Using skill-pressure to build competencies

Skill-pressure is the motivation to learn a skill you get when you want or need to immediately apply it to achieve your goals.

Building Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu skills

New sparring session with my private class BJJ teacher.

He's a fourth-degree black belt, not to mention he's probably made of granite, and I'm about to get a good beating.

Again.

His 210+ lbs on top of me feel more like 400 lbs. He pushes my elbow and wraps my own arm around my neck. Then he pulls my back towards him, and strangles me.

Again.

Later, at home, I look up my side control and back defense instructionals. That hip-switch side control defense seems promising...

So, new sparring session, and I'm about to get a beating.

He pushes my elbow, but I keep my hands together and prevent back exposure. Yey!

He turns to north-south (his chest is pressing my head against the mat, not fun), flips me over, takes my back, and strangles me.

Again.

Later, at home, I look up some of my north-south escapes videos...

The market for BJJ instructionals

Did you know there's a huge market for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu videos instructionals?

I love them, and they've really helped my game. In fact, how many hours worth of instructionals do I have?

python Desktop/duration.py
Total duration: 189.88 hours

ls Dropbox/Documents/Dui/bjj | wc -l
193 # total video files

Oh wow, that's way more than I thought!

In any case, instructionals are a huge part of building my BJJ skills.

Instead of just showing up for training trying to win, or just watching the videos one after another, my BJJ learning method is:

1. Choose a BJJ goal to work on
2. Based on my last session, identify what gap(s) I need to fill
3. Watch instructionals to fill the knowledge gap(s)
4. Apply new knowledge in my next training session
5. Repeat

Using my last session to identify gaps based on how it went is what I call skill-pressure.

Skill-pressure motivates us to learn

Skill-pressure happens when you want or need to have a skill to apply right away, and this motivates you to build it.

Skill-pressure is a common thing, it just doesn't have a well-known name. And I love naming things.

When you need to learn Terraform at work, don't know how to conduct your first 1-1, or are trying to figure out how to do OKRs, you have skill-pressure.

Unfortunately, most skill-pressure we subject ourselves under at work are for easily acquirable skills, like the above – from a few hours to a few days' worth of learning.

I'm a fan of creating skill-pressure for the really hard things to learn. Like, the really, really hard ones.

While skill-pressure is helpful to teach you how much B12 you should supplement (1,000mcg a week), something you can learn by asking ChatGPT, it really shines when you're building multi-year skills, such as BJJ, writing, playing the guitar, or being a top-tier professional in any high-competition, high-value field.

One of my favorite ways to build competencies is through books. I like having various books to read and re-read just what I want or need.

And work, especially when you are starting in a new role, while a mediocre source of professional growth, can be an incredible source of skill-pressure.

How to swim on the deep end

At work, we sometimes say "throwing somebody down the deep end" when we put someone in a role we are unsure they're qualified for, like a manager battlefield promotion or giving an associate a senior-level project.

It's a metaphor: "Let's throw them in the water and see if they sink or swim." An apt metaphor, in my experience.

I've never been at a company where, when we throw somebody down the deep end, we also put a plan in place to teach them how to swim. Admittedly, in hindsight, I was often the person who should've set up such a plan, but I never did.

Note: I don't mean there was no PD at the companies I worked at; there was — even good ones.

But I've never seen good PD plans alongside a swim on the deep end situation. When you're put in a situation you're potentially unqualified for, it's because everything is on fire, everything is urgent, nobody qualified has the time, and everyone's desperate. There's no time to teach or train you.

Instead, we do "on-demand coaching," which is sharing a ton of constructive feedback (rarely positive). If you're lucky and have a good manager, that feedback will actually be shared with you. Otherwise ..

If this sounds bad, it's because it is. But it's tech startups, work's gotta be done, and work is a little hectic sometimes. You have to roll with the punches.

If you're in this sink-or-swim situation, you must learn to swim. And if you're trying to swim by just waving your hands and hoping you stay afloat, you'll have a bad time.

Instead, you must build your own learning-how-to-swim plan. The great news is that there's a lot of skill-pressure — many reasons to learn to swim and not sink.

If you're a new manager, you read books on management, role-play with ChatGPT, ask your network for their opinions and suggestions, and read magazines and internet articles.

If you're a new manager, evaluate your last 1-1. How did it go? What were you trying to achieve? Did you achieve it? Then work to improve, and try again on the next 1-1.

You must have a plan for learning how to swim that doesn't involve sinking if you fail.

Instead of "learning on the job," you:

1. Do the job the best way you can
2. Read and practice based on the gaps you find
3. Do the job again, except a little better
4. Repeat

Quiz before the studying

I'm doing this Coursera specialization on Deep Learning. Like many studying curricula, you learn many things, and then you take a quiz or do an assignment to see how much you've learned.

When I worked at an ed-tech startup, we had a feature for students called a Diagnostic: students did it to find their level at the beginning of the year, and then they studied throughout the year, presumably to improve those scores.

I love the idea of quizzing before learning. If I try to build a deep learning model using a technique I’m unfamiliar with before I study, I’ll create a skill-pressure that makes me pay close attention to the gaps in my knowledge when I do study it.

This works great if you have permanent skill-pressure for things you're constantly improving on.

You're not actually starting on something. You're iterating.

When your skills don't start from zero but from wherever you are, and you're constantly applying them, you constantly have skill-pressure to improve.

Right now, I'm improving my guitar improvisation. I'm expanding my improvisation by adding new techniques, but I'm already improvising with the techniques I've mastered.

An important way to have constant skill-pressure is the constant need to improve further.

The moment you're content, when your skill is enough, the skill-pressure will disappear.

And when your skill-pressure disappears, so will a large part of your motivation to improve.

Applying skill-pressure at work and life

Skill-pressure is about using the need to apply new skills immediately to drive learning.

This isn’t limited to BJJ or the guitar; it can be applied to many aspects of your professional or personal life.

The basic formula for applying skill-pressure is the same one I use in my BJJ training:

1. Choose a goal to work on
2. Use actual situations as assessment to identify your gaps
3. Fill your knowledge gaps through deliberate learning activities
4. Apply this new knowledge to your next real opportunity
5. Repeat

For example, here's what I'm doing for deep learning.

1. My goal is to create a model from scratch that does some useful classification or prediction for me. I decided to build a model to find correlations between weeks when I don't practice the guitar and other activities I have in the week, such as working overtime, waking up late, meeting friends, etc.
2. I run the model and the output is basically crap.
3. I study more about what could be the problem. I read about the importance of choosing the right parameters when you lack data.
4. I re-implement my algorithm with a different set of parameters, now with weekly goals alongside my time spent.
5. Repeat

You'll have different skills to develop: getting stronger, learning a new programming language, public speaking, writing, sleeping on time, running meetings, eating well, ...

To leverage skill-pressure, you need only find an area where you need to immediately apply certain skills to achieve your goals and then have a methodical way to build these skills.

And repeat.