What, Exactly, Is Skill? – Tim Price Blog

In a nutshell, skill is the ability to know what, know how and to accomplish it quickly and effortlessly.

Skill involves the knowledge.

You have to know something about the area in order to be skillful. But knowledge alone doesn’t provide skill. There are lots of knowledgeable people about sports, but that doesn’t make them professional, skilled players.

Skill involves quality execution. But execution alone doesn’t make your skillful. In fact, lots of people try lots of things, and often learn what they’re not good at! Some people are part of a salesforce for a living, but they’re not necessarily skilled in it.

Knowing the fundamentals of a particular job or task is also crucial to skill, but doesn’t translate to a skilled person. A person can know the fundamentals of a skill but only be able to talk about it, not actually make it happen.

Skill involves these things, but alone, these things don’t create a person skilled in an area.

In addition to the knowledge of the fundamentals and the experience to execute it well, the key defining ingredient to skill the ability to perform it quickly.

In his book, Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, Legendary coach John Wooden says, “Proficiency in executing the fundamentals of our craft and learning to do them quickly will go a long way in making us a success.”

To achieve this, we must seek out those areas in which God has given us some level of ability. We should hone in on those things we are able to do well and figure out ways to spend more time doing those things! In time, we are able to accomplish those areas of expertise with more efficiency.

The sad truth is that we often use only a fraction of our time in our skilled area and spend an inordinate amount of time in our weaker areas of work and life.

As much as possible sharpen your skills. Use them often. Fill up all the time you can working with your skill set.

How can we make this happen:

1) Determine your skill.
2) Write out the fundamentals of your skill (this is often somewhat hard for the person for whom the skill comes easily).
3) Create some processes for these things to become high on your priority list each day/week.
4) Compete against yourself for the prospect of quickly accomplishing your skilled craft/ability.
5) Keep expanding time in your schedule for your skilled work.

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