I counsel others on their career paths and am constantly considering what abilities they will need as the world shifts around them. The general theory is that the answer will be technical – learn to code, stay abreast of current technology, specialize in the new. This may be right or partly right, but I don’t think so. In my opinion, the one ability which will carry the most weight for the next ten years will not be technical at all.

Technical skills have a shelf life

Technical skills are very important, yet they have one major flaw – they can go out of date. The particular technology that you know so well will probably be outdated after just a couple of years, and you will be forced to start learning a different one from scratch. Relying solely on technical skills is like putting yourself on a continuous learning cycle of learning something that is currently relevant. However, it should not discourage anyone from acquiring technical skills; it simply shows why they cannot be considered the basis of a stable career.

The real problem is that as our tools get better, they do more and more of the actual technical labor, leaving humans to be merely the ones with knowledge of how to carry out the technical task. Being the expert who knows how to carry out the task loses its value as tools make it easier, thus moving value elsewhere – namely to those things that are beyond the tool’s abilities. What’s beyond the tool’s abilities? Judgment.

The durable skill is judgment

The one skill which I think will be the most important would be judgment – the skill that allows for proper questioning, problem formulation, proper evaluation of different courses of action, and determination of what really should be done. That is the skill that continues to be human despite the increasing automation of everything else. Machines can provide answers, but they cannot determine what question matters. Machines can perform tasks, but they cannot make judgments as to whether those tasks should be done.

With more activities being carried out by tools, man’s responsibility comes to be that of guiding these well, a responsibility that essentially requires good judgment. Someone who can explore these AI tools and decide wisely which to use, when, and to what end is exercising exactly the judgment that grows more valuable as the tools themselves grow more capable.

Why judgment cannot be automated

Judgment cannot be automated since it requires factors that are missing in tools: namely, values, context, taste, and knowledge of human importance. For someone to make decisions regarding what needs to be done, he or she needs to know what he or she and those around value; this is not something technical at all. The decision-making process in judgment does not depend directly on tools, although tools may contribute to the process of analysis and choice.

This is precisely why I have doubts about suggestions that treat career security through staying technically up to date. The technically up-to-date person who doesn’t possess any judgment is perpetually busy with executing things but is completely clueless regarding directions; he/she is progressively being competed against by tools which perform much faster than him/her. On the other hand, the person who has good judgment, is aware of the value of doing things, and has the ability to guide tools to do things is the one who holds a very valuable position indeed.

Developing judgment

Judgment is cultivated in a different way from technical know-how. It is cultivated by virtue of experience, thought, exposure to various scenarios, and practice of decision-making. Judgment is cultivated through the act of extensive reading, careful reasoning, and the cultivation of good taste, and not through rote learning of technical processes. This is precisely what makes it hard to cultivate and hard to credentialize – and that is what makes it rare and desirable.

Investing in what lasts

When weighing up where you should develop yourself, remember that judgment will always outlive any particular technical competency and becomes more valuable as technology takes care of the execution. Learning to wield a stack of AI tools platform options with good judgment is more durable than mastering any single tool, because the judgment transfers even as the tools change.

The most critical skill for the coming decade will not be technical, since all technical skills will eventually become obsolete, and technology will continue to render them unnecessary due to their incorporation into competent tools. Instead, it will be judgment, which is the uniquely human ability to understand and solve problems, and to determine the value of an effort, something which no tool is able to emulate since it requires moral and contextual considerations that a tool cannot make.

The more I see how the world evolves, the more I am sure that those who will thrive in it won’t be the ones trying to gather the most amount of technical information at an ever-increasing pace, but those patiently growing their judgment, taste, and questioning skills. Such things won’t ever make anyone’s CV, and one can hardly be certified for them during a short workshop, and this very fact makes them rare and precious. They develop gradually and are built on the basis of life experience, and instead of becoming useless once something better appears, they accumulate with time and multiply in one’s life. If you want to know what to bet on in terms of your future success, then think of the only thing that will always bring rewards no matter what changes – good thinking and wise decisions.