Why it matters to your customer: Typically, in highly technical or highly creative fields, the cost of getting decisions wrong can be high.

Why it matters to you: As you grow older, Labor ceases to be a strong leverage. A younger professional can learn the skill or read up the facts faster and provide the same service at a lower rate. In the longer run, judgment determines what know-how will make you irreplaceable?

• Unlike skills and facts, judgement is something highly technical or highly creative that can only be earned out there in the field through experience.
• Judgement allows you (and you alone) to take better decisions and gives you the wisdom to navigate out of complex situations.

How to build this leverage?

• Build on what you’ve got.
• Build this leverage in a field that you really care about and are genuinely curious about or have a point of view — something specific to your Lived experiences. Something that doesn’t feel like work. Something in which, you, you alone can operate on the frontier of a field by yourself. You dig deeper than other people do, deeper than what seems rational just because you’re interested.
• Build this leverage in a field that is either highly technical or highly creative — something tangible. For example, no one became a CEO by building a career in social media marketing.
• Progressively refine your judgment through years of constant observation, note taking and forming of new associations until you are an authority. You need to be able to observe shifts in the current, as well as connect seemingly disconnected events to explain trends. Think and act independently. Don’t conform.

However, judgment is also restrictive. For example, Sachin Tendulkar has built great judgment in the game of cricket, however that does not make him a good Member of Parliament.

How to signal Judgment? Blog extensively about it. Own up your mistakes or when you change your mind. Take responsibility. Don’t scapegoat.

Examples

• Expert operators drop complexity of the system they operate because they know Complexity slows down execution.
• Expansion in social status hinders truth-seeking and thus discovery of Judgment.
• Loserthink

Footnotes:

• Tim Urban on Twitter: “I might define it like this https://t.co/rwbLTZD9JC” / Twitter
• Dokkodo
• Naval Ravikant