Through this column, I’ve talked a lot about what effective activism does and doesn’t look like, but I want to clarify that there is no one way to do the most effective activism. I would argue that movements tend to be most successful when they’re multi-faceted. And ultimately you’re going to be most effective when you’re doing things you’re good at and enjoy.

There’s a concept called social movement ecology. Essentially, it’s the idea that any social movement is made up of many different factions, each utilizing different tactics and strategies, and each entangled with the others to form a web. In many ways, each strand of the web relies on the other branches.

For example, the anti-fur movement needs people protesting stores that sell fur, and it also needs people lobbying governments to prohibit the sale of fur. As more stores stop selling fur, it becomes easier for governments to justify banning its sale, and as more governments ban its sale, it makes more sense for stores to stop selling it.

Policy-based work isn’t for everybody. Nor is protesting. But those aren’t the only two parts of the movement. The movement also needs people to research targets. It needs people designing protest flyers and editing protest videos to boost engagement. It needs people organizing phone swarms, making signs to picket with, serving as legal counsel and media and police liaisons. There needs to be someone to run a group’s website and social media. There needs to be someone in charge of communicating with the campaign’s target.

Anything you enjoy doing and anything you’re good at can be part of a campaign. There are no rules about what activism looks like. Find a way to incorporate your strengths into your activism. If you’re good at music, write campaign songs and sing them at protests, it’s really fun. If you’re tech-savvy, use your skills to help research targets, build websites and figure out the nuts and bolts of virtual actions and online campaigns. If you like to write, write related creative pieces, write the text that goes on flyers, or help your peers write the remarks they’ll give at bill hearings. There is no end to what you can do. You will be more motivated and your activism will be more sustainable and higher quality if you’re doing things you enjoy doing.

Frankly, coming at things from many different angles is a good thing because you don’t always know what’s going to be most effective in any particular instance. Maybe protests work well in one campaign, but not another. The only way to find out is to try.

Activism is not some unique set of skills. It’s not something you have to “be an activist,” whatever that means, to do. It’s something anyone can do with whatever skills they have. It’s just energy, in any form, directed at a target. Use your skills to your advantage.