Determining which skill to master when you have *many* different interests

[iteles]

In Cal Newport's book 'Deep Work' he convincingly argues that there are two core skills for thriving in the modern economy:

1. The ability to quickly master hard things
2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed

Independently of whether one agrees with him, there is no denying that mastery or deep expertise in a chosen subject is a valuable asset (arguably, these days, even when one speaks of a 'generalist', they are a generalist within a specific area).

I suspect however that many people suffer from the same issue I do: a lot of diverse interests.

So how do we pick which one to focus on for the purposes of the second point above? 🚀

I have a few thoughts on this but would be interested to hear how others have chosen to go about this, or thoughts in general on this topic. 🔢

[nelsonic]

The answer is quite simple, the intersection in the following Venn diagram: https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/500 Focus on acquiring the skill you can use to make something people want to pay for now.

[YvesMuyaBenda]

Personally one of my interests is thinking inbetween topics, using one to view another; for example, the progressive manner in which, say, progressive bodyweight_ calisthenics is taught, allowed me to observe the weakness in the pedagogical structuring of most all other materials, in that they are not progressive, have wild unarticulated jumps, do not have standards for progressing to the next step, have very weakly articulated ideas about what it means to even practice a single step, do not have clear criteria for judging how well you are doing a specific step, etc, etc.

But, if I were to give a more specific answer, there are three points of view that come to mind: [1] I might be interested in a widely useful general skill, like, say, "writing", which is a sub-topic within "communication". Getting continously better at commincating one's intent, might be said to be broadly useful; [2] I look at deep or foundational skills, like working memory, long term memory, sensory perception, attention span, etc which might be as the basic skills that underly all others; that is to say, improving these skills makes you globally better at everything there is to do. [3] In between foundational skills such as working memory, and general skills such as "writing", there might be other skills like "how to take a subject, break it down into progressive sequences with clear instructions of how to practice each step", or something more concrete like "how to efficiently learn new physical movements in general, be they playing the piano, touch-typing, doing a pull-up, handwriting, tying a knot whatever".

In summary, I do not think of skills or interests at one level, for me there are relations, and in particular, I am always asking myself what are the most generally useful foundational things one can master, that support everything else. Cal Newport continually made the case that a long attention span is one such foundational skill. So the question is, how precisely do you go about learning it? What exactly do you do. Sure Newport goes on about it, but if you had, say, one month to dramatically increase your attention span, what would you do, day to day, hour to hour, minut to minute, second to second?

Also, dwyl github issues allows me to practice my writing! As you can see!

[YvesMuyaBenda]

For example, take the topic of "learning to code". What are the most foundational skills, in order, classified by importance, with prescriptions for how to go about practicing those skills, and how to measure how well one is actually doing? For example, Zed Shaw, has as one of the most fundamental skills, the ability to accurately type code samples by hand and get them to run. I know that dwyl stresses the importance of touch-typing, and so on, and so on. What about documenting one's learning as one learns? Is that important? Anyways, fun questions!

[YvesMuyaBenda]

But one more point is that each interest is just another opportunity to learn how one learns. If someone is sloppy and vague and lax in one area, then they are probably the same in others. If someone is not that conscious about how they learn one topic, they are probably the same in others. If someone has great difficulty keeping their attention in one topic ...

[YvesMuyaBenda]

To better illustrate the topic of foundation skills, this is the example I often give vis-a-vis sensory perception and the mind's ability to learn:

"I don't have to start with really intelligent or cultured people to make trackers. In fact it happens the other way around. There was a young student from Washington who was having terrible reading comprehension scores and was doing really badly in public school. I took him under my wing and mentored him in the art of tracking. It turned on aspects of his personality, of his brain, and of his mind, so that when he finally went back for his reading comprehension and the SATs he scored very very well, and there was no tutoring in reading, there was no academic training, there was only tracking. It's the most interdisciplinary inter-sensory demanding task that a human brain can experience, and it's also the most beautiful. It turns on the human computer in a way that nothing else can. " Awakening Our Senses to Learn:Interview with Wilderness Educator Jon Young

"On the face of it, learning to track animals should have no relation to one's ability to score well on the SATS, but the relationship goes to the heart of what people think learning is, and how it occurs, and what factors influence a person's ability to learn quickly, and to learn well. In his book, Newport speaks of challenging the mind in specific ways--there was a case study of how the Jewish system of scholastic training challenged a certain individual's mind in a certain way with certain benefits:

"Unlike many orthodox Jews, Marlin came late to his faith, not starting his rigorous Talmud training until his twenties. This bit of trivia proves useful to our purposes because it allows Marlin a clear before-and-after comparison concerning the impact of these mental calisthenics— and the result surprised him. Though Marlin was exceptionally well educated when he began the practice— he holds three different Ivy League degrees— he soon met fellow adherents who had only ever attended small religious schools but could still “dance intellectual circles” around him. “A number of these people are highly successful [professionally],” he explained to me, “but it wasn’t some fancy school that pushed their intellect higher; it became clear it was instead their daily study that started as early as the fifth grade.” After a while, Marlin began to notice positive changes in his own ability to think deeply. “I’ve recently been making more highly creative insights in my business life,” he told me. “I’m convinced it’s related to this daily mental practice. "

Newport, Cal. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (pp. 156-157). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.

But for me, there is always the question of which methods to choose for which purposes? People who struggle to code, they challenge their minds in a certain way; people who train their senses in another, Jews going through the academic rigors of studying their religion, yet another, and so, and so on.

To learn difficult topics, quickly and well, what are the steps? For me one of the first steps is attention-span, the width, the height, the length, and depth of it, the intensity and flavour of it!

Yeah! I intensly amuse myself!

[YvesMuyaBenda]

Oh another thought, I suspect that learning motor-skills is one of the most fundamental skills to learn, but also as a way of priming the mind to learn new skills. Here is an article on the theme:Why the Brain Loves Parkour: How Complex Movement Triggers Learning and Tips to Enhance Skill Acquisition

I do not necessarily agree 100% with the authors point of view, but linking the article saves me writing!

[YvesMuyaBenda]

Oh, another thought to go with the one above, motor-skills are probably easier for building "concentration" and "flow (sustained concentration)"; so much easier to rehabilitate a weak attention span, than more abstract stuff like coding.