How to cultivate to become a master in a certain field?

Knowledge, skills, and talents make up the three cores of ability, so how can we cultivate to become masters?

Among the three cores, knowledge is the easiest to acquire. Going back more than 100 years, the ability of intellectuals was mainly to fight memory, and at that time there were not many books and they were very expensive. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Zeng Guofan bought a set of "Twenty-three History" and spent him one hundred taels of silver, which was about two and a half years of money for a seven-rank official. Now the online "Twenty-four History" is 1,300 yuan, which is about a week's salary for a department-level cadre. Therefore, the ancients praised a person for seeing ten lines at a glance and never forgetting them, not to mention how much money can be saved!

By the middle of the last century, books had become something that most people could afford. The competitiveness of knowledge began to shift to the amount of reading. At this time, everyone mainly fights for reading and comprehension. The books are full of correct answers, and the more you know and the more literature you read, the more you will win—our schooling today is the idea of this stage.

And in today's information age, knowledge on the Internet simply doesn't cost anything (except for electricity and internet bills). As soon as the carrier is cheap, the total amount of knowledge begins to explode.

First, knowledge itself becomes abundant and cheap. If Zeng Guofan lived in modern times, he might have typed keywords such as "Twenty-four History" and "free download", and then secretly got a set of free pirated e-books. As long as your search skills are good, basically most of the knowledge is cheap or even free.

Second, search technology has changed the way knowledge is stored, so that people can remember keywords and know where to look for them.

Finally, people in this generation are faced with so many new problems, and the relevant knowledge is constantly updated, so that we can't know what is verified and what is. This requires the ability to think for ourselves.

In this era, the knowledge gap has shifted to a contest of abilities – searchability, curiosity, independent thinking – and whoever learns faster, more, and more accurately in the same ocean of knowledge will win.

The gap in knowledge has become a gap in skills, which has turned cultivation to the second level - skills. When all the knowledge required for the skill exists, whoever practices it first will be the winner. If one day "Jiuyang Zhenjing", "Jiuyin Zhenjing" and "Yijin Jing" are all online, who will become the overlord of martial arts? Practice the fastest one. At this time, the competition for knowledge has escalated to the level of skills.

The biggest difference between skills and knowledge is that skills are judged by proficiency or not. He didn't have the instant thrill of knowing or not knowing, "this is what happened". Anyone who is new to a skill is clumsy and funny. Although the 24 letters are clearly written on each key, no one will start with their fingers.

Turning a corner, let's talk about the Chinese way of teaching English, they teach English as a kind of knowledge – you clearly know that [θ] is a dull sound that is caused by the flow of air from the throat rushing out through the palate and rubbing between the lips and teeth, but you don't necessarily get it right. You can know all about the twelve possibilities of the subjunctive mood, but you still can't blurt out: If I were you, I'd die. (ifiwereyou，iwouldratherdie.)

Language is a skill, not a knowledge. Knowledge can be learned, but skills can only be learned. Knowledge learning is instantaneous, and the difference between knowing and not knowing is almost instantaneous. But skills take a long clumsy period – if you don't accept your clumsy start, you'll never learn any skills well.

It is precisely because of this mental wall that many knowledge winners are reluctant to enter the field of skill practice. This is also the reason why "good students" often do not mix as well as "bad students" - "mixing society" is a skill.

And when a skill is practiced repeatedly, it will be further internalized and become a talent. Just as you don't need to look at the keyboard to type now, just as you don't need to think about pronunciation when you open your mouth when you speak, just as you don't need to think about maintaining balance when riding a bicycle, these skills have become your unconsciously talents because of repeated practice.

Once learned, they can be quickly transferred to other skill areas. It's as if today's children must learn a new electronic device faster than middle-aged people, and their interaction with computers has long since become a talent and has migrated to new areas of knowledge and skills. This is how masters are made.

Let the skill be upgraded to talent, and we have completed the best ability cultivation: talent is the ability to be automatic and spontaneous.