In everything you do concerning your professional career, there are input metrics, and there are output metrics.
Salary, Compensation, Status, Position and fame are output metrics of skill and contribution you make in your work environment.
If you keep increasing your skills, your compensation will keep growing. As you develop more skills, you will be in demand, and organizations will seek you out for your skills. The more need there is for your skills, the more valuable you will be.
- If you are skillful at managing people and running teams, people will follow you to offer leadership roles.
Or
- If you are the best in class when it comes to coding, you will likely be the person getting the best offers.
Or
- If you are an accomplished musician, performance opportunities and students will chase you.
Now flip this equation. Imagine you start chasing the output metric of Money/Position; what will happen? You may eventually achieve the milestone of position or money, but then you hit a roadblock. You stagnate and you don’t see any more growth because you did not invest in improving your skills. This is what happens to many people who encounter mid-career blues as they struggle with not having the improved skills required to move to the next level.
The more skillful you become, the better your salary/status and position will be. Simply put, avoid chasing the output metrics and instead obsess on the Input metric- your skills.