Developing the tools to deal with something causes you to deal with it more

This happens when people look up and look around at who has different skill sets, and — rationally! — assign the problems that require tools that you have to be solved by you. Sometimes, you are the person doing the delegating, and sometimes the person getting delegated to.

Examples:

• becoming operationally competent will cause you to get more jobs that require operational competence
• successfully operating in strongly adversarial environments will change the way you orient to the world such that adversarial environments come to you
• having a pocket knife will push you toward situations in which having a pocket knife is useful
• being capable of handling high stress fires effectively → you end up “firefighting” constantly
• having high EQ & a lot of patience for people undergoing traumatic events might cause you to be the go-to person for helping people undergoing traumatic events

Some of these are good, some neutral, and some negative. Some are intentional, and some unintentional. To state the obvious, consider mitigating the ones that might end up harming you without your realizing it.