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Leitura de 13 min

Skill-Building Is Not One Dimensional

Summary

In this episode of Developer Tea, host Jonathan Cottrell challenges the common misconception that skill development is a one-dimensional pursuit. He argues that simply acquiring a skill doesn’t guarantee its effective application, introducing a more nuanced mental model for understanding capability.

Cottrell presents capability as a combination of two balanced characteristics: capacity and ability. Capacity refers to environmental restrictions and base-level requirements—the potential or foundational traits that enable action. Ability represents skill-oriented, practiced execution—the actual performance of a task. He illustrates this distinction with examples, such as a restaurant’s seating capacity versus its service ability, and personal examples like time constraints affecting podcast production.

The host emphasizes that both capacity and ability must align for successful execution, and that misalignment between them often explains performance limitations. He encourages listeners to use this lens to diagnose whether capacity or ability is the limiting factor in various career scenarios, noting that these factors can change over time and even day-to-day based on circumstances like fatigue or changing environments.

Cottrell concludes by suggesting this model provides grounds for both self-challenge and self-compassion. Rather than viewing underperformance as a permanent loss of skill, listeners can examine the specific factors—whether capacity or ability limitations—that may be temporarily affecting their capability. This multifactorial approach offers a more realistic and actionable framework for career development than one-dimensional skill acquisition.

Recommendations

Communities

  • Developer Tea Discord Community — A free Discord community where listeners can discuss careers, ask questions about the show, get episode notifications, and connect with other developers and the host.

Tools

  • Square Web Payments SDK — Sponsored tool mentioned in the episode that provides a developer-friendly way to implement payment acceptance in web apps, supporting credit/debit cards, digital wallets, ACH payments, and gift cards with customizable branded experiences.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to the myth of one-dimensional skill development — Jonathan introduces the episode’s premise that skill development is often misunderstood as one-dimensional. He explains that simply acquiring a skill doesn’t mean it becomes a permanent part of your portfolio, as capability involves multiple factors beyond just skill.
  • 00:02:07 — Introducing the capability model: capacity and ability — Cottrell presents his mental model of capability as a combination of capacity and ability. He creates a portmanteau from these two words to help remember the model, explaining that capacity relates to environmental restrictions and ability relates to practiced execution. Both must align for effective capability.
  • 00:06:04 — Practical examples of capacity and ability mismatches — After the sponsor break, Jonathan provides concrete examples of capacity and ability interactions. He uses restaurant seating versus service efficiency, podcast production delays due to family responsibilities, and team staffing levels to illustrate how imbalances between capacity and ability create limitations.
  • 00:08:08 — Applying the model to career challenges and self-diagnosis — The host explains why this model matters for career development. He emphasizes that listeners may not know whether capacity or ability is limiting their performance, and this lens helps diagnose the issue. He notes that capacity isn’t always fixed—it can change based on circumstances like fatigue or changing environments.
  • 00:10:44 — Addressing potential criticisms and embracing multifactorial thinking — Cottrell acknowledges that some might debate whether certain limitations are truly capacity or ability issues. He emphasizes that the important thing is engaging with multifactorial truth rather than one-dimensional thinking. This approach provides both challenge to pay attention to all factors and grounds for self-compassion when performance varies.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2021-06-29T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:13:30

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] So much of the pursuit in our career is the development of skill.

[00:00:11] And we like to imagine that our skill is one-dimensional.

[00:00:16] Once we develop the skill, it’s as if it’s a part of our portfolio forever.

[00:00:22] But the truth is, skill is only one factor in the multi-dimensional reality that is capability.

[00:00:32] In today’s episode, I want to present a model of thinking about capability and hopefully

[00:00:40] give you some way of understanding how your skill can actually be turned into something

[00:00:50] useful in your career.

[00:00:52] My name is Jonathan Cottrell.

[00:00:54] You’re listening to Developer T. My goal on this show is to help driven developers like

[00:00:58] you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers.

[00:01:04] As a disclaimer, as is true with all mental models, this mental model that we’re going

[00:01:11] to present today is incomplete.

[00:01:16] It’s rough around the edges.

[00:01:17] There are plenty of places for you to criticize and say, it kind of falls apart when I think

[00:01:24] about it in this particular way.

[00:01:27] But hopefully, despite being incomplete, this model can be useful to you.

[00:01:35] Once we understand that models are intended to help us leverage what we’re thinking about

[00:01:41] into action, to give us some way of roughly placing things on a map, rather than perfectly

[00:01:51] describing the truth, this helps us get a new perspective on the truth.

[00:01:59] So I want to talk about capability as a mixture of two balanced characteristics.

[00:02:07] And there’s actually kind of a nice portmanteau happening here with the word capability.

[00:02:13] One is the word capacity, and the second word is ability.

[00:02:18] We can kind of combine those two words to make capability.

[00:02:22] I’m pretty sure that’s not the actual etymology of the word capability, but it is a useful

[00:02:26] way to remember this model of thinking.

[00:02:30] So we have capacity, and we have ability.

[00:02:34] And this model of thinking is actually something that can apply to both individuals and to

[00:02:41] systems.

[00:02:43] If you don’t have both of these things, capacity and ability, you’re not going to be able to

[00:02:50] execute on that, whatever that skill is, whatever that thing that is demanding, capacity and

[00:02:56] ability.

[00:02:58] If you don’t have both of those aligned, then you will be restricted from doing the thing

[00:03:03] that you’re trying to do.

[00:03:05] So I want to describe capacity and ability in kind of rough broad strokes, and then we’re

[00:03:10] going to take a sponsor break and we’ll come back and talk about it more in detail.

[00:03:16] Capacity is the kind of restrictions from an environmental standpoint.

[00:03:23] Environmental in this case isn’t necessarily external to you, but you can think about capacity

[00:03:31] as kind of the base level requirements.

[00:03:35] As a simple and kind of crazy example, humans will never have the capacity to see ultraviolet

[00:03:45] light.

[00:03:46] This is, in a way, an environmental restriction.

[00:03:51] Ability, however, is more of an event-based or skill-oriented practiced execution.

[00:04:02] So we have capacity, which is kind of like traits, and we have ability, which is execution.

[00:04:08] We’re going to talk a little bit more about capacity and ability right after we talk about

[00:04:14] today’s sponsor.

[00:04:21] Today’s episode is sponsored by Square.

[00:04:25] Payment acceptance can be one of the most painful parts of building a web app for a

[00:04:28] business.

[00:04:29] When implementing checkout, you want it to be simple to build, secure, and slick to use.

[00:04:34] Square’s new Web Payment SDK raises the bar in payment acceptance developer experience

[00:04:39] and provides a best-in-class interface for merchants and buyers.

[00:04:44] You can build a customized branded payment experience with the Web Payments SDK and never

[00:04:48] miss a sale.

[00:04:49] You can deliver a highly responsive payments flow across web and mobile that integrates

[00:04:54] with credit and debit cards, digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, ACH bank payments,

[00:04:59] and even gift cards.

[00:05:01] The old days of basic payment forms are over.

[00:05:04] You can even implement things like complex transactions and follow-up actions by the

[00:05:08] customer, which can include completing a payment authentication step, filling in a credit line

[00:05:12] application form, or doing background risk checks on the buyer device.

[00:05:18] The thing is, even though all of this may seem complicated, developers don’t need

[00:05:22] to know if a payment requires verification and if so, what type.

[00:05:26] Square hides all of that complexity from the seller and guides buyers through the necessary

[00:05:31] steps.

[00:05:32] Getting started with the new Web Payments SDK is easy.

[00:05:35] Simply include the Web Payments SDK JavaScript, flag the element on the page where you want

[00:05:40] the payment form to appear, and then attach hooks for your own custom behavior.

[00:05:44] You can get started with the Web Payments SDK at squ.re slash developer t.

[00:05:50] That’s squ.re slash developer t.

[00:05:54] Thanks so much to Square for their support.

[00:06:04] We’re talking about capability in today’s episode.

[00:06:10] This idea that capability is some mixture of capacity and ability.

[00:06:15] As we’ve already mentioned, this is a mental model.

[00:06:18] It’s not a perfect description.

[00:06:20] Certainly, there are things that might lie outside of this model that are hard to explain

[00:06:26] with it, but with that said, there are so many things that can be kind of put into this

[00:06:33] frame.

[00:06:35] A very simple example is probably where you see the word capacity the most at a restaurant.

[00:06:42] If a given restaurant has the capacity to, let’s say, seat 150 people, but their processes,

[00:06:50] the way that they route their servers, for example, don’t allow for that number of people

[00:06:56] to be served, we have a mismatch in the capacity and the ability.

[00:07:05] On the other hand, you can also have the opposite problem where you have a highly efficient

[00:07:10] waitstaff and simply not enough room to maximize that ability.

[00:07:18] In this case, your ability outpaces your capacity.

[00:07:23] Main listeners will recognize that this episode is coming out on a Tuesday, whereas usually

[00:07:28] episodes of the show come out on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays.

[00:07:31] In fact, we’ve missed our Friday refills for two weeks in a row.

[00:07:36] This is a capacity problem.

[00:07:39] Certainly, with over 900 episodes of the show published, I very likely have the ability

[00:07:47] to execute on these episodes, but because my time has been constrained, for example,

[00:07:53] yesterday, my son ended up having a fever and so I had to spend my time doing family

[00:07:58] things rather than recording for the podcast, my capacity was limited.

[00:08:05] So why is this important?

[00:08:08] As you go through your career, you’re going to have numerous occasions where these two

[00:08:15] things will be aligned, but then you’re going to have a lot of occasions where they’re not

[00:08:20] aligned.

[00:08:21] And here’s the critical thing.

[00:08:24] You may not actually know, you may not know that your capacity is the limiting factor

[00:08:30] or that your ability is the limiting factor.

[00:08:34] By having this lens available, you can ask the question, is my capacity the limiting

[00:08:41] factor in this scenario?

[00:08:44] You can ask this for teams as well.

[00:08:45] The most simple example, of course, is having a highly efficient team but not having enough

[00:08:51] people on the team.

[00:08:54] It’s important to understand also that as you change one factor, another factor may

[00:08:58] change and that your capacity is not something that you can’t change.

[00:09:04] We aren’t talking about external factors that are out of your control.

[00:09:08] Instead, we’re talking about longer term setup factors.

[00:09:13] Another simple example of this is that perhaps you have the capacity to work in a particular

[00:09:18] language.

[00:09:19] You’ve proven this by working in that language in the past.

[00:09:23] But since it’s been a while since you worked in that language, it’s possible that if it

[00:09:28] came down to it in the moment, you wouldn’t have the ability.

[00:09:33] Some of this is just because our abilities change over time.

[00:09:37] We lose abilities.

[00:09:39] They may decay with a lack of use.

[00:09:44] The same is true if you were to imagine that you have the capacity to work in a language

[00:09:49] that you’ve never worked in before.

[00:09:51] In other words, if you were to learn that language, you could develop the ability to

[00:09:57] work in that language.

[00:09:59] Another way to think about capacity is to imagine that it’s similar to potential.

[00:10:07] On the flip side, you can imagine that ability is similar to performance.

[00:10:11] You have performance and you have potential.

[00:10:15] It should be noted that these things can change even on a day-to-day basis, as we already

[00:10:20] mentioned with the delays on recording this episode of the podcast.

[00:10:26] Our surroundings may change our capacity.

[00:10:29] When you’re very tired, for example, your capacity goes way downhill.

[00:10:36] I mentioned that this is a model of thinking.

[00:10:38] I can imagine somebody listening to this and saying, well, actually, in that moment, it’s

[00:10:44] not that your capacity is limited, it’s that your ability is limited.

[00:10:49] This is a worthwhile argument to bring up because as you begin to think about the different

[00:10:59] variables that affect these two poles of your capability, the important thing is that you

[00:11:04] engage and try to find the multifactorial truth, not the one-dimensional truth.

[00:11:13] Again, the myth that we believe is that just because we have some developed skill, just

[00:11:20] because we’ve practiced something or because we have that knowledge in our heads, maybe

[00:11:26] because we’ve been exposed to something, that we inherently now possess that skill.

[00:11:34] But the truth is further from that.

[00:11:37] This should give us both a sense of challenge to pay attention to all of those different

[00:11:44] factors rather than just one.

[00:11:47] But also, this is grounds for going easy on yourself.

[00:11:52] Just because you didn’t perform to some perfect standard or even to some level that you’ve

[00:11:59] performed in the past doesn’t mean that you suddenly have lost all ability or capacity.

[00:12:07] There’s likely some specific factor that stood in the way of you performing that way again.

[00:12:15] Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:12:17] I hope you will inspect your capabilities through this lens and start to imagine things

[00:12:24] both as external and internal restrictions, those potential and performance, capacity

[00:12:32] and ability, these two poles of capability.

[00:12:35] Thank you so much to Square for sponsoring today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:12:38] Head over to squ.re slash developer tea to get started with the web payments SDK today.

[00:12:45] If you are enjoying this episode, if you’ve enjoyed many episodes in the past especially,

[00:12:50] I encourage you to join the Developer Tea Discord community.

[00:12:53] Head over to developertea.com slash discord where you can talk about your career, you

[00:12:58] can talk about your life, you can make friends, you can talk to me, you can ask questions

[00:13:02] about the show, you can get notifications when new episodes of the show come out and

[00:13:07] a whole lot more.

[00:13:09] And it’s all free.

[00:13:10] We never plan to monetize the Discord community.

[00:13:13] Head over to developertea.com slash discord to get started today.

[00:13:17] Thanks so much for listening and until next time.

[00:13:20] Enjoy your tea.

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