People are recipients of many lectures in school, but are rarely asked to translate learned material into an activity.
At the end of a seminar or mini-course, there are few opportunities to apply newfound knowledge.
Why?
Traditional education:
- Focused on knowing instead of doing
- Easy to present knowledge to a large group of people
- Expensive and inefficient to set up individual practice conditions
Knowledge is cognitive understanding. Skills are a combination of cognitive understanding and physical ability used to perform an action. While gaining more knowledge is valuable, effective execution is a product of building skills.
Great athletes, artists, pilots, managers, CEO’s, etc., once failed at what they now excel. Their improvement did not evolve from watching and learning, or simply gaining more knowledge. It was a result of performing a task, receiving feedback, and correcting mistakes.
“Your success is going to be predicted by your skills and abilities. What is your work ethic and what will you learn from mistakes to build your skills?” -Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO Vayner Media; Four time NY Times bestselling author
If you want to improve, practice. If you want to improve execution, build on weakness and gain more skill.
