I've noticed an interesting pattern when it comes to the skills I'm really good at - I taught myself those skills through obsessive self-study and practice. The things I excel at, whether it's coding, data analysis, or writing, weren't taught to me in a classroom. I had to go out, get resources, and grind away at it until I mastered the craft.

It's a funny contradiction though. The skills I use daily and rely on to get work done are kind of a mess. My coding practices are sloppy, my writing process is disorganized, and my data workflows are held together by duct tape and prayers. Meanwhile, the things I've spent hundreds of hours meticulously studying, like Chemistry or History, don't really come into play for my actual work.

There's an idea that it takes around 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to truly master a skill. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I do think there's truth to the notion that consistent, focused work over a very long period of time is required to reach a high level of proficiency.

You have to be obsessed and put in the decades of work to really get good.

The self-taught skills I've ground away at for years with repetition and incremental learning are clean, structured, and deeply embedded. The things I do every day are much more slapdash and barely functional. I guess that's what separates the hobbyist tinkerer from the master craftsman.