The Half-life and Practicality of a Skill

Time is something in very short supply. Bill Gates said that if you can afford to pay someone to do something you don't enjoy, do it, because you can always make more money but you can't buy more time. It follows, then, that it's important to spend our time in as productive and effective manner as we can.

From birth much of our time is spent developing various skills. We learn to nurse. We learn to walk, talk, use a toilet, play sports. We learn to court and we learn skills that make us money. We learn to be parents and we learn to get old.

Perhaps most importantly we learn to learn. That's a major and often unconsidered, or under considered, skill. The more efficiently you learn and the more categories of skill or information you can learn, the more you can accomplish in life. It's known that if you learn two languages at a young age you can pick up a third easier than someone that only spoke a single language as a child. If you play one instrument it's easier to pick up another. You learned how to learn that category of skill.

Here's the rub, as the daffy Dutchman would say: many skills have a finite lifespan of usefulness. Sometimes that's a necessary part of development, such as is the case when a baby learns to nurse. Sometimes, however, we spend time developing skills that are either immediately unproductive or soon will be. Perhaps you still benefit in the form of pleasure and entertainment, but these must be weighed carefully against alternate skills that may offer similar benefits but more longevity or perhaps more practical benefits beyond what the chosen activity provides. Therefore the skill of analyzing the benefits of an activity and skill is a valuable skill itself.

Let's consider various sports. Many, if not most, people play some level of sports growing up. It provides experience playing well with others, operating within a set of rules, discipline, and physical aptitude. With the exception of physical aptitude these can all be gained in other ways, perhaps with greater efficacy, which means the primary benefit of sports is the physical skill you gain. Most people will not utilize this skill beyond High School, or college at the latest. Few adults play football or baseball. What sports do people play when they're older? Golf, tennis, maybe basketball to a point.

One of my favorites is martial arts. It has a very practical benefit of providing some personal protection for yourself and your family while simultaneously providing the other typical sport-related benefits. Any sports or physical activity can be beneficial, but some lend themselves to lifelong pursuits while others do not. Some have added benefits, like self defense, while others do not. It would be trivial to create a matrix of these factors, one of which could be how much you enjoy the sport and how likely you are to get others in your friend group and vicinity to participate with you (this has a major effect on whether you pursue it for long enough to make it a valid skill).

Another commonly developed skill is video games. I like video games, and I grew up playing video games. They provided me an escape and an outlet for my imagination during times when things at home weren't wonderful. Perhaps it helps with hand-eye coordination, perhaps there are other benefits. Perhaps it's just a bit of R&R, which is fine. It's when a person starts spending all their time playing that important practical skill building time is lost. I personally started to get a feel for car dynamics via racing games, crude as they were back when I started. It still got me accustomed to weight shifting, traction, and how to come on/off power and brakes. So if you want to play a game, try a racing game, or something that utilizes twitch reflexes or advanced strategic thinking or problem solving.

Unless you plan to be a torch-carrying lumberjack. In the time it takes to get to level 9999 in WoW (I have no idea what the level caps are in WoW, the last MMO I played was Ultima Online) you could learn how to repair cars, take a hiking trip across Europe, apprentice under a Master Plumbing Flange Designer, or get a Master's Degree in Competitive Knitting. The point is that most games won't offer you a skill that extends beyond games, and even then usually only a subset of games. If you're not named Felix or Sean it probably won't help you in life. It's mostly play time, so play once your work is done.

What about learning how to meet and enthrall potential romantic interests? In and of itself this is not that useful once you meet someone you want to marry. Being good at it, however, does elevate the calibre of individual you can interact with in the first place. It will not, however, increase the number of people you're compatible with beyond a relatively low experience level. Once side benefit is that being attractive generally is a boon in business interactions, irrespective of whether that is cosmically just or not. Whatever your physical appearance, being sociable, confident, and considerate are hugely attractive when looking for someone to date, marry, or work with.

We could go on, but if I were to do so I may as well create a general comparative matrix and give you that. It's better that you simply realize that these are real comparisons that can waste or save, quite literally, years of your life, and even change who you end up partnered with, what path your career path takes, and what kind of opportunities for business and fun you have in your life. Being strategic about it simply means you are acting intentionally and intelligently, thus maximizing the brief decades we, at best, have here on Earth.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic, and if you have any questions feel free to comment here or email me directly at [email protected].