A geeky take on — Proficiency, skillset and everything in between — Part 1
It’s commonly observed that people would want to hear about Talent, Hardwork from people who’re at the pinnacle of their game.
I don’t consider myself near that, but I’ve few insights onto how Talent-Hardwork and other factors play a role in attaining proficiency at skills in life.
To ensure it’s not like a transcript of a Ted Talk or some compilation of motivational examples and quotes, I’ve taken a different approach to visualise my understanding of these factors in my life.
Work
Hard work is one of the most frequently mentioned words behind someone’s success. One needs to put in the work to accomplish a task, importantly accomplish it in a manner that nobody can easily better it.
Smart work is another word which is thrown around with similar purpose but more focused on optimising the energy and time spent on hard work to accomplish quality goals.
Going forward, I would be using work to imply either of them.
One might resonate with this that more work you put on you might achieve better quality in your goals.
“You cannot be good at that unless you practice for 10000 hours”
10000 hours?
You must have come across this saying. While I wouldn’t want to get into the debate around the validity of this statement, one key takeaway is that you can put in time and effort
This TED talk suggests that a person can spend roughly 20 hours to achieve a good competency in those skills. Taking a leaf out this talk, below is a visualisation of the same. I’ve used to word “Intermediate” to denote the level of proficiency. The markings “Beginner”, “Intermediate”, “Advanced” are ambiguous and vary for each skill.
But let’s consider Intermediate level to be that level of proficiency where one can teach for people who’ve not come across this skill and bring them at least till “Beginner” level ie: equivalent to making simple graphs and summing up numbers using the formula on Excel or to hitting a tennis ball correctly into the court consistently.
The graph, mathematically, could be different but there are few key takeaways I would like to stress upon
The slope of the graph:
Before the 20 hours mark, it’s a steeper curve, denoting you tend to gain beginner level skills faster than you would gain intermediate/advanced level skills.
Once you have reached this “Intermediate” level it requires some time/effort to improve upon.
You can take the analogy of the simplest of things like you can driving a car, you can speed your car down the highway within an hour or so, but you would take a lot of time to hone the skill of driving through busy streets where there is a demand for you to coordinate clutch, gears, brakes and accelerator and fine-tune them for a smooth ride.
Is it always 20 hours?:
You must have noticed on the first day of your tennis class that there is one guy in the batch of students who seems to grasp better and has a “knack” for it.
Similar experiences can be found across domains, that some people tend to grasp certain kind of skills faster than you and vice versa. I would attribute this to an inherent talent one has for that skill.
I find it an irrefutable truth that people do have an inherent talent or “knack” for certain things and grasp it easier and faster than their contemporaries.
When ones “talent” is taken into the picture, the rate of acquiring proficiency in that skill is higher for “talented” people than the others.
As you can find in the illustration, the green line of a “talented” person seems to have a lead in the proficiency at various instances of time. And this reflects not just in the initial stages of acquiring skill but also in the “advanced” stages.
With growing time, I feel, one converges to a similar level of proficiency and the effect of talent wears off gradually.
Coming from an Electrical/electronics background, the first thing which comes into my mind at the first glance of the above graphs is that of a capacitor charging.
Guess what! I’ll reach an intermediate level in a day
Maybe on paper, it does seem you can gain considerable mastery in under a day.
But, on a human level, it takes some unique level of motivation to remain focused on a specific skill
Will be continued in part 2
Gaining in one day — Impact of distractions
Losing grasp with time
That’s one skill, how does your skillset map out?
References
