"Do what you are good at", is the advice, well-intentioned perhaps, limited at best. We all want to feel like we are good at something and this can cause us to limit our capabilities enormously as we start to favor what we are 'good at' over what we need to learn.
This favoritism we show what we enjoy and are good at comes with an opportunity cost attached and the more we do what we like, the less goes into what we do not. This seems great to begin with until thinking through what we are actually wanting to do.
From nothing comes something
If starting a skill from zero, it takes very little effort to begin improvement as the low-level points are easily reachable. As we progress though, the better we get at something the more investment it takes to improve further. This is the law of diminishing returns at play and at some point, 100 percent investment will see zero improved results. It is easy to see when there is one skill.
But, there is very rarely ever one skill involved in the areas that are important to us, they are clustered and to be the best we can be in some field, it is likely that we have to raise all skills to an adequate level. If we focus at what we are good at, we are going to ignore what we are not.
The negative path
The most efficient way to become very good at something is by focusing on weaknesses but, this is counter-intuitive as most of our intuitions have been trained to 'focus on what you are good at'. This is in my opinion, terrible advice as it does not explain the nuances and caveats and most people will not spend the time in discovery of them.
If a core field is taken and broken into the skill sets and then individual parts we can get a more granular view of the requirements in order to satisfy potential. We will be able to identify and highlight where our weaknesses lay and then take an active role in closing the skill gaps necessary.
But to close one of these gaps sufficiently we are going to have to do something we don't want to do and that is, something we are not good at. And, if we are already quite strong in most of the other areas, the temptation to ignore weakness is high.
The easy new, the valuable difficult
I often hear the phrase spoken 'I love to learn new things' and have found that most of the time, this is not actually true as in general, it is only used when learning something one expects to already be good at. Most people do not want to learn the things that are boring to them or they know are outside of their normal range.
This biased view hinders many people in many ways as the things that they really enjoy and want to excel at can never be raised to their full potential as the boring and difficult parts become increasingly ignored. Tying loving to learn to what one wants to be very good at means accepting that there are going to be times where investment must be applied to weaknesses. In sickness and in health as they say.
The butterfly effect
This means that within a skill set there is a mix of strengths and weaknesses and focusing on the weaknesses will compound against the strengths. But to do so one has to be willing to become a beginner again. This is difficult for many to come to terms with as for many, this beginner feeling is already uncomfortable, let alone in an area that has generally high proficiency.
But, doing this is how one has the possibility to become brilliant at something and can actually decrease the time and investment to do so. It is this increase across all sub-skills that develop high peaks with shallow troughs that really drives greatness. On top of this, there is another benefit.
Finding a new lover
Within these skill gaps is the potential to uncover areas that have laid dormant which means the potential to find new interest areas, new great loves. Loves in the negative. These can splinter off and create entire new paths to explore that were previously hidden from sight behind the bias and preference of what one is already good at.
I have found through experience that most do not do this however, they are not really interested in being great at something. They are however interested in getting a return on their investment but rarely think about where they are actually investing. This traverses many areas of course but in a world of instant gratification, how does one expect to develop skills of value let alone, find their passions?
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
