How to Get Good at Anything
Dec. 13th, 2022 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThe earlier post on jobhunting got me thinking about how people develop skills. I came across some interesting articles in the process too.
First, consider different levels of skill. Most things that are widely practiced, like cooking or drawing, have an "average" perceived level of skill that people of a given culture are expected to have. So that can vary a lot depending how much a given culture values a particular ability, or not. This usually isn't something that has specialized training, except for reading since literacy isn't a natural ability. This level may be called novice, layman, or similar terms.
I like the old system of apprentice, journeyman, master, and adept. An apprentice is training to learn the basics, but those are professional basics -- the stage just beyond what an average person can do. This stage typically takes at least a year, although complex crafts like blacksmithing may take many years. An apprentice usually isn't thought of as an expert per se, but this is when folks will start asking for advice or help that is just a bit out of their own reach. While the classic approach assumes formal training, it is possible for people to learn some things on their own, especially if they are determined and have access to relevant tools, materials, books, and/or a professional they can observe.
A journeyman has learned all they can from their first master, and thus journeys to learn from others. They know enough to teach basic skills to an apprentice, and perform those skills well enough to set up a simple business of their own, but they don't have much refinement yet and may not have developed a personal style. Often they work in a large shop under supervision of a master. They can solve a lot of problems cheaper than going to a master, though. People typically spend several years at this level, depending how much they want to learn and from whom. A journeyman is an expert compared to an untrained person of average skill, but usually won't think of themselves as an expert.
A master has learned even the complicated and difficult parts of their craft, usually has their own business and style, and can teach apprentices and journeymen. They may add personal flourishes or refinements, and some will start coming up with whole new ideas. Most people are satisfied with this level of achievement. A master is an expert compared to journeymen, apprentices, and average people.
An adept is all about breaking new ground, and they can reach levels of talent and finesse that not even masters typically reach. Adepts tend to be self-taught at this level, although they may teach each other and/or masters. Some crafts are more secretive, though. And while this tends to be a senior's position, some people with a knack for innovation can jump to it surprisingly early. Adepts often seem like experts even to other adepts, because each tends to specialize in a different aspect of their art. A blacksmith who can make corrective shoes for any misformed hoof is quite different from one who can forge realistic roses, but they are equally skilled. Some systems refer to this as grandmaster.
So, when you're thinking about a skill or a job, and whether you qualify as "an expert" at them, remember that scale of comparison. If you have formal training, even if it's workshops rather than college, quite probably you are above average and a layman will think of you as an expert, even if you are nowhere near master level. If you have been doing something for a least a year, you're probably apprentice level or higher. If you've been doing it for 5 or more years, you're probably at least journeyman level. At 10 years, you may be a very experienced journeyman or master, depending on your talent and dedication. If you frequently invent new things and/or even trained people keep saying, "Wait, how did you do that?" then you may be an adept.
I came across a very interesting article that claims reading three books makes you an expert.
The point is reaching a skill level that makes you an expert for the average person, NOT for those people who are already highly-experienced in that given area. We tend to think that we need to reach the highest pinnacle of ability and knowledge before we can actually start working in the field.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. The average customer wants a general level expert, they don’t the need someone in the upper 20% of a given trade or speciality.
So we're talking a moderate level of expertise here -- tasks that could be done by an older apprentice or a journeyman. That actually is the lion's share of work in many fields, although some are more specialized. In blacksmithing, a lot of what people need is simple stuff like drawer pulls or campfire forks. In office work, a lot of it is typing. If I go into a hardware store, I don't need a master, I just need someone who knows the stock well enough to tell me which of the 10 products on the shelf is best suited to the project I want to do.
To measure your skills against this threshold, think about:
* how many types of things you can do
* what proportion of the field those things make up
* how consistent your quality is at those things
* whether those are things most people can do
* how often other people ask you to do that stuff because they can't.
Thus, one way to reach a useful level of "expert" -- the journeyman level -- is simply to learn the most common skills in a field until you can do them reliably. The bottom rungs on most learning ladders are plain old level-grinding, and the reason not many people are "expert" at them is they haven't put in the time. They're not incredibly difficult skills, they just take practice. It's why apprentice blacksmiths are set to making nails: it teaches precision, builds strength, and people can always use nails. Even now, if you're building period stuff where you don't want modern bits to show, you need the nails and somebody has to make them. Most of the first year in any new craft or subject is the equivalent of making nails. If you don't see exercises that are repetitive practice of very basic skills you'll be using in everything else, then you probably have a bad book or teacher. Get a better one or figure out your own nails.
When you're learning something new, first break down skills into subskills. Then practice each subskill until you feel confident with it, before you start combining them into complex skills. If you don't get the subskills and basic skills right, then the more advanced stuff won't work properly and you'll probably have no idea why. Deliberate practice is all about strategy. But you can break it down in many different ways. Take poetry. You could get a list of poetic devices and practice each one in turn, featuring each in 10 poems; you could take a list of famous poets to study and emulate each one's style; or you could buy The New Book of Forms and write 10 of each form. The latter is closer to something I did. I had a high school teacher who taught forms with worksheets, and I still like to teach poetry that way: description, example, now you try.
Some fields are poorly organized and taught, so you have to do all this work yourself. Others are very well deconstructed and your teacher or book will present them in a logical order. Skateboarding is an example of a field where the basic skills and subskills are very well known, with plentiful explanations of how they combine into more advanced tricks. Once you have learned a field that is well-broken, then you know what that looks like, and it becomes easier to break down an unbroken one if you have to. Just being able to break a topic well is apparently a rare skill, and thus marketable. Which is why I have teachers copying the "how to write poems" parts from my Pagan liturgy manual, because there are tons of books that talk about writing poetry but don't actually explain the steps well, and they couldn't find a good one anywhere else.
One good way to structure a learning experience is with skill trees. In this approach, basic skills enable you to learn more advanced skills. As much as possible, you want to identify which basic skills will open the most intermediate skills, and which intermediate skills will open the most advanced skills. This allows you to learn most efficiently. Another approach is to identify an end goal and then determine what skills you need to reach that. Here are examples from education, from business, and from gaming. This one is for Drupal and this one is for cardistry grips. See a skill tree maker.
Think about a potential customer that might buy a website from Larry. They might want a business website, a simple Ecommerce site or help with a personal blog. These are the vast majority of customers wanting web design, I’d say nearly 80%. At the high-end we have the medium to large businesses, online vendors and niche-specific websites with huge amounts of content that requires much more specialized skills.
But, that is only 20% of the demand. The other 80% could easily be done by guys like Larry.
This is about market as much as talent, skill, or experience. Who is your target market? And what is the competition there? If you aim at a basic level, the potential market tends to be large and the required skill level modest. So for instance, the landscaping field starts with stuff like lawnmowing and leaf raking, which an enterprising tween can make decent money from if they bother to learn how to do a quick clean job of it. With writing, if your stories feature topics and characters underserved by the mainstream -- which is surprisingly much -- then you have little competition and can probably sell things sooner than if you were trying to write for a big popular genre like romance. The higher you aim, the more you can charge for your work; but the more skill you need, which takes time and often money to cultivate. If you are not too picky, you can start working a lot sooner -- and if you are desperate for money, there are a lot more skills you could probably monetize from what you already know.
Also, whose opinion do you care about the most? Let's take gardening as an example. Am I an expert gardener? My yard looks nothing like a magazine cover; it looks like a messy jungle. I don't have a relevant degree and haven't worked a gardening job. By "conventional" standards I'm a half-assed gardener at best. But. I have read hundreds if not thousands of gardening and related books. I have grown many fine plants. I have killed more plants than most people have even planted, and learned from that. I can pick things and put them in my mouth or use them for craft materials. I have sold articles about plants and gardening. Gaia plants things I didn't even pay for. My detritus food chain is 3 days to apex. Twice we've flushed a bald eagle out of the yard. So, Nature thinks I'm a damn fine gardener. Whose opinion do I care about? I'm not gardening for the county fair. I'm gardening for my household needs (expert enough) and for the Earth (I'm still all asquee about those eagles endorsing my yard by landing in it). Decide on your target market and that will define your measures.
We are all taught to seek permission in order to believe we can do something. When we’re young we need permission to go to the bathroom, when we get older we need permission to take a sick day or an afternoon off. We seek permission in the form of job experience, references, degrees and fancy letters after your name. They confer status, "ability" and permission to even try.
This is a cultural thing, to a large extent; a contextual thing, to a large extent; and a personality thing to a somewhat lesser but still very important extent. Some cultures expect people to be independent and proactive, while others try to pack everyone into "their place" and discourage initiative. Some contexts allow people to rely largely on others (e.g. any city) while different contexts absolutely require a high level of self-sufficiency (e.g. Alaska). Some people lean submissive and prefer to follow directions, where others lean dominant and bristle at any attempt to push them around.
Know your culture, know your context, and know yourself. If you don't like the way you are, changing your context is much easier than changing your culture, let alone your personality. If you feel that you're too standoffish, choose an activity or venue that requires teamwork. If you feel that you're too dependent, choose something that forces you to rely on yourself.
You don’t need permission to learn anything new.
You don’t need it to become an expert in almost any field and you certainly don’t need it to find your first customer. So unless you’re becoming a doctor, a lawyer or something else that could get you into legal trouble, there isn’t much stopping you from becoming an expert, other than just investing your time.
So. Much. This.
A few fields are truly esoteric and very expensive to get training for. A few are dangerous if you don't know the proper precautions. Most are not, although an unfortunate problem in "developed nations" is infantilization of the populace by restricting things to trained experts that used to be things everyone did. Again, context matters: if you are on a wilderness expedition, people will care more that someone knows how to stop heavy bleeding effectively than whether they have credentials to do so. In a city they're fussier.
Plus, now we have the internet, so much information is readily available that used to require a lot of library trips to hunt down. We also have better access to buy pretty much any book in print, and a clearly written manual is often more use than a hostile "expert." People have lost a lot of skills, but if you want to learn something -- even an obscure thing like flint knapping -- you can usually find articles and videos online to teach you.
You want to learn something? Just go do the thing. No matter how fancy people have gotten with it, they all had to start somewhere. And no matter how bad you are, practicing will make you better than if you didn't.
There will never be a right time.
I would say, you probably won't find a perfect time. Some times will be better than others. If you're a morning person, work in the morning. If you just had a baby, wait until they can sleep through the night, because you can't learn while you are asleep on your feet. But don't put off learning or doing things just because it takes some work to juggle your schedule until they fit. MAKE time.
Also, defend your time to the extent you can do so. This is why there are more famous men than famous women: men have more ability to defend their time, while people feel free to rob women of time. People trying to get your time for free are trying to ROB you. (Allow for relationships with a fair exchange of resources. and honor commitments you chose to make.) In order to learn something, you must not only make time for it but prevent people from distracting or stopping you from it. Here are some ways to say no.
Invest Time Daily
Or at least regularly. For most things, daily is best. If you need a big chunk of time, however -- say, for hiking -- then you may only have one or two days a week when that is feasible. Most fields have something that can be broken down into small bits and practiced daily, though.
Know how you allocate your time. If you are organized, put it on your schedule. If you are spontaneous, leave things where they will prompt you. For instance, an organized person would pursue fitness by going to the gym every day, while a spontaneous one might install a chin-up bar in a doorway they pass many times a day. There is no point trying to make yourself do things in a way that does not work for the body/mind you have. Devise some method of frequent practice.
I've done the daily practice thing more than once. I wrote a poem every weekday for years, starting in junior high and going at least partway through college. When I was taking Russian, I'd write all the vocabulary words in blocks of 10 until I could do each one with no mistakes. It gave me the prettiest Cyrillic handwriting in class. This method is tedious but very effective.
One of my favorite rules of being an expert is the three book rule. If you were to read three books about a topic you would be an expert compared to 99% of the population. That’s all it takes. You don’t need a degree or an expensive certification. You just need to read three books.
This one just boggled me. That's all? THREE? Because I have consumed entire libraries. I have done that in this life and I have done it more than once. Granted the ones I ate whole were small ones, but they were still libraries and I ate them all. Plus of course extensive cherry-picking of larger libraries, which is probably a larger total volume -- a shelf of embroidery books here, a case of gardening books there. Plus the tens of thousands of books lining my house. A stack of magazines per month times several decades. And the internet. For topics I enjoy, I have read thousands of books. Paganism, speculative fiction, gardening, cooking, that sort of thing. For most topics I like even casually, whether I perform them or not, I have probably read a dozen or more books. Woodworking, music, that sort of thing. How much of this do I retain? Enough that my friends tend to treat me like a library with feet. Even though most of my friends are avid bookworms too.
Thinking about this, if it's really a standard, that would explain a lot about why people so often treat me as an expert even in areas of my least skill or interest. Because that is still way far above average. Comparing to all the people who read maybe one book a year, yeah, I'm a Renaissance man. Oh, and farmemory, I've permed a bunch of stuff from other lives, but that's less useful to most other folks.
How long does it take to read three books?
Maybe 3-4 months depending on the size. The average person can’t even focus his or her attention long enough to read one book let alone 3. Simply reading three books launches you into the expert stratosphere about any topic relative to the average person’s knowledge.
Okay, speed matters. A true speed-reader can finish a book in 5 minutes with enough retention to pass a post-test. I try not to do that because books cost money. If I'm online browsing free stuff? I'll chug if I feel like chugging, and can finish a book in a few hours easily. I usually try to make a book last at least a day, and more often it's several days because I pick it up and put it down.
If I am loading the database, however, I consume rapidly and voraciously until I feel satisfied with my new knowledge. Frex, at one point I wished to learn how to script comics. I examined available resources, bought two books, inhaled them in a couple of days, and went about doing the work. I already knew how to write, I just needed details for that format; easily done. But that scene in The Avengers -- "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" "Last night." -- that sounded very familiar to me. I could do that if I was building on any base field I already knew well. If saving the world required learning a genre or something like that, I could do it lightning-fast.
Of course, speed also depends on the content. Absorbing a field of knowledge can proceed at your speed of retention. Acquiring new skills requires time to practice and build muscle memory. I think it took me about a month to get good with a wok, or with making smoothies, and both of those required realizing that the books we'd bought gave shitty results so I had to scrap that plan and use my base knowledge of kitchen chemistry to compose recipes worth eating. If I wanted to learn a completely new field, I'd expect it to take at least a year.
Now let's talk about those three books. It matters which three books you pick, and I can think of several sets that would produce excellent results depending on the topic and your goals.
* Beginner, intermediate, advanced. This will work in any field and it doesn't matter how many levels it has. Just pick three different levels that make sense to you and you can climb that far up the ladder. Add more books if you wish, but three will certainly put you well above average unless it's a topic everyone reads about; and remember most people don't read unless forced. If you practice what you read, this should get you past apprentice level.
* Introduction and any two topics. You start with a general introduction to the field and then start exploring individual areas that interest you. For example: Gardening, Vegetable Gardening, and Native Wildflowers; Woodworking, Whittling, and Chip Carving; Cooking, Soul Food, and Tex-Mex. A basic overview and a couple of nascent specialties add up to a great start.
* Introduction and any two masters. You start with a general overview of the field and then focus on famous examples. For instance: Art History, Michaelangelo, and Bob Ross; Music, Mozart, and Kevin Locke; Science Fiction, Asimov, and Lois McMaster Bujold. This approach makes it easy to add more knowledge in packets.
* Three different beginner books on different branches of the same field. This starts you on a path of breadth rather than depth. For example: Basic Canning, Basic Freezing, Basic Dehydrating; Raising Sheep, Raising Chickens, Raising Pigs; How to Knit, How to Crochet, How to Tat; Louisiana History, American History, Black History. This is a good choice if the field has several well-known major branches and you like all of them, or if a particular subfield interests you but you want to connect it with the main field or other subfields.
Also, it doesn't always have to be three books exactly. If a field has a specific number of levels or subfields, then you might want that number of books. For instance, Earth has 7 continents, so to learn geology you might get a book about each one. With good enough books, though, you can do it in one or two. Any decent cookbook on a specific cuisine should teach you more about it than most people know. Understanding Comics will not only teach you how sequential art works, it generalizes to much other art and literature. The discussion of the Six Layers alone justifies the purchase price. (So that's why 90% of everything is crud: most people work backwards. Now I know.) This means you can build a fantastic general knowledge base simply by looking up the best books on many topics and consuming one of each. Here is the Goodreads page of nonfiction book lists. Go blow some of your holiday money.
Instead what I often come across is the story of the accidental expert.
The man or woman who had a hobby or interest and one fateful day was approached by a chance encounter to expand on it.
It might have been a favor from a friend, a side job, a project, or perhaps simply just a brave step forward. The opportunity isn’t as important as what it represents – a mindshift.
Well, that's how I became an editor. A publisher friend had developed a habit of asking me for help, because I know things and write like lightning. Then she asked me if I'd like to run a magazine. After I got over the "WHUT?" reaction, we talked it over, I discussed it with my partner, and I agreed. It was awesome.
In your life you will encounter opportunities. If they align with your skills and interests, take them. Usually the worst that can happen is it won't work out and you'll have to do something else. When it does work out, amazing things happen.
There is no greatness without risk. All experts are risk-takers, just not necessarily the same kind of risks. An expert kayaker risks getting smashed on rocks; an expert bookworm risks getting beaten up by jocks. You're always going to wonder if you can do it right when you're pushing your envelope. If you're not making any mistakes, you're not learning, you're coasting. So all experts are also expert fuckups.
How do you develop skills to become an expert, and how long does that take? Estimates vary. Of course if you learn fast it'll take less time, while a difficult skill will take longer than an easy one. A typical range is probably about 1-5 years.
Let's take the concept of 10,000 hours. Over in Terramagne, 10,000 Hours in is an intensive 5-year program for people who already know the basics of their craft and want to concentrate on practice. They work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. There is no homework; everything is supposed to get done during work hours, with the remainder of the day for personal activities and rest. Tuition includes full room and board, workshop and studio space, field trips to inspiring places, and classes. Most students choose to take one or two class days and the rest practice, but the balance is flexible. Classes typically cover advanced technical skills in arts, crafts, performance, or other creative pursuits.
Do the math:
40 hours x 52 weeks = 2080
- 2 week vacation = 2000
5 years x 2000 hours = 10,000 hours
Another approach I discovered is making big chunks of work. Just sheer mass. Do the thing a LOT. I've done this a couple times with editing, where I was reading just vast amounts of slush and learned new things from it. Another time I was making classes for the Grey School of Wizardry at about 10,000 words per class and cranking out as many as I could because we needed a curriculum. Pretty soon it got to where 10,000 words just didn't seem like a big deal. Once you have gotten the basic skills down, this is a great way to naturalize them so you don't have to concentrate on the details anymore. Plus you'll probably learn some new things on the way.
Cultivate your sponge mode. Usually you will have opportunities to learn from people more experienced than yourself. Absorb everything you can. Most folks like attention and some enjoy teaching, but almost everyone enjoys jabbering about their favorite topic to an enthusiastic listener. You may need to prime the pump with a question or two, so learn to ask interesting ones.
In any case, work from the core out, not from the surface in. (See the Six Layers.) This is where most people make the biggest mistake. Whatever you learn, try to identify its core principles, how it works, why things are the way they are. From base principles you can generate almost any needed ideas or solutions. If you don't have those, you are screwed and stuck with only the patterns you can memorize. The real power is always in the core structure so focus on that first. Also, be aware that most people do most things from the surface in, which is unstable and less effective, but often faster and less work. Don't fall into that trap. If you are stuck with a stupid teacher or book doing things backwards, get better resources if you care about actually learning the material. When you're shopping for your first book, look for one like "Principles of X," "Theory of X," or "How X Works." Books that say "guide," "manual," "introduction," etc. are promising if they have a section on core principles and processes. For an online example, see "Permaculture Design Principles."
Know how to find more information. You don't have to memorize it all. You just have to know how to get it when you need it. That means, at minimum, knowing how to use a library and search engines. See Google commands for more powerful effects. Ideally, also cultivate smart friends you can ask for input. Usually all people care about is getting the answer, not whether you memorized it or looked it up.
If you can reliably answer questions -- or even answer them more often than the asker can -- then people will tend to think of you as an expert. So then they'll ask you more and more things. Have a plan for handling that. my rules include that I don't help people who are mean to me until they want something, and the third time or so I'm asked the same question I usually write out the answer so I can just refer people to that. Hence the big How To section in my Memories here.
What if you dislike reading, can't do it well, and/or learn better some other way? No problem. Remember literacy has only been really common for a century or two. Just substitute an equivalent amount of effort in your preferred medium -- hands on learning, observing a master, storytelling, video, image tutorials, whatever. Expect to spend one to several years learning a field. Learning individual skills will go faster if your goal is smaller, like learning to ride a bicycle.
Do note that not quite 100% of books are for text learners. There are visual manuals to most crafts and many activities. For instance, a crochet pattern can be in text or in symbols. A visual thinking will often learn better from the symbol version. Quilt blocks are pretty visual, and often taught through image tutorials or just a pattern to cut out and piece together. It's worth looking, or asking a librarian or bookstore owner, for references in your preferred learning mode.
Further resources:
7-Steps to Becoming a Recognized Expert
Checklist for Being Seen as an Expert
How to Become an Expert (Psyche)
How to Become an Expert (WikiHow)
How to Become an Expert (And Spot out One Nearby)
How Hard Is It to Become an Expert?
How to get clients to see you as an expert
How to Identify Expertise: Who qualifies as an Expert?
How to Master Anything, at Any Age
Moving from Novice to Expertise and Its Implications for Instruction
The Path Toward Mastery — How To Become An Expert In Your Field
First, consider different levels of skill. Most things that are widely practiced, like cooking or drawing, have an "average" perceived level of skill that people of a given culture are expected to have. So that can vary a lot depending how much a given culture values a particular ability, or not. This usually isn't something that has specialized training, except for reading since literacy isn't a natural ability. This level may be called novice, layman, or similar terms.
I like the old system of apprentice, journeyman, master, and adept. An apprentice is training to learn the basics, but those are professional basics -- the stage just beyond what an average person can do. This stage typically takes at least a year, although complex crafts like blacksmithing may take many years. An apprentice usually isn't thought of as an expert per se, but this is when folks will start asking for advice or help that is just a bit out of their own reach. While the classic approach assumes formal training, it is possible for people to learn some things on their own, especially if they are determined and have access to relevant tools, materials, books, and/or a professional they can observe.
A journeyman has learned all they can from their first master, and thus journeys to learn from others. They know enough to teach basic skills to an apprentice, and perform those skills well enough to set up a simple business of their own, but they don't have much refinement yet and may not have developed a personal style. Often they work in a large shop under supervision of a master. They can solve a lot of problems cheaper than going to a master, though. People typically spend several years at this level, depending how much they want to learn and from whom. A journeyman is an expert compared to an untrained person of average skill, but usually won't think of themselves as an expert.
A master has learned even the complicated and difficult parts of their craft, usually has their own business and style, and can teach apprentices and journeymen. They may add personal flourishes or refinements, and some will start coming up with whole new ideas. Most people are satisfied with this level of achievement. A master is an expert compared to journeymen, apprentices, and average people.
An adept is all about breaking new ground, and they can reach levels of talent and finesse that not even masters typically reach. Adepts tend to be self-taught at this level, although they may teach each other and/or masters. Some crafts are more secretive, though. And while this tends to be a senior's position, some people with a knack for innovation can jump to it surprisingly early. Adepts often seem like experts even to other adepts, because each tends to specialize in a different aspect of their art. A blacksmith who can make corrective shoes for any misformed hoof is quite different from one who can forge realistic roses, but they are equally skilled. Some systems refer to this as grandmaster.
So, when you're thinking about a skill or a job, and whether you qualify as "an expert" at them, remember that scale of comparison. If you have formal training, even if it's workshops rather than college, quite probably you are above average and a layman will think of you as an expert, even if you are nowhere near master level. If you have been doing something for a least a year, you're probably apprentice level or higher. If you've been doing it for 5 or more years, you're probably at least journeyman level. At 10 years, you may be a very experienced journeyman or master, depending on your talent and dedication. If you frequently invent new things and/or even trained people keep saying, "Wait, how did you do that?" then you may be an adept.
I came across a very interesting article that claims reading three books makes you an expert.
The point is reaching a skill level that makes you an expert for the average person, NOT for those people who are already highly-experienced in that given area. We tend to think that we need to reach the highest pinnacle of ability and knowledge before we can actually start working in the field.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. The average customer wants a general level expert, they don’t the need someone in the upper 20% of a given trade or speciality.
So we're talking a moderate level of expertise here -- tasks that could be done by an older apprentice or a journeyman. That actually is the lion's share of work in many fields, although some are more specialized. In blacksmithing, a lot of what people need is simple stuff like drawer pulls or campfire forks. In office work, a lot of it is typing. If I go into a hardware store, I don't need a master, I just need someone who knows the stock well enough to tell me which of the 10 products on the shelf is best suited to the project I want to do.
To measure your skills against this threshold, think about:
* how many types of things you can do
* what proportion of the field those things make up
* how consistent your quality is at those things
* whether those are things most people can do
* how often other people ask you to do that stuff because they can't.
Thus, one way to reach a useful level of "expert" -- the journeyman level -- is simply to learn the most common skills in a field until you can do them reliably. The bottom rungs on most learning ladders are plain old level-grinding, and the reason not many people are "expert" at them is they haven't put in the time. They're not incredibly difficult skills, they just take practice. It's why apprentice blacksmiths are set to making nails: it teaches precision, builds strength, and people can always use nails. Even now, if you're building period stuff where you don't want modern bits to show, you need the nails and somebody has to make them. Most of the first year in any new craft or subject is the equivalent of making nails. If you don't see exercises that are repetitive practice of very basic skills you'll be using in everything else, then you probably have a bad book or teacher. Get a better one or figure out your own nails.
When you're learning something new, first break down skills into subskills. Then practice each subskill until you feel confident with it, before you start combining them into complex skills. If you don't get the subskills and basic skills right, then the more advanced stuff won't work properly and you'll probably have no idea why. Deliberate practice is all about strategy. But you can break it down in many different ways. Take poetry. You could get a list of poetic devices and practice each one in turn, featuring each in 10 poems; you could take a list of famous poets to study and emulate each one's style; or you could buy The New Book of Forms and write 10 of each form. The latter is closer to something I did. I had a high school teacher who taught forms with worksheets, and I still like to teach poetry that way: description, example, now you try.
Some fields are poorly organized and taught, so you have to do all this work yourself. Others are very well deconstructed and your teacher or book will present them in a logical order. Skateboarding is an example of a field where the basic skills and subskills are very well known, with plentiful explanations of how they combine into more advanced tricks. Once you have learned a field that is well-broken, then you know what that looks like, and it becomes easier to break down an unbroken one if you have to. Just being able to break a topic well is apparently a rare skill, and thus marketable. Which is why I have teachers copying the "how to write poems" parts from my Pagan liturgy manual, because there are tons of books that talk about writing poetry but don't actually explain the steps well, and they couldn't find a good one anywhere else.
One good way to structure a learning experience is with skill trees. In this approach, basic skills enable you to learn more advanced skills. As much as possible, you want to identify which basic skills will open the most intermediate skills, and which intermediate skills will open the most advanced skills. This allows you to learn most efficiently. Another approach is to identify an end goal and then determine what skills you need to reach that. Here are examples from education, from business, and from gaming. This one is for Drupal and this one is for cardistry grips. See a skill tree maker.
Think about a potential customer that might buy a website from Larry. They might want a business website, a simple Ecommerce site or help with a personal blog. These are the vast majority of customers wanting web design, I’d say nearly 80%. At the high-end we have the medium to large businesses, online vendors and niche-specific websites with huge amounts of content that requires much more specialized skills.
But, that is only 20% of the demand. The other 80% could easily be done by guys like Larry.
This is about market as much as talent, skill, or experience. Who is your target market? And what is the competition there? If you aim at a basic level, the potential market tends to be large and the required skill level modest. So for instance, the landscaping field starts with stuff like lawnmowing and leaf raking, which an enterprising tween can make decent money from if they bother to learn how to do a quick clean job of it. With writing, if your stories feature topics and characters underserved by the mainstream -- which is surprisingly much -- then you have little competition and can probably sell things sooner than if you were trying to write for a big popular genre like romance. The higher you aim, the more you can charge for your work; but the more skill you need, which takes time and often money to cultivate. If you are not too picky, you can start working a lot sooner -- and if you are desperate for money, there are a lot more skills you could probably monetize from what you already know.
Also, whose opinion do you care about the most? Let's take gardening as an example. Am I an expert gardener? My yard looks nothing like a magazine cover; it looks like a messy jungle. I don't have a relevant degree and haven't worked a gardening job. By "conventional" standards I'm a half-assed gardener at best. But. I have read hundreds if not thousands of gardening and related books. I have grown many fine plants. I have killed more plants than most people have even planted, and learned from that. I can pick things and put them in my mouth or use them for craft materials. I have sold articles about plants and gardening. Gaia plants things I didn't even pay for. My detritus food chain is 3 days to apex. Twice we've flushed a bald eagle out of the yard. So, Nature thinks I'm a damn fine gardener. Whose opinion do I care about? I'm not gardening for the county fair. I'm gardening for my household needs (expert enough) and for the Earth (I'm still all asquee about those eagles endorsing my yard by landing in it). Decide on your target market and that will define your measures.
We are all taught to seek permission in order to believe we can do something. When we’re young we need permission to go to the bathroom, when we get older we need permission to take a sick day or an afternoon off. We seek permission in the form of job experience, references, degrees and fancy letters after your name. They confer status, "ability" and permission to even try.
This is a cultural thing, to a large extent; a contextual thing, to a large extent; and a personality thing to a somewhat lesser but still very important extent. Some cultures expect people to be independent and proactive, while others try to pack everyone into "their place" and discourage initiative. Some contexts allow people to rely largely on others (e.g. any city) while different contexts absolutely require a high level of self-sufficiency (e.g. Alaska). Some people lean submissive and prefer to follow directions, where others lean dominant and bristle at any attempt to push them around.
Know your culture, know your context, and know yourself. If you don't like the way you are, changing your context is much easier than changing your culture, let alone your personality. If you feel that you're too standoffish, choose an activity or venue that requires teamwork. If you feel that you're too dependent, choose something that forces you to rely on yourself.
You don’t need permission to learn anything new.
You don’t need it to become an expert in almost any field and you certainly don’t need it to find your first customer. So unless you’re becoming a doctor, a lawyer or something else that could get you into legal trouble, there isn’t much stopping you from becoming an expert, other than just investing your time.
So. Much. This.
A few fields are truly esoteric and very expensive to get training for. A few are dangerous if you don't know the proper precautions. Most are not, although an unfortunate problem in "developed nations" is infantilization of the populace by restricting things to trained experts that used to be things everyone did. Again, context matters: if you are on a wilderness expedition, people will care more that someone knows how to stop heavy bleeding effectively than whether they have credentials to do so. In a city they're fussier.
Plus, now we have the internet, so much information is readily available that used to require a lot of library trips to hunt down. We also have better access to buy pretty much any book in print, and a clearly written manual is often more use than a hostile "expert." People have lost a lot of skills, but if you want to learn something -- even an obscure thing like flint knapping -- you can usually find articles and videos online to teach you.
You want to learn something? Just go do the thing. No matter how fancy people have gotten with it, they all had to start somewhere. And no matter how bad you are, practicing will make you better than if you didn't.
There will never be a right time.
I would say, you probably won't find a perfect time. Some times will be better than others. If you're a morning person, work in the morning. If you just had a baby, wait until they can sleep through the night, because you can't learn while you are asleep on your feet. But don't put off learning or doing things just because it takes some work to juggle your schedule until they fit. MAKE time.
Also, defend your time to the extent you can do so. This is why there are more famous men than famous women: men have more ability to defend their time, while people feel free to rob women of time. People trying to get your time for free are trying to ROB you. (Allow for relationships with a fair exchange of resources. and honor commitments you chose to make.) In order to learn something, you must not only make time for it but prevent people from distracting or stopping you from it. Here are some ways to say no.
Invest Time Daily
Or at least regularly. For most things, daily is best. If you need a big chunk of time, however -- say, for hiking -- then you may only have one or two days a week when that is feasible. Most fields have something that can be broken down into small bits and practiced daily, though.
Know how you allocate your time. If you are organized, put it on your schedule. If you are spontaneous, leave things where they will prompt you. For instance, an organized person would pursue fitness by going to the gym every day, while a spontaneous one might install a chin-up bar in a doorway they pass many times a day. There is no point trying to make yourself do things in a way that does not work for the body/mind you have. Devise some method of frequent practice.
I've done the daily practice thing more than once. I wrote a poem every weekday for years, starting in junior high and going at least partway through college. When I was taking Russian, I'd write all the vocabulary words in blocks of 10 until I could do each one with no mistakes. It gave me the prettiest Cyrillic handwriting in class. This method is tedious but very effective.
One of my favorite rules of being an expert is the three book rule. If you were to read three books about a topic you would be an expert compared to 99% of the population. That’s all it takes. You don’t need a degree or an expensive certification. You just need to read three books.
This one just boggled me. That's all? THREE? Because I have consumed entire libraries. I have done that in this life and I have done it more than once. Granted the ones I ate whole were small ones, but they were still libraries and I ate them all. Plus of course extensive cherry-picking of larger libraries, which is probably a larger total volume -- a shelf of embroidery books here, a case of gardening books there. Plus the tens of thousands of books lining my house. A stack of magazines per month times several decades. And the internet. For topics I enjoy, I have read thousands of books. Paganism, speculative fiction, gardening, cooking, that sort of thing. For most topics I like even casually, whether I perform them or not, I have probably read a dozen or more books. Woodworking, music, that sort of thing. How much of this do I retain? Enough that my friends tend to treat me like a library with feet. Even though most of my friends are avid bookworms too.
Thinking about this, if it's really a standard, that would explain a lot about why people so often treat me as an expert even in areas of my least skill or interest. Because that is still way far above average. Comparing to all the people who read maybe one book a year, yeah, I'm a Renaissance man. Oh, and farmemory, I've permed a bunch of stuff from other lives, but that's less useful to most other folks.
How long does it take to read three books?
Maybe 3-4 months depending on the size. The average person can’t even focus his or her attention long enough to read one book let alone 3. Simply reading three books launches you into the expert stratosphere about any topic relative to the average person’s knowledge.
Okay, speed matters. A true speed-reader can finish a book in 5 minutes with enough retention to pass a post-test. I try not to do that because books cost money. If I'm online browsing free stuff? I'll chug if I feel like chugging, and can finish a book in a few hours easily. I usually try to make a book last at least a day, and more often it's several days because I pick it up and put it down.
If I am loading the database, however, I consume rapidly and voraciously until I feel satisfied with my new knowledge. Frex, at one point I wished to learn how to script comics. I examined available resources, bought two books, inhaled them in a couple of days, and went about doing the work. I already knew how to write, I just needed details for that format; easily done. But that scene in The Avengers -- "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" "Last night." -- that sounded very familiar to me. I could do that if I was building on any base field I already knew well. If saving the world required learning a genre or something like that, I could do it lightning-fast.
Of course, speed also depends on the content. Absorbing a field of knowledge can proceed at your speed of retention. Acquiring new skills requires time to practice and build muscle memory. I think it took me about a month to get good with a wok, or with making smoothies, and both of those required realizing that the books we'd bought gave shitty results so I had to scrap that plan and use my base knowledge of kitchen chemistry to compose recipes worth eating. If I wanted to learn a completely new field, I'd expect it to take at least a year.
Now let's talk about those three books. It matters which three books you pick, and I can think of several sets that would produce excellent results depending on the topic and your goals.
* Beginner, intermediate, advanced. This will work in any field and it doesn't matter how many levels it has. Just pick three different levels that make sense to you and you can climb that far up the ladder. Add more books if you wish, but three will certainly put you well above average unless it's a topic everyone reads about; and remember most people don't read unless forced. If you practice what you read, this should get you past apprentice level.
* Introduction and any two topics. You start with a general introduction to the field and then start exploring individual areas that interest you. For example: Gardening, Vegetable Gardening, and Native Wildflowers; Woodworking, Whittling, and Chip Carving; Cooking, Soul Food, and Tex-Mex. A basic overview and a couple of nascent specialties add up to a great start.
* Introduction and any two masters. You start with a general overview of the field and then focus on famous examples. For instance: Art History, Michaelangelo, and Bob Ross; Music, Mozart, and Kevin Locke; Science Fiction, Asimov, and Lois McMaster Bujold. This approach makes it easy to add more knowledge in packets.
* Three different beginner books on different branches of the same field. This starts you on a path of breadth rather than depth. For example: Basic Canning, Basic Freezing, Basic Dehydrating; Raising Sheep, Raising Chickens, Raising Pigs; How to Knit, How to Crochet, How to Tat; Louisiana History, American History, Black History. This is a good choice if the field has several well-known major branches and you like all of them, or if a particular subfield interests you but you want to connect it with the main field or other subfields.
Also, it doesn't always have to be three books exactly. If a field has a specific number of levels or subfields, then you might want that number of books. For instance, Earth has 7 continents, so to learn geology you might get a book about each one. With good enough books, though, you can do it in one or two. Any decent cookbook on a specific cuisine should teach you more about it than most people know. Understanding Comics will not only teach you how sequential art works, it generalizes to much other art and literature. The discussion of the Six Layers alone justifies the purchase price. (So that's why 90% of everything is crud: most people work backwards. Now I know.) This means you can build a fantastic general knowledge base simply by looking up the best books on many topics and consuming one of each. Here is the Goodreads page of nonfiction book lists. Go blow some of your holiday money.
Instead what I often come across is the story of the accidental expert.
The man or woman who had a hobby or interest and one fateful day was approached by a chance encounter to expand on it.
It might have been a favor from a friend, a side job, a project, or perhaps simply just a brave step forward. The opportunity isn’t as important as what it represents – a mindshift.
Well, that's how I became an editor. A publisher friend had developed a habit of asking me for help, because I know things and write like lightning. Then she asked me if I'd like to run a magazine. After I got over the "WHUT?" reaction, we talked it over, I discussed it with my partner, and I agreed. It was awesome.
In your life you will encounter opportunities. If they align with your skills and interests, take them. Usually the worst that can happen is it won't work out and you'll have to do something else. When it does work out, amazing things happen.
There is no greatness without risk. All experts are risk-takers, just not necessarily the same kind of risks. An expert kayaker risks getting smashed on rocks; an expert bookworm risks getting beaten up by jocks. You're always going to wonder if you can do it right when you're pushing your envelope. If you're not making any mistakes, you're not learning, you're coasting. So all experts are also expert fuckups.
How do you develop skills to become an expert, and how long does that take? Estimates vary. Of course if you learn fast it'll take less time, while a difficult skill will take longer than an easy one. A typical range is probably about 1-5 years.
Let's take the concept of 10,000 hours. Over in Terramagne, 10,000 Hours in is an intensive 5-year program for people who already know the basics of their craft and want to concentrate on practice. They work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. There is no homework; everything is supposed to get done during work hours, with the remainder of the day for personal activities and rest. Tuition includes full room and board, workshop and studio space, field trips to inspiring places, and classes. Most students choose to take one or two class days and the rest practice, but the balance is flexible. Classes typically cover advanced technical skills in arts, crafts, performance, or other creative pursuits.
Do the math:
40 hours x 52 weeks = 2080
- 2 week vacation = 2000
5 years x 2000 hours = 10,000 hours
Another approach I discovered is making big chunks of work. Just sheer mass. Do the thing a LOT. I've done this a couple times with editing, where I was reading just vast amounts of slush and learned new things from it. Another time I was making classes for the Grey School of Wizardry at about 10,000 words per class and cranking out as many as I could because we needed a curriculum. Pretty soon it got to where 10,000 words just didn't seem like a big deal. Once you have gotten the basic skills down, this is a great way to naturalize them so you don't have to concentrate on the details anymore. Plus you'll probably learn some new things on the way.
Cultivate your sponge mode. Usually you will have opportunities to learn from people more experienced than yourself. Absorb everything you can. Most folks like attention and some enjoy teaching, but almost everyone enjoys jabbering about their favorite topic to an enthusiastic listener. You may need to prime the pump with a question or two, so learn to ask interesting ones.
In any case, work from the core out, not from the surface in. (See the Six Layers.) This is where most people make the biggest mistake. Whatever you learn, try to identify its core principles, how it works, why things are the way they are. From base principles you can generate almost any needed ideas or solutions. If you don't have those, you are screwed and stuck with only the patterns you can memorize. The real power is always in the core structure so focus on that first. Also, be aware that most people do most things from the surface in, which is unstable and less effective, but often faster and less work. Don't fall into that trap. If you are stuck with a stupid teacher or book doing things backwards, get better resources if you care about actually learning the material. When you're shopping for your first book, look for one like "Principles of X," "Theory of X," or "How X Works." Books that say "guide," "manual," "introduction," etc. are promising if they have a section on core principles and processes. For an online example, see "Permaculture Design Principles."
Know how to find more information. You don't have to memorize it all. You just have to know how to get it when you need it. That means, at minimum, knowing how to use a library and search engines. See Google commands for more powerful effects. Ideally, also cultivate smart friends you can ask for input. Usually all people care about is getting the answer, not whether you memorized it or looked it up.
If you can reliably answer questions -- or even answer them more often than the asker can -- then people will tend to think of you as an expert. So then they'll ask you more and more things. Have a plan for handling that. my rules include that I don't help people who are mean to me until they want something, and the third time or so I'm asked the same question I usually write out the answer so I can just refer people to that. Hence the big How To section in my Memories here.
What if you dislike reading, can't do it well, and/or learn better some other way? No problem. Remember literacy has only been really common for a century or two. Just substitute an equivalent amount of effort in your preferred medium -- hands on learning, observing a master, storytelling, video, image tutorials, whatever. Expect to spend one to several years learning a field. Learning individual skills will go faster if your goal is smaller, like learning to ride a bicycle.
Do note that not quite 100% of books are for text learners. There are visual manuals to most crafts and many activities. For instance, a crochet pattern can be in text or in symbols. A visual thinking will often learn better from the symbol version. Quilt blocks are pretty visual, and often taught through image tutorials or just a pattern to cut out and piece together. It's worth looking, or asking a librarian or bookstore owner, for references in your preferred learning mode.
Further resources:
7-Steps to Becoming a Recognized Expert
Checklist for Being Seen as an Expert
How to Become an Expert (Psyche)
How to Become an Expert (WikiHow)
How to Become an Expert (And Spot out One Nearby)
How Hard Is It to Become an Expert?
How to get clients to see you as an expert
How to Identify Expertise: Who qualifies as an Expert?
How to Master Anything, at Any Age
Moving from Novice to Expertise and Its Implications for Instruction
The Path Toward Mastery — How To Become An Expert In Your Field
(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-15 12:42 am (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2022-12-15 01:33 am (UTC)Yay!
>> The 3 books to be an expert surprised me <<
Yeah, me too. Then I remembered that I was raised by hippies and all my friends are nerds. Normal people just don't read that much. I mean, the only things I've read only 3 books about are things I don't care much about, or where -- like scripting comics -- I felt that everything I needed to know was covered well in what I already read.
>>but so did the 3-4 months time frame. I can read much faster then that. Esp if it's a special interest of mine.<<
I suspect that part of that time was intended for activities meant to help people remember what they read. For books that are either stories or pure information, I can chug them very fast. If it's something like a craft book, though, I might read it cover-to-cover quickly but it would take me longer to work through exercises. And I definitely do not recommend chugging something like Prometheus Rising.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2022-12-15 02:12 am (UTC)Yeah, me too. Then I remembered that I was raised by hippies and all my friends are nerds. Normal people just don't read that much.
Fair point. I was raised by a teacher & all my friends are nerds.
>>I suspect that part of that time was intended for activities meant to help people remember what they read.
That's fair. Most of my reading is for fun or personal interests.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-15 09:44 pm (UTC)I'd add: look for subfields that intersect or reinforce one another. Drawing and painting can (but don't always) use very similar hand movements; sewing and leatherwork use patterns in similar ways. Understanding the structure of one language will help you understand the logic of any subsequent language you choose to learn, and vice versa as new knowledge helps reframe and refine the old.
I do this on both a personal and professional level, and it's a good way to turbo-charge the initial grind.
It is, however, reliant on three things: identifying overlaps accurately, abstracting patterns from one skill to another, and the ability to absorb a large amount of information in the first place.
Thank you!
Date: 2022-12-15 10:39 pm (UTC)Thank you!
>>I'd add: look for subfields that intersect or reinforce one another. Drawing and painting can (but don't always) use very similar hand movements; sewing and leatherwork use patterns in similar ways. Understanding the structure of one language will help you understand the logic of any subsequent language you choose to learn, and vice versa as new knowledge helps reframe and refine the old.<<
Many crafts use the same tools or patterns. For instance, crochet, beadwork, and cross-stitch are just three of the many crafts that use grid patterns. Get a grid designer or photo-to-grid maker and you can even create your own.
I recommend that people keep a set of all-purpose tools and supplies for various needs, things that can be used for a wide range of tasks. Most people benefit from a toolbox for repairs. If you like crafts, keep a craft box. When starting a new hobby, search for a list of "essential," "basic," or "beginner" tools and supplies rather than trying to get everything at once. You can learn to crochet with just a hook, a skein of yarn, and some sort of instruction for simple stitches.
>>It is, however, reliant on three things: identifying overlaps accurately, abstracting patterns from one skill to another, and the ability to absorb a large amount of information in the first place.<<
So those are good foundation skills to cultivate.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-21 05:18 am (UTC)But remember: sometimes different groups are expected to have different levels of skill, as with emotional labor, sports, home repair, math, etc. Then you may get a higher-level person berated for underpreformance, where a less-skilled person is exceeding al, expectations.
>>If you frequently invent new things and/or even trained people keep saying, "Wait, how did you do that?" then you may be an adept.<<
What if people keep acting like you are an expert, even if you are mostly osmosis-and-self-taught?
>>So we're talking a moderate level of expertise here -- tasks that could be done by an older apprentice or a journeyman. That actually is the lion's share of work in many fields, although some are more specialized. In blacksmithing, a lot of what people need is simple stuff like drawer pulls or campfire forks. In office work, a lot of it is typing. If I go into a hardware store, I don't need a master, I just need someone who knows the stock well enough to tell me which of the 10 products on the shelf is best suited to the project I want to do.<<
...hunh. My old volunteer place self-sorted out that way, but with situational authority (since we needed multiple different skills in use, often concurrently or even linked-in-tandem).
>>The bottom rungs on most learning ladders are plain old level-grinding, and the reason not many people are "expert" at them is they haven't put in the time. They're not incredibly difficult skills, they just take practice. <<
I guess I should start level-grinding some of my skills, then.
>>If you don't get the subskills and basic skills right, then the more advanced stuff won't work properly and you'll probably have no idea why.<<
Laugh-laugh-laugh. The absolute first skill I would like to teach kids in my care (before First Aid, EFA and so on) is healthy boundaries. How to recognize them, how to enforce them, how to sort problems into 'mine' and 'hand off,' etc, etc.
>>Some fields are poorly organized and taught, so you have to do all this work yourself. Others are very well deconstructed and your teacher or book will present them in a logical order.<<
Occasionally you also get stuff that is technically well-written, but not in a way that is a match for your needs. I wrote a book to fix that once...the people I was helping didn't have six months to practice grammar, they needed to be able to navigate stores and pleasantries and the occasional emergency /now/.
>>..you have little competition and can probably sell things sooner than if you were trying to write for a big popular genre like romance.<<
I want more romance with nice-and-realistic people and healthy emotional skills. Hence why I binge-watched the show I found with that as a feature, and it only took, what a few days?
>>Again, context matters: if you are on a wilderness expedition, people will care more that someone knows how to stop heavy bleeding effectively than whether they have credentials to do so. In a city they're fussier.<<
Also, how many people with your skillset are /willing/ to help the current situation? I've managed to be the 'expert' for explaining:
- various specialized jargon that I am not foramlly trained in (car repair, carpentry, sewing, some medical, some educational)
- how vaccinations work, and the ethics of if people 'should' be vaccinated)
- How To Talk To Women Without Offending Anyone Or Starting a Fight
- basic emergency skill (like calling in an emergency)
Sure, there's a million people in the world better/more trained at sewing, or auto repair, or tactfully explaining social skills...but it doesn't count for much if they are busy, unavailable, or unwilling to help.
>>Thinking about this, if it's really a standard, that would explain a lot about why people so often treat me as an expert even in areas of my least skill or interest. Because that is still way far above average. Comparing to all the people who read maybe one book a year, yeah, I'm a Renaissance man. Oh, and farmemory, I've permed a bunch of stuff from other lives, but that's less useful to most other folks.<<
You have
1) a useful array of skills,
2) are good at cross-referencing them, and you
3) can distill them into sensible, coherent, and useful chunks
4) which you then sometimes present in an entertaining way (i.e. stories).
>>Now let's talk about those three books. It matters which three books you pick, and I can think of several sets that would produce excellent results depending on the topic and your goals.<<
A good variety is useful, unless you want to super-specialize. If getting one book, an introductory one with a lot of samples is useful - think a homesteading book with each chapter covering a different skill, or my new art book with each chapter covering a different material. You can get more specific once you know what you need more help with or are more interested in (and yes those are different categories).
Also, if cost is an issue, you may be able to find low-cost or even free resources. Like, webpages, menus, those catalogues people are always getting in the mail. It won't work for everything, but it may be worth considereing.
>>Well, that's how I became an editor.<<
Or my language shenanigans. Also, you keep telling me to write down my ideas. (Yup, working on it...)
>>If you can reliably answer questions -- or even answer them more often than the asker can -- then people will tend to think of you as an expert. So then they'll ask you more and more things.<<
...which explains how I become The Reference Person. And at that one job, the Spanish-speaking Person. (My coworkers kept giving me funny sideways looks the first time they heard me chatting with the Spanish-speaking customers, which was actually kind of funny.)
>>Do note that not quite 100% of books are for text learners. There are visual manuals to most crafts and many activities. For instance, a crochet pattern can be in text or in symbols. A visual thinking will often learn better from the symbol version. Quilt blocks are pretty visual, and often taught through image tutorials or just a pattern to cut out and piece together. It's worth looking, or asking a librarian or bookstore owner, for references in your preferred learning mode.<<
This is also another use for art skills, if you have them or know someone who does.