4111: How to Be Competent by Tynan on Accelerated Learning

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[00:00:49] [SPEAKER_00] This is Optimal Living Daily. How to Be Competent by Tynan of Tynan.com and I'm Justin Malik and I'm going to jump right into today's post as we optimize real life. How to Be Competent by Tynan of Tynan.com As I've written before, I think that one of the most important skills one can have is basic competence.

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_00] It doesn't sound as appealing as programming, writing, or engineering, but it's a rarer skill and thus more valuable. Most skills are clearly defined and can be easily taught, which makes them easy to commoditize. Competence, like social skills, is something that's less easy to define and teach. It's more of a personal exploration. I define competence as the ability to get an undefined task done in an efficient manner.

[00:01:44] [SPEAKER_00] The skills that go into that are primarily time management and ability to learn. Someone who is very competent can take a random task in a field in which they are not an expert, figure out how to get it done, and then complete it. They won't be able to do it as well or as quickly as an expert, but that's not the point. The point is to not be totally helpless when working outside of your comfort zone. So what does it take to be competent? You start with confidence.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_00] If you don't believe that you can complete the task, you'll get flustered or sabotage yourself and will either give up or do such a poor job that the task can't be considered complete. You need to get your confidence from other areas, not from the area in which you're working. Look for times that you learned how to do a new skill and were able to execute it in a passable manner. If you went from zero to something then, you can do it again.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_00] Next, you need to determine what is actually important. Last summer, I led the building of a loft inside the yurt on our island. I never built anything close to that size or level of complexity. Very quickly, I determined that the most important factor was safety. If the loft could hold a lot of weight in a secure manner, it would be a success. Second most important was functionality.

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_00] It had to have sufficient space on top on which to sleep, enough room behind it to store stuff, and to be an appropriate size for installing a kitchen counter on the front. Maybe most importantly, I determined that how it looked didn't really matter and that cost wasn't a primary concern. Because I'm not an expert, I know that I'm not going to reach perfection, so I had to decide where to allow slack.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_00] By ignoring appearance, I could build it in the simplest and thus fastest and safest way. And by ignoring cost, I could err on the side of bigger hardware and lumber, since I didn't know exactly what would be correct. Considering what actually matters, you come up with a plan. I called my father to ask about lumber sizes, but didn't ask him about every last detail. That was the most important part, but the rest I could figure out on my own.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_00] You want to only ask people for advice for important things in which they are an expert. This is because you don't want to burn them out with giving advice, and you also want to learn how to search the internet to find your own answers, and be comfortable executing even when you're not totally sure. Once you have the confidence to start, figure out what actually matters, and have done some basic planning, you start working. The most important part of this phase is recognizing errors early.

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_00] You will make some errors, as you have no experience in the field, so it's important to find them. When I was building a loft, I laid everything out and realized that we didn't get enough joist hangers because I miscalculated. By figuring it out early, we were able to correct the mistake before the hardware stores closed. This is the rough plan for a single task, but the real key here is to do things like this as often as possible. The more you do tasks in subjects with which you're unfamiliar,

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_00] the more you'll learn about how you learn and work. That knowledge builds your general competence. I'm an expert in very few things, but I have a high level of general competence. With no experience and very little guidance, I've bought property in foreign countries, cooked meals for people, built all sorts of things, bought art, hiked in the wilderness solo, rebuilt a moped engine, and done many other unrelated things.

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_00] Some of these things were hard, and probably none of them came out as well as if a real expert had done them, but that's not the point. I meet very few people who are generally competent, and it's always a little shocking to me. If you think you might be one of those people, make it a high priority to develop general competence. It's a great feeling to know that you can handle anything life throws at you, and you become very useful to other people. Among the friends I have who hire, they all prioritize general competence

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_00] because it's essential to autonomy. You just listened to the post titled, How to be competent, by Tynan of Tynan.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. Support for today's episode comes from Square, the business platform that helps sellers become neighborhood favorites. Payments, point of sale, online orders, inventory, staff, all in one place,

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_00] so you can focus on your customers instead of your to-do list. One thing about my favorite gelato place, besides the flavors, is that I'm always done paying in seconds. Tap to pay, receipt in my inbox, and the person behind the counter is actually talking to me instead of messing with a machine. That's Square. When the tools aren't the focus, the human part of the business gets to come forward. Square helps you run your business more smoothly,

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_00] bringing payments, operations, and insights together in one place so you're ready for whatever's next. Right now, listeners can get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com slash go slash old. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash go slash O-L-D. Get started with Square and build a setup that works the way you do. Back to school starts now.

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[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_00] Thank you to tie it in. Definitely a more unique concept than the traits that we typically hear on this show. There's an article from Brian Tracy talking about the nine success factors for personal growth. Those were education, skill, contacts, money, good work habits, positive mental attitude, positive image, creativity, and character. And I think the closest one to competence in that list might be good work habits, but there's definitely more to it than that.

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_00] Like education and skill. He even mentioned starting with confidence, which relates to positive image from Brian's article. So you can see that this idea of competence is really a mix of multiple traits that all need to be worked on. Not necessarily easy, but a great trait to have. In the beginning, it can be frustrating and defeating when we need to learn something new. But as Tynan talked about,

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_00] the more we put ourselves into these situations of working on something new, the more our confidence grows with our ability to adapt and learn. And the more that confidence grows, the better we are at being competent. It's a cycle where each step makes the next one even easier. But I'll leave it there for today. Have a great rest of your day. And I'll see you over the weekend, where your optimal life awaits.