Meta-skills are talents that inform every domain of life and govern your ability to improve other skills.  There are many meta-skills out there, but feeling, seeing, dreaming, making, and learning are likely the most important when trying to remain competitive in the modern world.

FEELING

Because the of future lies in automation, social intelligence is going to be an indispensable  skill. Individuals with more empathy and other uniquely human gifts will be able to bring the most value. Interpersonal skills include intuition as this skill will enable you to save time and effort when developing solutions.

SEEING

While computers can work on addressing particular problems, they are not that good at seeing the big picture. This meta-skill expresses the human ability to strategize, to understand how the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts, and to escape biases. Seeing better provides better information to act on when navigating the modern world.

DREAMING

Innovation and creativity will always be in high demand, whereas linear work will be outsourced to machines. Your innovation might fail, or it might make things worse, but nothing is going to be improved without taking that risk on. Settling for tried-and-true solutions also means settling for mediocrity.

MAKING

This meta-skill relates to design thinking where you create answers, not find answers. While this skill overlaps with dreaming, the difference lies in the prototyping and testing of generated solutions. It’s this ability to navigate uncertain scenarios and tolerate ambiguity that makes this such a valuable and powerful meta-skill.

LEARNING

Learning how to learn enables you to improve every skill in your life. Learning how to learn enables you to improve every skill you have. Doing this regularly will make you more curious and hungry to learn about other topics that you may not have cared for originally.

These five meta-skills inform nearly every talent and capacity that we exercise in our daily lives. Moreover, they aren’t going to be automated anytime soon. As rapidly as technology is advancing, it’s still a far cry from the curious abilities that millions of years of evolution have gifted us with. Taking advantage of these natural and uniquely human skills is the best way to stay relevant in the changing world.