5 Phases Of Mastering A Skill

If you expect to make a living from your blog or as a blogger there are a lot of basic blogging skills that you have to develop and master. Mastering a skill means you have moved beyond learning basic concepts and developing basic skills. Having true mastery over a skill means you are able to strategically implement that skill in an efficient manner. Being able to strategically and efficiently implement a skill allows you to spend less time doing routine tasks. So, you have more time to learn new skills and strategies.

The more skills you develop, the more strategies you learn and the more efficient you are at implementing them, the more successful you will become. Understanding the 5 phases of skill mastery is essential for developing skills. It will also help you assess where your are in developing a skill; as-well-as help propel you to mastering that skill.

The 5 Phases

1. Define: What is the definition of what you are trying to do.
2. Conceptualize: What are the concepts that support what you are trying to do.
3. Implement and build skills: What are the skills necessary to implement the concepts. Most concepts have a set of underlying skills that require development for full understanding and implementation of the concept. Skill development requires you to actually do something.
4. Develop Strategies: What skill should be used to accomplish a goal. How and when you should use those skills to accomplish your goals. What skills can and should be combined to accomplish other goals.
5. Develop Efficiencies: Becoming efficient at something means that you have eliminated all of the unnecessary extraneous and superfluous actions associated with completing a task. It means you have honed those skills to a fine point. You have built confidence in when and how to use that skill. You are now able to alter the process so that it best suites your needs.

Example of the 5 Phases of Mastering a Skill

Learning how to write. We all know how to write but very few of us can say we have mastered writing as a skill.

Define what it is: Writing is the act of communicating words and ideas in a written format.

What are the supporting concepts to the act of writing? Spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure are all basic concepts for writing. More advanced concepts; such as, writing essays, inverted pyramid writing, layered inverted pyramids, copy writing, persuasion and editing are all advanced concepts that come after you have a solid understanding of the basic concepts.

Developing The Skills: Knowing how to properly combine letters to make a real word, avoiding phonetic misspellings and being able to implement spelling rules (like, "i" before "e" except after "c") are skills that support the concept of spelling. Spelling takes practice. After a lot of practice you are able to master the skill and it becomes intuitive. Grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure also have underlying skills that have to be developed before moving on to more complex concepts.

Essay writing and copy writing are examples of more complex writing skills that require mastery of not only basic writing skills but also more complex skills. For instance; to write an essay you need to be able to combine words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into the final body of writing. The final body of writing, or essay, should communicate, in a logical manner, the topic of the essay. Each piece of properly building an essay requires a certain skill or set of skills. Knowing how to properly combine these skills requires strategy.

Strategy Development: When is it best to use a skill, or group of skills, and how to use it in a particular case. For example: writing for web content and writing for print content are two different concepts requiring two different yet complementary sets of skills. Obviously, you would not use a print strategy for writing for the web and vice versa.

Developing Efficiencies: If you are a newspaper reporter or editor you have, relatively speaking, mastered the art of writing. However you write mostly in the inverted pyramid format. This skill should come as second nature. You have developed skills and become efficient at writing in a style best suited for newspapers. Although, both the newspaper reporter and newspaper editor have mastered writing as a skill. They are efficient with the skill in a newspaper format. Neither the newspaper reporter nor the newspaper editor would probably be very efficient at writing or editing a fictional novel. Both would be able to accomplish the task but they would not be as efficient as a science fiction writer and a book editor.

Take Away: Master Blogging Skills and Become a Successful Blogger

True skill mastery separates the professional blogger from the novice. When you have truly mastered a blogging skill you can use that skill efficiently and are able to alter your understanding and use of the skill based on the changes in your needs. Besides name recognition and reputation, what separates A-list bloggers from novice bloggers? Their mastery of essential blogging skills. A-list bloggers have mastered all the essential blogging skills. Their time is not wasted on the basic aspects of running their blog. Therefore, they are able to spend more time expanding their skill set and are able to intuitively spot trends in their niche . Getting a jump on the novice blogger by developing tomorrow’s essential skills today. Develop the skills required to be a professional blogger, or web publisher, and you will become successful.

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