QuoteProject
Also, it's good to have more than one profession, in case your own profession goes out of style. A Wall Street trader who's also a belly dancer will do a lot better than a trader who winds up driving a taxi.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Having multiple skills or professions provides security and adaptability in a changing world.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb emphasizes the importance of versatility in one's career, suggesting that diversifying one's skill set is a wise strategy for navigating uncertain job markets. By highlighting the contrast between a Wall Street trader with a secondary skill in belly dancing and a trader who is limited to his primary profession, Taleb illustrates that adaptability can lead to greater opportunities and resilience during economic fluctuations.

Themes

VersatilitySkillsAdaptabilityCareerSecurity

In practice

Example use cases

During a career workshop, one could remind attendees about the importance of having multiple skills.

More from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nobody reads the disclosures that roll down your computer screen. You click 'I agree' but you don't know what you're agreeing to.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Individuals should think about the worst-case scenarios and plan for them. The world will be crazier than you think it will be. Put money away, and then you can live with much more freedom.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead

Similar quotes

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
Rabindranath TagoreRead
To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one's entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one's life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances.
Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiRead
If you survive long enough, you're revered - rather like an old building.
Katharine HepburnRead
Expectations are not based on reality. They are observations, expected realities, or beliefs of what you think will happen. Expectations of others stop us from acting as our highest selves and reaching our full potential.
Jay ShettyRead
Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life.
Gretchen RubinRead
Perhaps the best place to begin with an integral approach to business is with.. oneself. In the Big Three of self, culture, and world, integral mastery starts with self. How do body and mind and spirit operate in me? How does that necessarily impact my role in the world of business? And how can I become more conscious of these already operating realities in myself and in others?
Ken WilberRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | QuoteProject