Quotes About Proficiency

I know every movement of my kitchen.

I only got about four moves.

Where a new guy may only know one or two ways to do something, I know all of the moves, and I've forgotten more stuff than the newer guys might even know.

As you get older and gain more experience, you're able to do multiple things. You don't necessarily have to focus so hard on your performance in order to have a good one.

To put it in musician's terms, my chops are good.

I look at other members of my generation who have basically done one thing, and one thing well, and have been handsomely rewarded for it.

My generation, we came along, we had to really know our craft.

My generation was advised to focus on one area to excel.

Most people are good at too many things. And when you say someone is focused, more often than not what you actually mean is they're very narrow.

I think I have a natural hitting ability.

Fencing and shooting kind of came naturally. From the start, I knew that I had it in me.

He wasn't a good talker under the best of circumstances. If she needed someone killed, he was her man, but trying to sound suave and sophisticated was far beyond any ability he had.

The receptionist was a petite Asian woman of forty who spoke English so precisely that Tuck knew it had to be her second language.

But anyone with the time and the inclination can acquire technical proficiency. To achieve greatness, though, that requires artistry. That requires imagination and thoughtfulness...

En mi época, quienes sabían alemán ya no se licenciaban. Se pasaban el resto de su vida sabiendo alemán. Creo que hoy en día sucede lo mismo con el chino. —Yo lo conozco poco, por eso hago mi tesis.

You mustn't fool yourself with the idea that you could hire experts to attend to things; for how could you know that a man was an expert, unless you knew as much as he did? Some day your foreman might drop dead, or some other fellow would buy him away from you, and then where would you be? Be your own expert, said Dad!

If you're going to be an expert in something, then you need to be an expert in all aspects of it. From what makes it work to what makes it desirable to what makes it flawed.

You can't teach somebody to do something if you don't even know how to do it yourself.

You've nailed

complete submergence of the acquired skill in the subconscious.

The most momentous moment is the moment of decision. This calls for proficiency because it makes or destroys only in the extremes.

We are alike, Joscelin and I, in that what we do, we do very well.

Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don't need you.

Ultimately, mastery is about connecting the dots of many fields.