Focus on a skill and focus on doing it well
At the beginning, the best advice that I received was to focus on a skill and focus on doing it well. For me that was manufacturing - there is a Japanese word monozukuri, which means the art of making things. I fell in love with it, and that allowed me to have a passion for building things and finding out how things work. This built my repertoire of skills and knowledge, which allowed me to move up into some management positions later on.