Earning Leverage as a Tester

Atul asked me this interesting question on my WhatsApp group:

What are some of the ways you can achive asymetric returns as a QA? Have any of you done something different that has led to asymetric returns? This doesn’t have to be specific to QA. It can be anything.

Atul Jha, Editor – Tea Time with Testers

What I understand from your use of the word “asymmetric” is “scaling oneself”:
i.e. getting non-linear results or multi-fold returns.

Well, at one point in every professional’s life, this question comes.

“How to scale oneself” because everyone has 24 hours only.

Let me share some ways that I use:

1. Writing Blogs (and then sharing them to save my time).
2. Writing Books (and referring them / pointing people to them).
3. Video Blogs
4. YouTube Videos
5. Giving Presentations / Demos Often (1 Hour of Myself gets scaled to 60 hours of audience — assuming that there are min. 60 attendants)
6. Writing Automation Code (More useful if one can write framework-level code — one library, multiple uses, multiple projects, etc,)
7. Creating Org Level / Project Level Utilities
8. Creating Documentation / Strategy Docs (Created once – referred multiple times).
9. Building Website / Online Presence (SEO is everything since 2001)
10. Getting my work reviewed in my internal groups (My 1 hour of review discussions x 10 hours of review comments — assuming 10 people spend 1 hour with me).

Life is about leverage. Whether its project work, office work, personal finance, judgements, etc.

If you have leverage, you will WIN.

A FOOL will look GOOD when they have leverage and a GOOD person will look like a FOOL without it.

Look for it. Learn to expand it. All the best!

P.S. If you are interested in learning more about leverage, follow Naval Ravikant and Charlie Munger.