Deciding Which Approach You Should Take to Improve A Skill
A skill is the ability perform a task that has value. If performing a task has no value, then it’s not a skill. For example, watching a movie is not a skill unless you are a professional movie critic who provides value by offering your opinion to consumers. A sports example would be running. Running is not a skill unless you run to compete and win. Anyone can be a runner, but there are very few people who use running as a skill.
With that said, there are only two main approaches you can take to improve how you perform a skill.
1) Learn from experts who are already performing the skill better than you
- Identify experts who are performing the skill you want to improve better than you
- Figure out what they are doing that allows them to perform the skill at that level
- Come up with practice techniques that allow you to do what they are doing the same way
2) Hire an expert coach who can teach you how to perform the skill better
- Hire an expert coach who has experience helping people improve their skills at your same skill level
- The coach explains to you exactly what accounts for improvement and how it is measured
- That coach then guides you in performing specific practice techniques designed to help you improve the skill.
The challenge in both approaches starts with finding an expert. However, with approach one you must not only find an expert, but you must also have the ability to diagnose what the expert is doing that you are not and develop a practice technique that helps you do that. On the other hand, with approach two the coach helps you with the final two steps.
As you can see, although approach one is free and approach two cost money, approach two is more efficient. So, the decision of what approach you take to improve a skill comes down to if you have more time than money or more money than time.