This Is How You Make Yourself Irreplaceable

A reflection from The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

This is part of the "Meller Highlights" series with reflections from my personal book highlights.

One thing I’ve been trying to do every day is to pick one idea from my reading and think about how to actually apply it.

Not just understand it in theory, but find a way to live it a little.

Today’s highlight: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you.

How easy would it be to replace me?

The idea here is not about fear or panic. It’s about seeing your work clearly.

If the value you bring can be explained in a manual, written in a script, or repeated by someone with a few hours of training, then sooner or later, someone else will do it.

Maybe faster.

Maybe cheaper.

Maybe with a robot.

But… Specific knowledge is different. It’s the stuff that lives in you because of your story. Because of how your brain works.

Because of what you’ve built, what you’ve broken, how you think, how you learn, how you adapt when something unexpected happens. It’s the mix of your curiosity, your scars, your ideas, and your judgment.

You can’t teach that easily. You can’t replace that overnight. And that’s what makes someone hard to copy.

Think about the kind of work you do. How much of it could be passed to someone else with a short set of instructions? And how much of it depends on things that only you see, you decide, or you notice before it becomes a problem?

The closer your job is to a checklist, the easier it is to automate or outsource. The closer it is to your unique way of solving something, the more protected you are.

This doesn’t mean you have to be a genius. It means you need to build a path that no one else could walk in the exact same way.

Sometimes this comes from stacking skills that don’t usually go together.

Like being a developer who also writes well.

Or a designer who understands psychology.

Or a project manager who can coach a team emotionally, not just report the deadlines.

Other times, it’s about building trust. The kind of trust that makes people think, “I want that person on this, because of how they think, not just what they do.”

And it also comes from getting really good at a few things, not just collecting certifications or jumping between skills like they’re fashion trends.

Learning is great. But depth matters.

This is also a good lens when thinking about AI.

Everyone's asking what jobs will survive.

But the better question is: which parts of your value are human-shaped? Which parts rely on your ability to make judgment calls, hold a hard conversation, change course quickly, read the room, or simplify something messy?

Specific knowledge is not louder. It’s not always visible.

But it’s what makes someone irreplaceable in the moments that really matter.

So maybe the real question is not just “What should I learn next?” Maybe the better one is “What can I do that would be very hard for someone else to copy?”

Have you ever felt like you were doing something that only you could really do well?

Or conversely, have you noticed areas of your work becoming too easy to replace? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in your own work.

This is your tip today, inspired by one of my highlights from The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

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