Seems to me there is some risk either way. If you keep developing skills without applying them to a specific goal, it can be a form of procrastination (an insidious one, because it feels so virtuous). There are many skills you could develop, and life is short. On the other hand, as you said, if you go right after your goal, you may find an obstacle you can’t overcome… or even worse, an obstacle you can’t even properly analyze, so the problem is not merely that you don’t have the necessary skill, but that you even have no idea which skill you miss (so if you try to develop the skills as needed, you may waste time developing the wrong skills, because you misunderstood the nature of the problem).
it seems like the main important thing for people who do incredible things is their ability to do problem solving on the things that come up, and not the skills that they had previously built up in a “skill bank”.
It could be both. And perhaps you notice the problem-specific skills more, because those are rare.
But I also kinda agree that the attitude is more important, and skills often can be acquired when needed.
So… dunno, maybe there are two kinds of skills? Like, the skills with obvious application, such as “learn to play a piano”; and the world-modelling skills, such as “understand whether playing a piano would realistically help you accomplish your goals”? You can acquire the former when needed, but you need the latter in advance, to remove your blind spots?
Or perhaps some skills such as “understand math” are useful in many kinds of situations and take a lot of time to learn, so you probably want to develop these in advance? (Also, if you don’t know yet what to do, it probably helps to get power: learn math, develop social skills, make money… When you later make up your mind, you will likely find some of this useful.)
And maybe you need the world-modelling skills before you make specific goals, because how could your goal be to learn play the piano, if you don’t know the piano exists? You could have a more general goal, such as “become famous at something”, but if you don’t know that piano exists, maybe you wouldn’t even look in this direction.
But most of the things that I want by default are of the sort “wanting to be able to do”, because if I had more capabilities, that would make me awesome.
Could this also be about your age? (I am assuming here that you are young.) For younger people it makes more sense to develop general skills; for older people it makes more sense to go after specific goals. The more time you have ahead of you, the more meta you can go—the costs of acquiring a skill are the same, but the possible benefits of having the skill are proportional to your remaining time (more than linear, if you actually use the skill, because it will keep increasing as a side effect of being used).
Also, as a rule of thumb, younger people are judged by their potential, older people are judged by their accomplishments. If you are young, evolution wants you to feel awesome about having skills, because that’s what your peers will admire. You signal general intelligence. The accomplishments you have… uhm, how to put it politely… if you see a 20 years old kid driving an expensive car, your best guess is that their parents have bought it, isn’t it? On the other hand, an older person without accomplishments seems like a loser, regardless of their apparent skills, because there is something suspicious about them not having translated those skills into actual outcomes. The excuse for the young ones is that their best strategy is to acquire skills now, and apply them later (which hasn’t happened yet, but there is enough time remaining).
Seems to me there is some risk either way. If you keep developing skills without applying them to a specific goal, it can be a form of procrastination (an insidious one, because it feels so virtuous). There are many skills you could develop, and life is short. On the other hand, as you said, if you go right after your goal, you may find an obstacle you can’t overcome… or even worse, an obstacle you can’t even properly analyze, so the problem is not merely that you don’t have the necessary skill, but that you even have no idea which skill you miss (so if you try to develop the skills as needed, you may waste time developing the wrong skills, because you misunderstood the nature of the problem).
It could be both. And perhaps you notice the problem-specific skills more, because those are rare.
But I also kinda agree that the attitude is more important, and skills often can be acquired when needed.
So… dunno, maybe there are two kinds of skills? Like, the skills with obvious application, such as “learn to play a piano”; and the world-modelling skills, such as “understand whether playing a piano would realistically help you accomplish your goals”? You can acquire the former when needed, but you need the latter in advance, to remove your blind spots?
Or perhaps some skills such as “understand math” are useful in many kinds of situations and take a lot of time to learn, so you probably want to develop these in advance? (Also, if you don’t know yet what to do, it probably helps to get power: learn math, develop social skills, make money… When you later make up your mind, you will likely find some of this useful.)
And maybe you need the world-modelling skills before you make specific goals, because how could your goal be to learn play the piano, if you don’t know the piano exists? You could have a more general goal, such as “become famous at something”, but if you don’t know that piano exists, maybe you wouldn’t even look in this direction.
Could this also be about your age? (I am assuming here that you are young.) For younger people it makes more sense to develop general skills; for older people it makes more sense to go after specific goals. The more time you have ahead of you, the more meta you can go—the costs of acquiring a skill are the same, but the possible benefits of having the skill are proportional to your remaining time (more than linear, if you actually use the skill, because it will keep increasing as a side effect of being used).
Also, as a rule of thumb, younger people are judged by their potential, older people are judged by their accomplishments. If you are young, evolution wants you to feel awesome about having skills, because that’s what your peers will admire. You signal general intelligence. The accomplishments you have… uhm, how to put it politely… if you see a 20 years old kid driving an expensive car, your best guess is that their parents have bought it, isn’t it? On the other hand, an older person without accomplishments seems like a loser, regardless of their apparent skills, because there is something suspicious about them not having translated those skills into actual outcomes. The excuse for the young ones is that their best strategy is to acquire skills now, and apply them later (which hasn’t happened yet, but there is enough time remaining).