Let’s discuss skills for a moment. Few words are as widely misunderstood as “skill.” Defining this word carefully can have an immediate and positive impact on your career planning.

One dictionary defines “skill” as “the ability to do something well, usually gained by training or experience.” Some skills—such as the ability to repair fiber-optic cables or perform brain surgery—are acquired through formal schooling, on-the-job training, or both. These abilities are called “work-content skills.” People with such skills have mastered a specialized body of knowledge needed to do a specific kind of work.

However, there is another category of skills that we develop through experience both inside and outside the classroom.

These are transferable skills. Transferable skills are abilities that help people thrive in any job—no matter what work-content skills they have. You start developing these skills even before you take your first job.

Perhaps you’ve heard someone described this way: “She’s really smart and knows what she’s doing, but she’s got lousy people skills.” People skills—such as listening and negotiating—are prime examples of transferable skills.

Transferable skills are often invisible to us. The problem begins when we assume that a given skill can be used in only one context, such as being in school or working at a particular job. Thinking in this way places an artificial limit on our possibilities.

Why do I identify my transferable skills? Getting past the “I don’t have any skills” syndrome means that you can approach new corporate clients with more confidence.

As you uncover these hidden assets, your list of qualifications will grow as if by magic. You won’t be padding your résumé. You’ll simply be using action words to convey the full truth about what you can do.

Identifying your transferable skills takes a little time. But the payoffs are numerous. A complete and accurate list of transferable skills can help you land projects that involve more responsibility, more variety, more freedom to structure your time, and more money. Careers can be made—or broken—by the skills that allow you to define your value to your customer’s business, manage your workload, and get along with people.

Transferable skills help you thrive in the midst of constant change. Technology will continue to develop.

Ongoing discoveries in many fields could render current knowledge obsolete. Jobs that exist today may disappear in a few years, only to be replaced by entirely new ones. In the economy of the twenty-first century, you might not be able to count on job security. What you can count on is skill security—abilities that you can carry from one career to another or acquire as needed. Therapy and live corporate training, however, are here to stay for many more years.

What are my transferable skills? Discover your transferable skills by reflecting on key experiences. Recall a time when you performed at the peak of your ability, overcame obstacles, won an award, gained a high grade, or achieved a significant goal. List the skills you used to achieve those successes.

For a more complete picture of your transferable skills, describe the object of your action. Say that one of the skills on your list is organizing. This could refer to organizing ideas, organizing people, or organizing objects in a room. Specify the kind of organizing that you like to do.

How do I perform these skills? You can bring your transferable skills into even sharper focus by adding adverbs—words that describe how you take action. You might say that you edit accurately or learn quickly.

You can use a three-column chart to summarize your transferable skills. Create a three-column chart. The first column should be labeled “verb.”Label the second column “Object.” Label the third column. Adverb: For instance, verb: organize; object: NLP Books; and adverb: effectively.

What if I could expand my transferable skills? In addition to thinking about the skills you already have, consider the skills you’d like to acquire. Describe them in detail. List experiences that can help you develop them. Let your list of transferable skills grow and develop as you do.

Pay close attention to the format of that last question: “What if I COULD…”. Procrastination tends to snap our conscious line of thought, often by using the word “couldn’t”… But what if I couldn’t make it and ended up wasting lots of precious time and money? This format closes the loop by asking, BUT what if I COULD? And how can you truly find out if you could or couldn’t?!

Discovering your skills includes five steps.

Step 1: Make a list of recent activities.Recall your activities during the past week or month. Jot down as many of these activities as you can. Include work-related, study-related, and recreational activities.Spend 10 minutes on this step.

Step 2: List rewards and recognitions. Next, list any rewards you’ve received, or other recognition of your achievements, during the past year. Examples include promotions or awards, a thank you letter from a client, or recognitions for volunteer work. Allow 10 minutes for this step as well.

Step 3: Make a list of job-related skills.Now, review the two lists you just created. Take another 10 minutes to list any specialized areas of knowledge needed to do those activities, win those awards, and receive that recognition.

Step 4: Make a list of transferable skills.Go over your list of activities one more time. Spend 10 minutes looking for examples of transferable skills—those that can be applied to a variety of situations. For instance, giving a speech or working as a salesperson in a computer store requires the ability to persuade people. Tuning a car means that you can attend to details and troubleshoot. List all of your skills that fall into this category, labeling each one as transferable.

Step 5: Evaluate and planYou now have a detailed picture of your skills. Review all the lists you’ve created in the previous steps. See whether you can add any items that occur to you. Save your lists in a place where you can easily find them again. Plan to update all of them at least once each year. Your lists will come in handy for writing your bio, preparing for new client interviews, and doing other career-planning tasks.