# The Skill Code  ## Metadata - Author: [[Matt Beane]] - Full Title: The Skill Code - Category: #books ## Highlights - I was transfixed by the way the expert shaped the apprentice. Just as the expert kept the tin warm to be pliable, so he kept the apprentice challenged, pushed them to engage with more and more of the crafting process, and depended on them in a way that built a firm, trusting connection. Not much talk, by the way. Gestures, nodding, and head shaking. The expert taking over for advanced technique—holding the piece just so, with the apprentice watching like a hawk. The laughter they shared when something went a bit screwy with the tin. ([Location 32](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=32)) - Tags: [[blue]] - this special working bond between experts and learners has been the bedrock of humanity’s transfer of skills and ingenuity for millennia. Many, many millennia. ([Location 40](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=40)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Think about your most valuable skill. The thing you can reliably do under pressure that delivers results—and looks like magic to those nearby. How did you learn it? Decades of research suggest that you achieved mastery the same way Menelaos and Kristen did: by working with someone who knew more than you did. More specifically, by watching an expert for a bit, getting involved in easy, safe parts of the work, progressing to harder, riskier tasks with their guidance, and then finally starting to guide others. In surgery, this is called “see one, do one, teach one.” But no matter what we call it, whether we even know it’s going on, it’s the same process—in pipefitting, midwifery, or carpentry, in an elementary school classroom or a high-energy-physics lab. And we have clear archaeological evidence of this process going back at least to the invention of language and the bow: about 160,000 years ago.2 ([Location 60](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=60)) - Tags: [[blue]] - what about books? School? Workshops? Even Khan Academy or YouTube? Hasn’t our increasingly connected, up-to-date, inexpensive, global academy taken center stage away from this old-school bond? Nope. The research is clear on this, too—formal learning, at best, just gets you table stakes. It lets you start playing the game. But having conceptual knowledge about the work or doing practice exercises is very different from being able to do the work under pressure. To get there, most of us still rely primarily on collaboration with an expert. That relationship shapes our work so that we slowly, incrementally build layers of know-how that allow us to get results when it counts. If we step back from our own personal experience—if we look at human history as a long chain of relationships and interactions—this is how skill gets developed and passed between generations. ([Location 70](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=70)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The first key insight in this book is that the working relationship between experts and novices is a bundle of three Cs that humans need to develop mastery: challenge, complexity, and connection. Work near your limits, engage with the bigger picture, and build bonds of trust and respect. ([Location 83](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=83)) - Tags: [[blue]] - All this links to the second key insight: if we don’t put this knowledge to use right now, our species is in deep trouble; we’re handling intelligent technologies in ways that subtly degrade human ability. ([Location 93](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=93)) - Tags: [[blue]] - If intelligent technologies are going to truly help, then the expert-novice bond has to survive, too. And it’s here that this book offers its third key insight: if it’s going to flourish, the future of skill needs the very technologies we’re concerned about. We need to use them to enrich, expand, and amplify skill development for everyone. We need to make them part of the solution, not the problem. ([Location 121](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=121)) - Tags: [[blue]] - In millions of workplaces, we’re blocking the ability to master new skills because we are separating junior workers from senior workers, novices from experts, by inserting technology between them. ([Location 125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=125)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Top corporate law firms are cutting costs aggressively, but they’re spending more on one thing: technologies like AI “to support lawyers’ workflow.” Practically, this means automating document review. The firm doesn’t involve or bill for that junior lawyer’s time anymore, so senior experts do more, faster; clients pay less while the law firm can bill more with fewer staff so their profit goes up. But as a result, juniors become separated from seniors, losing visibility and exposure to their day-to-day work, and can’t learn by helping. A recent Law.com review article sounded the alarm: “There is a whole generation of lawyers missing out on training and professional development.” ([Location 165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=165)) - Tags: [[blue]] - From the cutting edge it’s clear: the expert-novice connection is fraying where human and machine learning collide. ([Location 176](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=176)) - Tags: [[blue]] - we’re approaching this backward. Almost all of the half-trillion dollars we spent in 2020 on skills development went to formal training: in the classroom, online self-paced tutorials, or—more recently—video clips on a worker’s cell phone.14 Only a tiny fraction was devoted to the ubiquitous, informal bond at the foundation of our most valuable skills. And that pittance is being spent without an up-to-date understanding as to how that bond functions. ([Location 190](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=190)) - Tags: [[blue]] - We learn best when we get healthy challenge: too much, and we burn out. Too little and we stagnate. ([Location 294](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=294)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Physical therapists Kazunori Akizuki and Yukari Ohashi, looking for the right amount of challenge for their recovering patients, gave participants a posture control task: stand up straight on an unstable surface.3 They assessed how difficult the task was by taking samples of participants’ saliva and testing for alpha amylase, an enzyme that correlates very well with stress. They also administered the NASA Task Load Index, a well-validated measure of task difficulty.4 Like the many studies before and after, subjects learned better the more they were stressed and challenged, up to a point—81 percent above normal alpha amylase readings and a 51.5 on the NASA scale—but their learning went down after that. Overdrill your recruits or exclude your interns and you will probably hurt skill, too. And that’s to say nothing of any technological gas you’ve thrown on those fires, whether it be remote work or expert-enhancing AI. ([Location 317](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=317)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The decades of research that followed tell a pretty straightforward tale: when students got the hardest tasks they could handle with guidance, they learned more and built more confidence in the long run than they did if they struggled on their own. Benjamin Bloom, an educational researcher at the University of Chicago, showed the world that when an average student got held to this standard via one-on-one tutoring, they improved to the 95th percentile of achievement.6 Getting there took starting with the basics—say how to hold a knife to chop produce and the best way to sear steak—and progressed to complicated tasks like making a sauce. In the late 1970s, educational researchers Jerome Bruner, David Wood, and Gail Ross coined the term scaffolding to describe this activity—the parsing out of challenge over time, in a manner that would keep learners engaged. ([Location 336](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=336)) - Tags: [[blue]] - scaffolding only works well when both the expert and the novice have a solid, shared understanding of the goal. Andre got a lot more out of his blood, sweat, and tears because he and his mentors were clear on the outcomes he was trying to produce. Smooth sauces. Sharp knives. Elegant plating. No one had to wonder. The opposite would be true for an administrative assistant in a publishing company who is trying to learn proposal review from an expert who’s never shared a great one. Shared clarity on outcomes is essential. ([Location 356](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=356)) - Tags: [[blue]] - to begin your journey in an occupation—let’s take finance—you had to build some sort of generalist knowledge. You learned basic accounting and budgeting, you learned about basic analysis, statements, and software, and you learned the various specialties within the occupation and the problems they focused on: corporate finance and shareholder value, venture capital and new venture funding, and so on. And you might have gotten some offline practice in basic techniques like cash flow analysis and ledger analysis. But everyone would know that all of this was the price of entry, not your ticket to membership. To become a CPA and a financial planner—to be granted that title and a license to work on those problems—you got involved in practicing financial planners’ work, helping them in limited ways in the beginning, more complicated ways as you went on, and ultimately helped to mentor newbies as you were about to complete your training. Similarly, Andre the chef started in prep—“simply” chopping produce and boning meat on demand for the head prep. Then he set his own plans and space for his work, and finally got involved in ordering for prep just as he started to oversee newbie preppers fresh off the street. When the broader community of social scientists took stock of facts like this, they saw the same patterns in the many studies of what’s known as “occupational socialization,” or the process of how new members became competent, accepted members of an occupation. ([Location 407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=407)) - Tags: [[blue]] - He and many colleagues showed through numerous studies that top performers take the next thing they can’t do, break it down, and practice a single, difficult component of it until it flows—an aspiring jazz pianist who eventually wants to jam on a Miles Davis tune will first practice their chromatic minor scales over and over, up and down until they can run them at high speed without thinking, for example. In other cases, making your own challenge means finding opportunities to handle uncomfortably challenging “live fire” work. Either way, total failure doesn’t teach you much. The evidence across all these studies shows that the tasks worth fighting for are those where the expert needs you, and you need them, but you’re sweating it. And this is a critical part of the threat that comes from separating experts and novices through technologies like AI and robotics: the farther away from an expert you are, the farther away from healthy challenge, too. ([Location 438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=438)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The specific characteristics of healthy challenge are peppered throughout this chapter. Let’s pull them together here in a ten-point checklist for easy reference. You’re facing healthy challenge when: ❑You have work that’s near—not way below or beyond—your capabilities. You’ll know because it requires near-total focus, and you can perform this work well, but not at your best. ❑The level of challenge isn’t constant: parts of the work are straightforward to you. ❑You want to get better at this work, and you don’t want to fail. ❑You still fail in small ways, every time you try—part of your challenge involves recovering from small failures. ❑You have time to recover—either during straightforward work or off the job. ❑You have enough work in front of you to face similar challenges once you have recovered from the first burst. You need repeat opportunities to learn. ❑You create, seek, and even compete for challenge when it’s in limited supply. ❑In return, experts make sure you’re on the same page about the goal, and help you manage frustration—proactively by reminding you of the payoff, and reactively by reminding you how far you’re stretching. ❑They retune their guidance to your developing skill and adjust their approach to match the work: when the task is highly structured, so is the mentorship. When it’s very unstructured, their methods are more fluid. ❑Finally, experts reserve their help for tasks that are just a bit more challenging than you could handle on your own—they stop helping you cope with challenge as you start being able to take it on yourself. ([Location 484](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=484)) - Tags: [[blue]] - she also knows that the fastest path to a win often requires keeping discoveries to herself for a while to see whether her team picks up on them themselves. When the group figures things out without her or with limited prompting, well, then she knows she’s earned her pay. ([Location 578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=578)) - Tags: [[blue]] - In the 1970s, John Anderson, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, described this first step in tackling complexity as creating “declarative” knowledge: information you can write or say that is critical to directing your action but doesn’t directly enable you to do the job.2 ([Location 616](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=616)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Over the last thousand years, we have answered this “getting up to speed” problem with increasing formality: school, books, rules, checklists, and so on. These allow us time away from the action to get to know it intellectually. Obviously, codifying declarative knowledge has been incredibly helpful, allowing many more of us to prepare for the complexity of the world with much less help. And research shows that it’s best to get this kind of knowledge shortly before we have to do the work itself. ([Location 619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=619)) - Tags: [[blue]] - We now know people learn best when they are put in realistic situations that are dynamic and interconnected—complex, not perfect. This is the difference between holding your hands in the right place over the keyboard versus typing at a reasonable clip in a loud café or a swaying sailboat. So she flipped the script, throwing rehab patients into plausibly normal task conditions after minimal practice, studying how they engaged with the environment as they tried to rebuild skill. Those patients did better. ([Location 654](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=654)) - Tags: [[blue]] - the other core insight from psychological research on situational complexity: early on, explicit instruction should only serve to direct the novice’s attention to “information-rich” (that is, complex) aspects of context without interpreting them. ([Location 665](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=665)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Research on learning and skill building agree on this point: you don’t just build skill by doing. You need time away from the action to make sense of all the complexity you’ve dealt with. Here again, K. Anders Ericsson ignited elegant insights. Through study in domains ranging from taxi driving to chess to neurosurgery, he and his colleagues find that top performers form “increasingly sophisticated mental maps” of the work to be done, including environmental factors that could shape any surprises or contingencies they need to handle.11 The richer the factual data they include, the better they are. ([Location 685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=685)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Research shows us that this mental representation work—the task of tackling all this complexity down to an understanding that helps us act skillfully in the situation—mostly occurs after the work is over, when we get a chance to rest and reflect. ([Location 694](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=694)) - Tags: [[blue]] - the closer you are to being a novice, the less you should rely on reflection during the action. But whether it happens in the moment or after the action, a lot of this processing and reflection is unconscious or implicit—we are literally laying down new neural connections and giving them a chance to settle in. Regardless, after a little soak time, we can see patterns in the action that we couldn’t before, and these new patterns allow us to at least see a way to act more skillfully the next time we try. In fact, Ericsson and others’ work on expertise shows we do just this: away from the action—on the bus, in the shower, over dinner—we visualize our own performance in an idealized version of the situation, given our updated understanding.14 And this visualization is in many ways indistinguishable to our brains from the real thing. So, in a very real sense we are getting free, simulated practice by doing this visualization and the research shows that when we do this intentionally, we get more skill out of our next real practice opportunity. ([Location 701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=701)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The goal, then, is to limit the explicit rules, ideas, and distinctions you acquire for how to do something, and avoid trying to consciously apply them to control the mechanics of your technique. Instead, focus on—even visualize—the outcomes you want to achieve and count on the implicit learning that will come through reflection. ([Location 723](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=723)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The research on ERFs backs this up, too: it finds that when the task environment becomes more complex in some new way, learners will struggle to build skills without any adaptation to the changed environment unless an expert points out the change.17 We are highly susceptible to the overconfidence that comes from snapshotting. ([Location 730](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=730)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Research on expertise and skill shows that experts can help with this reflection problem by refocusing a novice’s attention if they get distracted or build inaccurate understandings of what’s going on.19 Sometimes this takes the form of open-ended questions about what they see; sometimes it’s asking them to predict what will happen next. But the point is to spot-check how they think their task environment works, and why it works that way. ([Location 738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=738)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Experts have a different problem: they fail to reflect. This is the blindness that comes with the “seen one, seen ’em all” phenomenon: after a while, if you’ve got solid skill, it’s all too easy to fit your mental models onto most any complexity to predict what’s coming. ([Location 749](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=749)) - Tags: [[blue]] - novices arrive at the work pretty clueless about how to do things, why things are done that way, and what is even going on. Whether or not they recognize it consciously, experts rely on newbies’ new eyes and lack of expertise to break the trance that skill can put us in. So, while on the surface, collaborating with novices slows the work down and leads to more mistakes, the precious upside is that their “silly” questions and “sloppy” work call fresh attention to the situation, which helps experts pay better attention to complexity. ([Location 759](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=759)) - Tags: [[blue]] - I’ve deeply examined thirty-one occupations in my research career and have read studies on dozens more. And when it comes to building skill, the pattern is often the same: you start at a distance as a novice, offering help and moving toward the “core” of the work as an expert decides you’re ready. What’s less well understood is that as you close in on that core—the most complex and difficult tasks available—in another sense you go broad: inevitably coming to terms with environmental dynamics that condition your specific task. The more you do this, the more you deepen your skill: you can handle surprises better, plan better, and help others see important but subtle patterns. And, like Sita, workers across multiple studies take this expanding negotiation of complexity as an opportunity to specialize in new skills. ([Location 790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=790)) - Tags: [[blue]] - By taming complexity in peripheral domains, you don’t just build focal skill—you get access to the branches of an interconnected skills tree, and a clearer sense as to which ones you’d like to climb to next. ([Location 798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=798)) - Tags: [[blue]] - You’re facing healthy complexity when: ❑You learn basic facts about the work close to when you have to get started. ❑You minimize up-front explicit learning—once you’re oriented, it’s usually better to learn implicitly by getting to work. ❑You reserve explicit direction and instruction to direct attention toward complexity but avoid interpreting it. ❑You have slack time to reflect on the work—away from it to start, during the action as you gain significant expertise. ❑You reflect through visualization—imagining vignettes of action and consequence, and you envision alternatives. ❑You don’t try to control your automatic responses in the work by consciously thinking through rules. ❑You get time enough away from the work to forget about some significant parts of it. ❑You have an expert who asks about or redirects what you’re paying attention to, but who limits telling you about what you’re seeing or why it is the way it is. ❑In return, experts treat your naïveté as an asset—encouraging “silly” questions and asking for your assessment before sharing theirs. ❑The better you get at a task, the more you look into your broader work context, and pay more attention to parts of it that interest you. ([Location 834](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=834)) - Tags: [[blue]] - We often celebrate leaders who received The Devil Wears Prada–style mentorship—isolation, lack of direction, harsh critique—but these are typically the harbinger of poor skills development. And all too often, we think of skills in individualistic, egocentric terms: all you need is a good head and nimble hands. That masks the fact that we simply can’t get healthy challenge and complexity without healthy human connection. ([Location 946](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=946)) - Tags: [[blue]] - when we decide, on our own volition, to pursue a goal, we go after it with more energy than we otherwise would, and feel more fulfilled in life—even if the goal was someone else’s idea.2 This finding confirms a basic need to feel in control of our actions and goals, and to choose those that feel consistent with our sense of self. This is as basic as the need for competence. What’s more, the needs for autonomy and competence are a powerful combination: when we get to choose our own goal and build the capability we need to achieve it, we get more motivation, creativity, and life fulfillment. ([Location 964](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=964)) - Tags: [[blue]] - We are not born with an idea of what we choose to pursue and master—the specific competence targets we aim for. The only place we can get those goals and motivation is the people around us as we bond with them and seek their approval. Social scientists refer to this process as “socialization”—where an outsider (at the beginning, a new human) is introduced to a social experience and given a flood of reactions that suggest how one ought to behave in that situation.4 The longer we willingly choose that relational environment, the more we internalize it all. ([Location 990](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=990)) - Tags: [[blue]] - This is the same pattern that shows up in dozens of studies: when we hear we’re doing well from an expert, we’re essentially learning that we’ve done something significant in their eyes, and this recognition plays a critical part in how we form relational bonds and, in turn, stay motivated to keep learning. ([Location 1011](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=1011)) - Tags: [[blue]] - By the mid-1980s, studies driving self-determination theory had shown us that our most precious commodity was a combination of intrinsic motivation and life satisfaction.8 Researchers started to ask what made a difference for these outcomes. The answer was stark and simple: no relatedness meant no motivation and meaning. ([Location 1045](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=1045)) - Tags: [[blue]] - When it comes to healthy connection, the story on feedback is refreshingly simple: we need to know how we stand in the relationship, not just how we’re performing on task. Specifically, this means experts and novices communicate clearly and regularly about the status of care, trust, and respect between them. Remember, these are the aspects of our need for relationality, so this is what people will naturally be wanting to know about. ([Location 1130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=1130)) - Tags: [[blue]] - when we get clear information (feedback) that our bonds are warm and that respect is strong, we learn better. In 1997, Jason Teven and his advisor James McCroskey at the University of West Virginia found a very simple connection: students who felt their teacher cared for them also reported learning more. ([Location 1139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=1139)) - Tags: [[blue]] - 21 She and her colleagues have found that in top-performing teams, members express disapproval about task performance or the relationship just like Emily did to Brandon: point to a gap and ask if you’re missing something. The “trick” here is that you have to be genuinely open to the possibility that you don’t have the complete picture or are even flat wrong. If you’ve got that mindset, then your question will be genuine. ([Location 1148](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=1148)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Talent capture is entirely unnecessary, of course. Even if we specialize as we build increasing skill, and even if we do this in large, hierarchical organizations, we can always take and make some time for self-directed skill development, whether we’re the novice or the expert. We’ll do better, build more skill, and be more fulfilled in our work the more we build connections that allow for everyone to meet the same basic needs: autonomy, competence, and relationality. ([Location 1204](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=1204)) - Tags: [[blue]] - A connection is healthy for your skill when it: ❑Provides warmth, bonding, and care. ❑Gives both of you a sense that you and your work are significant in others’ eyes. ❑Builds trust: the other person’s willingness to be vulnerable to your actions because they expect you’ll deliver. ❑Builds respect: the other person’s willingness to give you valuable resources because they admire and hold you in esteem. ❑Involves both of you being carefully attuned to each other, limiting distractions and judgments. ❑Gives both of you feedback on how the relationship is going. ❑Involves joint adjustment of goals, methods, and work assignments to allow both of you satisfying authorship of your work and skills journey. ❑Eventually allows you to coach and teach others as you reach solid skill yourself. ❑Eventually results in the expert advocating for you outside your shared project. ❑Results in a “breakup” when you’ve built enough skill to handle complex projects mostly on your own. ([Location 1227](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CHW5QB1R&location=1227)) - Tags: [[blue]]