Core Human Skills

What do you really need to know to succeed?

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog,
conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a
bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations,
analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Robert A. Heinlein

Scott Adams, creator of the popular comic strip Dilbert, has a simple but useful theory
about personal success: you can either choose to hyper-specialize and become one of
the best in the world (top 1%) at doing one very specific thing, or you can try to become
very good (top 25%) in as many different areas as possible, which you can use in
combination as the situation demands.
Of these two approaches, the latter strategy is usually far easier, and is often more
effective: by improving your skills in a few distinct but complementary areas, you
increase your versatility and rarity, making your particular combination of skills
uniquely valuable.
So: dont worry so much about uber-specializing in a single, narrow field. Youll get
better results if you focus on building a wide range of fundamental skills, which
increases your versatility, resilience, and flexibility.
Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, is oftentimes better than master of one.

This line of thought produces an interesting question: which skills should you focus on
improving if you want to live a productive, satisfying, fulfilling life?
Based on my research, here are the 12 areas of Core Human Skill you should focus on
developing if you want to improve your situation in life. These twelve universal skills
will help you get more of what you want, regardless of what you do for a living.

1. Information-Assimilation how to find, process, and comprehend information and

identify whats most important in the face of a problem or challenge. A person who is
highly skilled in Information-Assimilation is able to process information quickly and
apply it to the situation at hand, with consistently high levels of comprehension and
retention.

2. Writing how to communicate thoughts and ideas in written form clearly and
concisely. A person who is highly skilled in Writing is able to convey information to
others briefly and simply, as well as use writing to persuade and influence.

3. Speaking how to communicate thoughts and ideas to others clearly, concisely, and
with confidence. A person who is highly skilled in Speaking is able to communicate
individually or in front of a group of people in an engaging manner, with little visible
evidence of tension or stress.

4. Mathematics how to accurately use concepts from arithmetic, algebra, geometry,

formal logic, and statistics to analyze and solve common problems. A person who is
highly skilled in Mathematics is able to use numbers, ratios, and equations to gain
insight into present circumstances and potential future scenarios.

5. Decision-Making how to identify critical issues, prioritize, focus energy/effort,

recognize fallacies, avoid common errors, and handle ambiguity. A person who is highly
skilled in Decision-Making is able to weigh available information and come to a
supportable conclusion, without falling prey to common reasoning mistakes and
cognitive bias.

6. Rapport how to interact with other people in a way that encourages them to like,
trust, and respect you. A person who is highly skilled in Rapport is able to build
productive, mutually-beneficial relationships with a wide variety of people in a way that
influences their perceptions and opinions.

7. Conflict-Resolution how to anticipate potential sources of conflict and resolve

disagreements when they occur. A person who is highly skilled in Conflict-Resolution is
able to anticipate potential sources of conflict and counteract unproductive emotions,
both individually and in groups.

8. Scenario-Generation how to create, clarify, evaluate, and communicate a possible

future scenario that assists in decision-making, either for yourself or another person. A
person who is highly skilled in Scenario-Generation is able to envision possible future
events, identify likely tradeoffs, and suggest multiple options that will result in the
achievement of an objective.

9. Planning how to identify the necessary next steps to achieve an objective, account
for dependencies, and prepare for the unknown and inevitable change via the use of
contingencies. A person who is highly skilled in Planning is able to examine available
resources, anticipate potential issues and risks, and propose new / better paths as more
information becomes known.

10. Self-Awareness how to accurately perceive and influence your own internal states
and emotions, including effective management of limited energy, willpower, and focus.
A person who is highly skilled in Self-Awareness is able to recognize what physical and
emotional state theyre currently experiencing, use or compensate for their current state,
and intentionally elicit and reinforce preferred states.

11. Interrelation how to recognize, understand, and make use of key features of
systems and relationships, including cause-and-effect, second and third-order effects,
constraints, and feedback loops. A person who is highly skilled in Interrelation is able to
identify the most important factors in a system, explore how they affect each other, and
improve systems without provoking undesired consequences.

12. Skill Acquisition how to go about learning a desired skill in a way that results in
competence by finding and taking full advantage of available resources, deconstructing
complex skills into manageable subskills, and removing barriers to focused, deliberate
practice. A person who is highly skilled in Skill Acquisition is able to continually
improve their skills in any field through continuous practice, observation, and
experimentation.

A few of these Core Human Skills are taught in primary, secondary, and higher
education systems, but theyre rarely taught well. Many of these skills are ignored
completely: you have to develop them yourself.
Its never too late to master the fundamentals. Take a moment to imagine all of the
things youd be able to accomplish if you improved your skills to the point where you
ranked in the top 25% of the human population in each of these areas. How developed
are your skills now, and which of these areas could, if improved, help you accomplish
what youre trying to achieve?
A top quartile level of skill in each of these areas is an extremely attainable goal,
provided youre willing to invest the time and energy. Each and every one of these Core
Human Skills is something that you can decide to improve with a bit of focused
practice.

Most people never choose to sit down and do the work: if you intentionally practice one
or more of these fundamental skills, youll stand out, and youll find it much easier to
achieve the goals you set for yourself, whatever they may be.
Heres the exciting part: you can decide to get better in any one of these skills right now.
All it takes is a bit of practice, and if youre smart about how you practice, youll
improve these Core Human Skills quickly, and youll reap the rewards for the rest of
your life.

I love the hidden premise of this question. The asker clearly doesnt believe that going
to school and being educated are the same thing, and the surprising part is:
educational institutions agree.
Josh Kaufman, author of the top-voted answer and the book entitled The Personal
MBA, summarized thoughts from Harvard, Princeton, George Wyth College, and
himself in his Quora post.
Whether you agree or disagree with his list of core human skills, it is worth taking a
moment to consider the general skills that, when mastered, can effect all areas of your
life and make you more rational, effective, and insightful. They are meta-skills. Skills
that help you be better at everything, not just one thing.
All the schools I worked for taught nonsense up front. And under the table, they taught
young people how to be dumb, how to be slavish, how to be frightened, and how to be
dependent.
John Taylor Gatto
Education
Historian
For example, cooking is a great skill to have. It can be enjoyable, impressive, and
profitable. However, cooking only improves your cooking. You can be an effective cook
and still be an idiot.
However, if you learn to reason critically and systematically as Princeton suggests,
that will make your cooking practice more effective. You will become a good cook
faster and it will raise your total potential overall.
Great chefs like Heston Blumenthal (pictured above) are as much scientists and
philosophers as actual scientists and philosophers, but he applies his powerful creativity
and reasoning to food instead. He deconstructs, questions, and re-purposes ingredients

and techniques. Sometimes he solves genuine problems in ways no one had considered.
Thats more than a good cook. Thats a good thinker.
Personally, I love the items on the lists of Harvard, Princeton, George Wyth, and Josh
Kaufman, and I also cant help but cherry pick from those lists to make my own. Below
is my list of core human skills, adapted and adjusted from the Quora answers and my
own research.

1.

IDENTIFY & CONCEPTUALIZE PROBLEMS

Very few people can actually identify a problem without help. Most people just tell you
how they are affected by it. A good thinker can find the problematic needle in a
haystack of irrelevant information. Once you know what the problem is, you have to be
able to break it down and abstract it, so you can work with the parts and principles to
make it better.

2.

COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY TO EVERYONE

Simple information just works better. More people understand it, more people
remember it, and more people trust it. Big words do not make you more trustworthy,
and complicated lingo just alienates your audience. Learn to write and speak, clearly
and confidently.

3.

UNDERSTAND HUMAN NATURE AND LEAD ACCORDINGLY

There is a lot of awesome packed into this one, from the George Wyth College list.
Understanding human behaviour makes a lot of sense out of a lot of non-sensical things.
Once you know the rules, some people are almost annoyingly predictable. However, it
is the second part of this meta-skill that is most potent. By understanding how people
think and feel, you can motivate them and lead them to victory. 5 passionate people are
better than 50 lazy ones any day.

4.

ADAPT

Most people think they are pretty flexible, but most people also actively seek out what
they already know and like. Genuinely changing yourself is emotionally uncomfortable.
Learn to love the feeling of changing something you love for the better.

5.

UNDERSTAND MATHEMATICS

Rational thought often requires an understanding of probability and logic, and objective
truth. Especially when it disagrees with our intuition (which happens often). Without the
ability to spot those mistakes, we can go through life making bad decisions and feeling
good about them, which is very, very dangerous.

6.

LEARN TO LEARN

Knowing how to learn effectively is the difference between skilled people and multiskilled people, because effective learning is faster, better, and easier. Knowing how to
direct your own learning ensures that you learn the right things at the right time, but it
also ensures that you rest, practice, and enjoy the right things at the right times.
Learning basic, unimpressive things becomes much more fun when you understand how
they contribute to the complex, impressive things in the long-term.

7.

USE DIFFERENT MODES OF THOUGHT

Great thinkers can move in and out of a problem, effortlessly floating from details to
visionary ideas and back. The best debaters can equally argue either side of a conflict.
Be able to move from a few details to a general hypothesis, and from a vague cloud of
theory to practical applications. Fully understanding a problem means examining it, to
find any perspective that might be helpful.

8.

KNOW WHAT YOU DONT KNOW

One of the most counter-intuitive things about experience is that it doesnt expand your
mind, it narrows it. It creates assumptions. It forms habits and expectations. Learning to
seek out the gaps in your knowledge is a much better path, and will lead to much better
discoveries.

9.

COLLABORATE, WORK ALONE, BUILD GOOD TEAMS

Several of the lists mentioned independent thinking and the ability to work together
with other people. Brainstorming, for example, is most effective when you start alone
and then join forces. The real world will require both skills, for lots of reasons, so I
cant help but agree. I would add that working with others is not automatically a good
thing, so knowing who to work with is at least as valuable as the ability to collaborate.
Be smart enough to work with people smarter than you, and know who complements
your talents.

10.

THINK FORWARD

One of the brilliant things about Apple, for example, is that everything they do is a
stepping stone to something they will do next. No energy is ever wasted. Learn to plan
ahead and imagine your future vision, so everything you do now takes you one step
closer to everything you want to do later.

Do You Have These Core Human Skills?

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog,
conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone,
comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations,
analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Robert Heinlein , renowned science fiction author

Scott Adams, creator of the popular comic strip Dilbert, has a simple but useful strategy
of personal success: you can either choose to hyper-specialize and become the best in
the world (top 1%) at doing one very specific thing, or you can try to become very good
(top 25%) in as many different areas as possible, which you then can use in
combination.
The latter strategy is far easier, and is often more effective: by improving your skills in a
few different but related areas, you increase your versatility and rarity, making your
particular combination of skills more uniquely valuable.
If youre interested in improving the quality of your life and work, there are the 12
primary areas of Core Human Skill you should focus on developing

Information-Assimilation
How to find, consume, and comprehend information and identify whats most important
in the face of a problem or challenge. A person who is highly skilled in InformationAssimilation is able to process information quickly and apply it to the situation at hand,
with consistently high levels of comprehension and retention.

Writing
How to communicate thoughts and ideas in written form clearly and concisely. A person
who is highly skilled in Writing is able to convey information to others briefly and
simply, as well as use writing to persuade and influence.

Speaking
How to communicate thoughts and ideas to others clearly, concisely, and with
confidence. A person who is highly skilled in Speaking is able to communicate

individually or in front of a group of people in an engaging manner, with little visible

evidence of tension or stress.

Mathematics
How to accurately use concepts from arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, and
statistics to analyze and solve common problems. A person who is highly skilled in
Mathematics is able to use numbers, ratios, and equations to gain insight into present
circumstances and potential future scenarios.

Decision-Making
How to identify critical issues, prioritize, focus energy/effort, recognize fallacies, avoid
common errors, and handle ambiguity. A person who is highly skilled in DecisionMaking is able to weigh available information and come to a supportable conclusion,
without falling prey to common reasoning mistakes and cognitive bias.

Rapport
How to interact with other people in a way that encourages them to like, trust, and
respect you. A person who is highly skilled in Rapport is able to build productive,
mutually-beneficial relationships with a wide variety of people in a way that influences
their perceptions and opinions.

Conflict-Resolution
How to anticipate potential sources of conflict and resolve disagreements when they
occur. A person who is highly skilled in Conflict-Resolution is able to anticipate
potential sources of conflict and counteract unproductive emotions, both individually
and in groups.

Scenario-Generation
How to create, clarify, evaluate, and communicate a possible future scenario that assists
in decision-making, either for yourself or another person. A person who is highly skilled
in Scenario Generation is able to envision possible future events, identify likely
tradeoffs, and suggest multiple options that will result in the achievement of an
objective.

Planning
How to identify the necessary next steps to achieve an objective, account for
dependencies, and prepare for the unknown and inevitable change via the use of
contingencies. A person who is highly skilled in Planning is able to examine available
resources, anticipate potential issues and risks, and propose new / better paths as more
information becomes known.

Self-Awareness
How to accurately perceive and influence your own internal states and emotions,
including effective management of limited energy, willpower, and focus. A person who
is highly skilled in Self-Awareness is able to recognize what physical and emotional
state theyre currently experiencing, utilize or compensate for their current state, and
intentionally elicit / reinforce preferred states.

Interrelation
How to recognize, understand, and make use of key features of systems and
relationships, including cause-and-effect, second and third-order effects, constraints,
and feedback loops. A person who is highly skilled in Interrelation is able to identify the
most important factors in a system, explore how they affect each other, and improve
systems without provoking undesired consequences.

Skill Acquisition
How to go about learning a desired skill in a way that results in competence by finding
and utilizing available resources, deconstructing complex processes, and actively
experimenting with potential approaches. A person who is highly skilled in Skill
Acquisition is able to continually improve their skills in any field through deliberate
practice, observation, and intentional experimentation.

Take a moment to imagine all of the things youd be able to accomplish if you improved
your skills to the point where you ranked in the top 25% of the human population in
each of these areas. How developed are your skills now, and which of these areas could,
if improved, help you accomplish what youre trying to achieve?

Do You Have These Core Human Skills?

by Monica | Mar 2, 2015 | Featured, mindfulness, mindfulness at work |

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog,
conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a
bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations,
analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

 Robert Heinlein, renowned science fiction author, as in Personal MBA Master the
Art of Business, by Josh Kaufman
Josh Kaufman, author of Personal MBA Master the Art of Business, says that If
youre interested in improving the quality of your life and work, there are the 12
primary areas of Core Human Skill you should focus on developing, and he breaks
daily life into the following areas (information has been distilled):
1) Information-Assimilation Consuming and comprehending information, and being
skilled in this we can process and apply information at high levels.
2) Writing Clear and concise communication that can persuade and influence.
3) Speaking Clearly, concisely & with confidence, so that we are engaging and
relaxed as we deliver the message.
4) Mathematics Using mathematical concepts we can gain insight into circumstances
and potential future scenarios.
5) Decision-Making Identifying critical issues, avoiding fallacies, errors & cognitive
biases.
6) Rapport Interacting in ways that engender trust, positivity and respect increases
productivity and mutually-beneficial relationships.
7) Conflict-Resolution Anticipating & resolving disagreements; counteracting
unproductive emotions.
8) Scenario-Generation Envisioning future events & suggesting options that will
achieve desired objectives.
9) Planning Identifying next steps, preparing & proposing paths.
10) Self-Awareness Perceiving & influencing your own internal states, including your
energy, willpower, emotions & focus.
11) Interrelation Recognizing, understanding and using features of systems,
relationships, causal relationships & feedback loops. Exploring interrelationships
without provoking undesired consequences.
12) Skill Acquisition Learning skills by finding resources, deconstructing complexity
& experimenting with potential approaches. We can thusly improve our skills in any
field.
There is not one Core Human Skill that isnt greatly affected by skillful present-moment
awareness and attention. Pick any quality in this list and imagine undertaking it with
only half of the focus you can bring in any other moment of increased mindful presence.
Then imagine undertaking it with the trained mindful awareness that we have cultivated
in our sessions.

In our sessions we have practiced skilled, focused awareness that is inclusive of all,
and exclusive of nothing. That is to say, we have turned away from nothing that comes
to us, but rather we learn to become aware of and accept what arrives. In doing so, we
learn. And since we are practicing non-judgmental awareness, we have the opportunity
to allow for intellectual consideration of all options before making decisions or before
applying what weve learned.
Every single one of these Core Human Skills is affected by our perceptions and
emotions, and it follows that in being mindfully aware of the very perceptions and
emotions that are present, we are elevated intellectually and even may find
increased confidence from feeling a sense of stability and presence as we approach
a task or consider next steps.
Many of us lead lives that are very diverse in terms of activities and responsibilities. We
each hold many roles and execute a multitude of functions within each role. Mindful
awareness is always of value, not only in order to focus better, increase productivity and
communicate wisely, but in order to fully experience life as it happens. After all, if we
are going to spend the time going out to succeed, it serves us to know just how close
weve come.
Take a moment to imagine all of the things youd be able to accomplish if you
improved your skills to the point where you ranked in the top 25% of the human
population in each of these areas. How developed are your skills now, and which of
these areas could, if improved, help you accomplish what youre trying to achieve?
-Josh Kaufman, joshkaufman.net/core-human-skills