Definition of Competence

A person is competent with something—e.g. plumbing, critical thinking, algebra, sewing, history, engineering, statistics, or whatever—when the following criteria are met:

1. Performance: The person is able to do useful things with a level of quality that is acceptable, good, excellent, or better. These results are created with minimum amounts of time, cost, effort, resources, and so on. These results are created with maximum levels of learning, enjoyment, and so on.

2. Knowledge: In the context of the main ideas that are needed for performance, the person is able to do the following: explain, teach, remember, answer questions, and so forth.

3. Ethics: The person adheres to associated ethical standards. For example, to be competent in journalism a person needs to adhere to ethical standards of the journalism profession.

4. Growth: Performance or knowledge this week is better than last week. Next week, performance or knowledge will be better still.

5. Enjoyment: The person enjoys what they do. They get satisfaction.

A competent person plays their role well; they get the job done.

Examples of Competence

1. A competent fiction writer creates books that others love to read and that sell.

2. A competent car mechanic is able to fix nearly every problem that comes their way and do this with minimum cost and effort.

3. A competent guitar player plays their instrument well. They are good at rhythm guitar and at lead guitar.

4. A person who is competent with statistics is able to apply statistics to many useful things: designing experiments, reading and interpreting research papers, predicting probability, making data-based decisions, summarizing data, running R, plotting data, and so on. In addition, this person can solve most textbook problems associated with statistics.

Rationale for Competence

1. Rewards: Feels great to do something well.

2. Respect: Everyone loves a person who is competent.

3. Financial: People who can perform get paid, often very well.

4. Contribution: Do worthwhile things with your life.

How to Become Competent

Set a goal to become competent. Reach this goal by using the method of learning called “effective practice.” Note: this typically takes many years and a great deal of work but it is so enjoyable as to be addictive.

Note: If you want to become competent, then I recommend using effective learning as the way to do your learning.

Real World Constraints

To become a really good guitar player takes many years of dedicated practice and performing.

Similarly, to become really good at most things takes huge amounts of time and effort. Typically, we don’t have this time. To overcome this constraint, here is what I recommend:

1. Focus: Pick only a few things in your life to become really good at because that is all you will have time for.

2. Competence with Qualification: For most things, strive to become the most competent you can given the amount of time that you have invested. For example, I routinely set a goal like this: become as good as I can with a subject given that I’ve only got 15 hours, or 3 hours even, to learn this subject.