: people who seem 'naturally adaptable' have just developed better learning systems.

Here's what we don't usually calculate: career pivots cost months of lost salary plus expensive retraining. But people with strong metaskills don't pay this tax. They turn industry disruption into promotion opportunities instead of career emergencies.

Metaskills enable you to:

• Adapt quickly to new situations, technologies, and job requirements

• Learn continuously with the curiosity and growth mindset that fuel self-improvement

• Unlock your potential in all areas of life, not just your current role

In those creativity sessions, I saw this happen in real time. People weren't just getting better at their existing jobs, they were developing the capacity to tackle completely new challenges with confidence.

Six Metaskills for Thriving in Any Context

After years of observing what makes people adaptable and effective across contexts, I've identified six fundamental metaskills that create this foundation for continuous growth and adaptation:

1. Exploring (Learning, Questioning, Facilitating) - The ability to investigate subjects thoroughly, driven by curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. This is the journalist researching a complex story or the product manager conducting deep user research before developing features. It's about being genuinely curious about how things work and why they matter.

2. Creating (Building, Breaking, Reframing) - The ability to generate and develop new ideas, concepts, or objects through imagination and ingenuity. This isn’t just for artists. It could be the engineer designing eco-friendly buildings, the chef experimenting with fusion cuisine, or the software developer creating apps that solve problems in unique ways. It's about bringing something new into existence.

3. Feeling (Connecting, Empathizing, Storytelling) - The ability to connect with your own emotions and those of others, fostering empathy and strong interpersonal skills. This shows up in the therapist using active listening to help clients, the marketing professional crafting brand stories that resonate, or the teacher adapting their style to meet students' emotional needs. It's about understanding and working with human nature.

4. Imagining (Improvising, Observing, Playing) - The power to create mental images, ideas, or scenarios beyond current reality, fostering creativity and innovation. Think of the science fiction author envisioning technologically advanced societies, the urban planner reimagining city spaces for sustainability, or even a child turning a cardboard box into a spaceship. It's about seeing possibilities that don't yet exist.

5. Innovating (Idea Fluency, Idea Articulation, Originality) - The ability to introduce novel concepts or make significant changes to existing ones, pushing boundaries and driving progress. This is the engineer developing breakthrough renewable energy technology, the startup founder disrupting traditional industries, or the teacher implementing new methods that dramatically improve learning outcomes. It's about making meaningful change happen.

6. Adapting (Resourcefulness, Responsiveness, Flexibility) - The capacity to modify actions, behaviors, or beliefs in response to changing situations, demonstrating flexibility and resilience. We saw this during the pandemic as businesses pivoted to e-commerce, athletes modified training regimens around injuries, or retirees learned new technologies to stay connected. It's about thriving through change rather than just surviving it.

These six metaskills form a complete foundation for navigating uncertainty, but the magic happens when you understand how they amplify each other.

How Metaskills Multiply Each Other

What makes metaskills powerful isn't just their individual impact—it's how they amplify each other in unexpected ways. This isn't just theoretical synergy. It's compound effectiveness that shows up in real work.

Consider what happens when you combine specific metaskills:

An engineer who develops Feeling + Creating doesn't just write cleaner code, they anticipate user frustrations before they happen and build solutions that feel intuitive rather than technically correct. Their empathy informs their innovation.

A project manager who strengthens Exploring + Adapting doesn't just gather more information, they develop radar for which insights actually matter when timelines shift or requirements change. They know what to investigate and when to pivot.

A marketer who combines Imagining + Innovating doesn't just create campaigns, they envision entirely new ways customers might want to engage with products, then figure out how to make those visions real.

This multiplication effect was exactly what I witnessed in those creativity sessions, but I've seen it play out in countless other contexts. At Hello Alice, our customer success team has well developed Exploring and Feeling metaskills. They didn't just solve user problems faster—they started identifying patterns in user struggles that led to product improvements no one had considered.

I refer to this as the 'Metaskill Multiplication Effect.' When you have two strong metaskills, you don't get 2x effectiveness—you get something closer to 4x because they compound exponentially. This is why some people seem to have unfair advantages: they're not working harder, they're working with compound interest.

The magic isn't in getting good at one metaskill. It's in understanding how they reinforce each other to create capabilities that are genuinely hard to replicate. When your Adapting skills improve your Creating, and your Creating enhances your Innovating, you develop a kind of professional agility that makes you valuable in any context.

How to Develop Your Metaskills

The great thing about metaskills is that you can develop them regardless of your current role or background.

An accountant can strengthen their Creating metaskill by designing visual dashboards that tell stories with financial data, or by developing new ways to present budget information that helps non-financial teams actually understand resource allocation.

A software engineer can develop their Feeling metaskill by conducting user interviews before writing code, or by spending a day in customer support to understand how real people struggle with the product.

Here's how to start:

1. Focus on one metaskill at a time. Rather than trying to develop everything simultaneously, pick the metaskill that feels most immediately relevant to your current challenges or goals.

2. Practice through your existing work. You don't need to take up painting to develop Creating—look for opportunities to apply metaskills within your current responsibilities and projects. That said, activities like improv comedy, woodworking, or creative writing can accelerate metaskill development if you're drawn to them. The key is intention: whether you're redesigning a budget presentation or building a bookshelf, focus on which metaskill you're strengthening.

3. Embrace the beginner's mindset. Metaskills develop through practice, experimentation, and reflection. Be willing to try new approaches, make mistakes, and learn from the results.

4. Connect across disciplines. Actively seek out perspectives, examples, and approaches from fields completely different from your own. The intersection is where the magic happens.

The goal isn't to become Leonardo da Vinci overnight. It's to develop the foundational capabilities that make everything else, learning new technologies, adapting to industry changes, solving complex problems easier and more intuitive.

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Create "Visit Budgets" for Your Most Used Tools: Set a specific number of times you'll visit high-frequency spaces each day - email three times, Slack twice, project tools once per major work block. This forces you to make each visit count and eliminates mindless checking. Track it for a week and you'll be shocked how much mental energy this frees up.

II

Design "Consolidation Triggers" for Batch Work: Instead of handling things as they pop up, create triggers that bundle similar activities. When you have three emails to write, that's your trigger to batch all email composition work. When you have two documents to review, that triggers a focused analysis session. This prevents the one-off visits that fragment your attention.

III

Practice "Space Exit Discipline": Before leaving any digital space, ask: "What else can I accomplish while I'm here?" This simple question often reveals three or four additional tasks you can knock out in the same visit. The goal is to leave each space feeling complete rather than planning your next return trip.

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"What would I consolidate if I could only visit this space twice today?" This question reveals how much of your current activity is actually unnecessary maintenance versus meaningful work. It forces you to identify what really needs immediate attention versus what just feels urgent.

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"Which of my space visits are actually improving outcomes versus just managing anxiety?" Most frequent tool-checking is anxiety management disguised as productivity. This question helps distinguish between visits that create value and visits that just make you feel temporarily informed or in control.

The best productivity gains don't come from doing things faster - they come from going places less often. Master your movement patterns before you optimize your tasks.