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1/ I’ve noticed that in every skill you become sufficiently good at, there comes a point where you begin to notice nuance in your own skill (and the skill of others) and … you begin to make up your own language to describe that nuance. Let’s call this the vocab point.

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2/ This is, of course, not a new observation. Here’s investor Graham Duncan, for instance, on this exact phenomenon (Duncan makes it a point to be very good at evaluating the expertise of others):

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3/ But here’s something that I think is interesting: once you know the vocab point exists, you can begin to use it in different ways. For instance, you can use it to evaluate just how good you are in a specific skill. This is useful in messy domains with no clear eval rubrics.

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4/ So, for instance, I know I’m ‘good’ at writing because I can break down exactly what makes Rowling or Matt Levine or Paul Graham so much better than me. I’m able to articulate the nuances of their skill in a way that novice writers might find difficult.

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5/ (Or, more accurately, they can probably tell that these writers are better than they are, but they’ll fall back to coarse categorisations to explain the delta).

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6/ Contrast this to computer programming or judo, where I’m absolutely certain that I haven’t reached the vocab point yet. I can’t precisely break down what makes a certain programmer or top judo player so good.

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7/ This tells me that I have some way to go. This leads me to something I’ve been toying with: I think the vocab point is a good initial goal to have. It’s a solid waypoint on the way to mastery. What do I mean by this?

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8/ At the bottom of a skill tree, you might say “oh I want to get to mastery”. But what does mastery mean? It’s usually not clear. Worse, mastery tends to be skill-specific. (In the fighting arts, John Danaher proposes it’s “you can give a good fight to a top 25 fighter”)

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9/ The vocab point, on the other hand, is pretty universal. It is thus a good first goal because a) you have to be decently good to create your own vocab, and b) you are able to see the levels of skill above you, and therefore the diminishing returns to effort to get there.

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10/ Side note, how do you know that your vocab — the nuances of the thing you’re noticing — is valid? A: talk shop with another practitioner of a high skill level. They might not have the exact same vocab, but they’ll be able to grok quickly if what you’re saying is valid.

5:15 AM · Mar 17, 2022Tweetbot for iΟS

Replying to

My favourite example of this is the Wired video series of 'X explains one concept in 5 levels of difficulty'. Take this example of Jacob Collier, for instance. By the time he gets to jazz legend Herbie Hancock, it's ALL vocab point shop talk.

Musician Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty ft. Jacob...

23-year-old musician, composer and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier explains the concept of harmony to 5 different people; a child, a teen, a college stud...

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12/ Interestingly, the vocab point often becomes the end goal for some of my skills. Take Judo, for instance. I've long made peace with the fact that I cannot reach mastery. (I'm in a race against my declining physical ability). But I think I can get to the vocab point.

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13/ I want to be able to watch Olympic level Judo and really understand the chess game that occurs before a throw or pin happens. And I think I can get there with a decent amount of hard work. (Mastery, on the other hand, would likely require a decade or so of 100% focus).

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14/ Other useful implications of the vocab point: When you're listening to two experts talking shop, the vocab they use can become a map of the skill domain, even though you can't see it yet. This was what I was getting at in

To Get Good, Go After The Metagame

What do metagames have to do with the acquisition of expertise?

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15/ Another implication: when someone uses cliched language / well-known categories to describe their skill, you can probably guess that they haven't reached the vocab point yet.

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16/ This can lead to some surprising things! For instance, I recently read a breakdown of Paul Graham's writing style. I could tell, within the first three paragraphs, that it was written by a novice. They totally missed what was hard about pg's writing.

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17/ They were leaking information about their own skill level, without knowing it. I think about this a lot whenever I write about business or about org design. I wonder if I'm leaking information about my (lack of) skill.

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18/ Another implication of the vocab point: you should get to the vocab point of at least one skill, because then you learn to recognise it in others. Preferably when you're younger (i.e. if you have kids, it's good to get them to the vocab point of at least one skill).

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19/ By this I mean: if you know the vocab point exists, you'll also know what it feels like to have arrived at it. This means that you'll know what to look for when climbing other skill trees.

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This is a very useful way of putting it:

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Bob (Moderna #5) Kerns

Replying to @BobKerns and @ejames_c

An important part that some miss, is that when you get into that region, you should recognize that you have not arrived or even almost arrived at expertise. You should be able to see what experts have that you don't.

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