Learning Complex Skills
Most people have trouble acquiring new complex skills (such as playing tennis, coding, networking, presenting, etc.) because
- they don’t understand that complex skills are really a collection of simple skills performed in a certain manner and…
- it must be practiced repeatedly to make it look easy and natural (internalization)
A common mistake people make is to try to learn a complex skill as if it’s just one single skill. Through a lot trial and error, it is possible to reach a certain level of competence this way, but I would argue that this common approach introduces a few critical problems.
Problems with the common approach
The first is that the common approach can take much longer than necessary. For example, many people learn to play tennis simply by going out to the court with friends and try to keep a rally going. If you’ve ever watched casual players do this you would know that it’s not very successful.
Second is that even if you managed to reach some level of competence with the “trial by fire” approach, the focus would have been on trying to produce “quick” results rather than mastery of fundamentals. Although it is possible to look like you are producing results very quickly on the first part of the learning curve, you are most likely hindering long-term growth by unknowingly having gaps in fundamental knowledge.
Progressions
As I mentioned before, complex skills are really a collection of simple skills. A good coach (or a good self-learner) is able to deconstruct these complex skills into simple skills and plan a good sequence of progressions for learning.
For example, an adult can learn how to ride simply by going out there and immediately trying to pedal on the street and falling repeatedly until they finally get it.
Or they can take a less painful (and a more effective) approach and learn it through a series of progressions. It can look something like this:
- find a grassy area that has a very slight decline so that a bike can roll downhill
- remove pedals so that it’s not in the way, and try to roll down hill very slowly by inching your feet off the ground just a tad. if you lose balance, just put your feet back down
- as you start to “get” the feel of how the bike starts self-balancing when it’s rolling, try to keep your feet off the ground longer and longer and roll downhill without touching
- as you get better at balancing, switch from a grassy decline to a concrete decline and practice feeling out the balance more
- one you reach a certain level of confidence in your ability to feel the balance, put the pedals back on and attempt to roll down hill with the feet on your pedals (but not pedaling yet)
- after you’re able to keep your balance indefinitely with the feet on the pedals, slowly start moving the pedals with your feet
- etc…
Conclusion
As you can see from above, the complex skill of learning how to ride a bike has been broken down into more manageable skill progressions.
Not only is it less overwhelming, but it is actually more effective in that allows a person to master fundamental layers individually so that in creates a strong foundation for long-term growth.
Most people don’t bother with trying to learn with this approach. The human mind is inherently lazy after all, and it takes some thought via problem solving and planning (or finding/paying for a mentor) to learn in this manner.
However if you can get over the obstacle of “learning how to learn”, it establishes a framework for learning other complex skills that can open many opportunities.