Skill vs precision

Praise,

Hi, it's me, Praise, your friend—a term you've not quite fully come to terms with despite reading my letters everyday—almost. Today, I'll be writing about gaining experience.

There's an Easter egg in this email. If you find it, you get first-hand free access to two of the ideas I'll be launching this month—the exclusive coaching subscription and the Notion product.

Hint: It's a number.

Assume you're in a game. You have a score. Your aim is to beat the highest score. That's it, that's fun. You play and play and play, devising strategies and learning new things along the way.

That was 2017.

2020, you're in level 386 of, let's say, Candy Crush. In 3 years, you moved up the ladder while handling your chores, going to work, attending school, and other things you did.

Then, you outgrew it. You got tired and decided not to play anymore. You wrote articles about how to escape a particular level, cheat codes, tactics, combo modes.

You retired. 356 was a milestone for the bottom 91%.

Chikem is a 15-year old kid who got Candy Crush in 2020. By the end of 2020, he was in level 280. Logically, it'd taken less than half the time it took you to get there.

At that rate, he'd surpass you and he's not even your age-mate. Typically, if he spent 3 years like you, he'd be on level 500+, miles away from where you stopped.

From experience, I think of experience in two forms—time and exposure.

99% of the time, people ascribe experience to the former—how much time have you spent doing something, which is valid! Very!

Yet only about 2 out of 5 "time-experienced" people remain relevant in the field. Why?

Because as time passes by, the world moves on.

Exposure, on the other hand, 90% underrated yet touted so loudly, tackles the irrelevance problem that time poses.

It is defined by how much information you can consume.

I'm a designer. Look around you. Look at the most talented designers. They started 4 - 8 years ago, at par skill-wise with decades of experience. Access has increased exponentially with the advent of YouTube, the Internet, mobile data and "community".

By all means, you are probably doing well in this regard—but exposure alone poses a problem, noise!

There is so much information everywhere, different thought processes, several techniques, so many possibilities—you want to try them all. No! You have to try them all. You want to know more.

And this creates a divide—one that's become apparent in our industry today—skill vs precision.

Yet, true experience, is a combination of both—applying skill with precision, the true mark of a "leader".

Time provides precision.

How are you precise? By being able to live through events, opportunities, situations, trying and failing over and over and over again until you got it right.

If you're all skill, yes, you're experienced. All precision? We respect you, Morgan Freeman.

The industry would still need you.

However, if you want to be a design leader, skill & precision are your MUST. They're a non-negotiable. You must know what to do, how to do it and why you're doing it—not one less.

That's why people find mentors, but you know my advice.

When you find the Easter egg, send me a DM on Twitter, @praisephilemonn. This stays open till Monday!

Take care.

Bye.

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