Forged Not Built

The most valuable skills and capabilities are not built in advance, they are forged through experience.

We like to think that we can build new capabilities before we are actually challenged to put them into action. This the big theory behind the school system. It will help you build skills that will make you’re ready to enter the real world.

But that is not how reality works.

Real growth happens when you throw yourself into the fire and let your environment shape you.

If you struggle with procrastination and organization, it is natural to think that you shouldn’t take on new responsibilities until you’ve improved to a point where you feel confident in your ability to get things done. This is the idea that you should build your capabilities in organization and productivity before you take more on.

But if you don’t have the extra responsibilities pushing you to your limit, you will never have the motivation to make a change.

Instead, if you throw yourself into a context that pushes you to your limits, you will find that you don’t even think about Facebook, YouTube, or other forms of social media. Once you feel the pain day to day of being disorganized you will find it enjoyable and easy to invest time in implementing an organization system.

This applies too much more than organization. If you want to truly learn something, put yourself in a context where you will have to learn it or else you will fail spectacularly. In that context, you will forge the skill from experience instead of being unsuccessful in trying to build it in preparation.