Learning a New Skill

It’s always good to learn a new skill. It expands our knowledge, helps us grow, and gives us new opportunities. But the thing about learning a new skill is that we must invest a lot of time to master it.

Take writing and painting, for example. Each require a lot of time, practice, and energy to master. If we tried to master both, our time would be split between the two. We wouldn’t be as good in one or the other if we had focused on one instead. It’s a sacrifice, of course, but that’s what it takes to master a skill.

Many skills take years to master, such as carpentry, or playing a musical instrument. In the workplace, we specialize because that is more practical and efficient. Someone who know a little about a lot of things doesn’t have the depth of knowledge that might be needed for a particular task. They wouldn’t be as efficient as someone who knows a lot about that task, but knows little about the other ones.

To learn a skill we have no intention of mastering or being the best at, that’s sufficient for a hobby, or a field that we simply want to study for our own curiosity. But to learn a skill that we we hope to master, we must spend more time on it than other skills.