Skills, like the ability to do math, marketing, programming, or physics, are mainly extrinsic.Strengths, like our being good at grasping information, or in influencing people, are mainly intrinsic. Working on three to four extrinsic skills (to reach the top 25 per cent) is actually just working 10,000 hours towards the main (intrinsic)strength of yours, even if you don’t realize the same.

Skills Vs Strengths

The gains are disproportionate, mainly going to the very top of the pyramid. Most of us with ‘mediocre’ talent could find it a challenge to be at the very top, even after practising the 10,000-hour rule.  As Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert tells us: Instead of working towards the very top(which is a big task) it is fairly easy to be in the top 25 percent of a chosen field by honing one’s top three skills to good enough levels.

Don’t Try To Be At The Very Top

The mastery approach of practising 10,000 hours is overshadowed by the 80/20 rule, which states that one can be 80 percent proficient(good enough) at something in a fairly shorter time than it takes to attain perfection(100 percent). Developing a portfolio of a good enough skill-stack is a better way than being a master at one particular skill and sacrificing everything else.

80/20 Rule Vs the 10000 Hours Approach

To become the very best and able to reach the top of the pyramid requires the Calculus Of Grit, which is embedded in the 10,000-hour rule of mastery.  If one is on the right path, the modules start to appear easy, but if it feels increasingly stressful and difficult as the modules get upgraded, it may be the wrong path. Master stuff that appears easy for you but impressive to others.

The Calculus Of Grit

Having a number of valuable skill sets is not an option, but a necessity. It’s okay to have passive knowledge about a number of things, and still make the whole skill-stack work. If we only fine-tune our strengths and forget about the other equally important skill sets, we end up going nowhere.  Just like an exceptional programmer who only knows coding would never be able to build a company or a client base to grow his own personal brand, it can be disastrous for anyone to focus on only one skill set.

Our Valuable Skills And How To Showcase Them

A Stack of skills does not add up but multiplies. If a set of skills has a ‘zero’ in it, the net result is also zero. Example: If one is brilliant, capable and intelligent but does not do any work, the rest of the skills are nullified. One needs to have at least a basic competence in the many fundamentals of the chosen venture.

Skills Are Multiplicative

To be really good at something one has to let go of many other aspects, as the bandwidth on which our mind works is finite. If one is really good at something, it is often a great possibility that the person would also be bad at something else. One cannot be good at everything in the same proportion.

The Memory Trade-off

Pick a few of your skill sets and start to work on them, observing what strengths of yours start to emerge.  To market yourself, you have to showcase your skills, as your strengths are intrinsic and cannot be put on the table. Do lots of work showcasing your skill sets and let it be seen by others. Slowly a pattern starts to emerge, and they are able to see your strengths.

Start Reaching Your Potential

You have to pick one or a few skills and get started on them and over time start to see what strengths emerge. Since you can find your strength and reach your potential through multiple domains, it doesn't matter so much where you start, as long as you follow two heuristics.