I get my career news fix from popular career bloggers in the U.S. I like Laurie Ruettiman’s Punk Rock HR and Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist. The reason I love these bloggers is that they tackle relevant issues in the workplace and also dabble on significant areas such as politics, sex and parenting. Their style of writing engages the readers in a dialogue so much so interaction among the readers themselves is not unusual. Heated debates are inevitable especially when sensitive topics are raised such as gender roles, correlation between generation and employment, income disparity between men and women and more.

One topic that has become a personal favorite was Penelope Trunk’s post on the “Five signs that your career is about to get vapid.”Among the five items discussed, this one struck me most.

“1. You aim to be a generalist.
The best way to see what you’re great at is to specialize. Pick a type of work that suits your personality, then pick a field that is a specialty within that. Usually you will pick wrong. So what? Keep trying. When I was trying to figure out what I was great at, I wrote a lame novel, I pitched stupid articles to Marie Claire and I got dumped as a feature writer for an alternative Weekly. This is how I learned that I should be writing career advice. The process of becoming a specialist is finding out what makes you special. How could you not want to know that?”

You know the familiar feeling when you’ve been around doing the same work for years. You no longer feel challenged. You literally have to drag yourself to work. You work on auto-pilot. You find comfort in mediocrity. Complacency has become your comfort zone.

What is up with being a generalist anyway? Generalist is akin to being a jack of all trades, master of none. You have the skills alright but the skills are what you considered superficial. It’ not enough to make you an expert. You lack the in depth knowledge required to perform complex tasks. That said,  how do you turn yourself into a specialist?

Companies normally sponsor skills training or further studies to step up your education. When such opportunity arises, seize it. Becoming a specialist not only increases your technical skills, most of all it increases your marketability in the job market. Plus, all new skills learned would all work to your advantage. So the next time your company offers training, whether it’s a new skills set or a refresher course to brush up your skills, grab it.