https://www.atdoc.org/Connections/13576500We started this week with an invitation to conduct a 'pre-interview' with ourselves before directing our focus and energy for 2026. This post follows up on one of those questions.

The Question: What are your skills?

Here's what they don't tell you when you develop a skill: it's perishable. Project management, facilitation, data storytelling, strategic communication—if you don't use them regularly, they don't just sit dormant. They atrophy.

Even more insidious: they become credentials on a résumé rather than capabilities you can deploy. You can say you're skilled at something, but when the opportunity arrives, the muscle memory is gone.

Volunteering keeps those skills alive, but more importantly, it tests their boundaries. A marketing professional working with a nonprofit communications team discovers that member engagement operates differently than customer acquisition. A data analyst helping with organizational metrics learns that mission-driven organizations measure impact in ways corporations don't.

This testing reveals what transfers and what doesn't. It shows you where your expertise is portable and where it's context-dependent. That knowledge makes you better at your primary work because you understand the shape of your own capabilities more clearly.

Reflection: What skill are you claiming expertise in that you haven't actually used in the past six months?