While most people fight to learn “in-demand” skills, smart people are learning rare skills instead

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When self-made billionaire investor Ray Dalio wanted to understand changing world events, he didn’t just look at the latest news. He became an amateur historian and spent months looking back at cycles going back hundreds of years — something almost no one else does.

When Bill Gates wanted to grow Microsoft in the early 1990s, he didn’t just study the latest industry news and business books. He studied science. A 1994 interview is telling:

Interviewer: Do you dislike being called a businessman?

Bill Gates: Yeah. Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10% to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.

Interviewer: What, then?