In this post, I want to explore what a meta-skill is, as I have used the term in two recent blog posts: How to Protect Your Cognitive Abilities in the AI Age and What writing costs us. It is a key concept in understanding how to improve your cognitive ability, which is becoming even more important in the age of AI.
If I think it’s so important, why didn’t I have a permanent note on meta-skills in my vault? Why don’t you join me in exploring what a meta-skill is and why it’s so important.
My understanding of what a Meta-skill is
Meta is Greek for ‘beyond’. It is often used to describe either information about itself or a higher level of abstraction.
For me, a meta-skill is a skill that can help you learn another skill. That definition has now gone into a permanent note, which will live in my vault.
I think reading is a meta-skill, as it gives you access to the written library of human knowledge from across space and time.
Reading as a Meta-skill
The only note in my vault where I used the word meta-skill argues that reading is a meta-skill. It unlocks other skills because it enables you to learn from others across time and space.
Reading for pleasure is fine, and is often better than consuming fiction in other media, as your own imagination creates the world in your mind. But it isn’t what I mean by reading as a meta-skill.
It’s when you read non-fiction and use it to help improve your own thinking. This is done by asking questions and thinking about where what you’ve read fits in with your existing knowledge.
Example questions that you could consider using when you read include:
- What do I think?
- Where do I agree?
- Where do I disagree?
Writing as a Meta-skill
Writing as a meta-skill might surprise you. I think many of us would see it as a communication skill, and of course it is. I’m communicating with you through space and time via the medium of the written word.
But the fact is, one of the main reasons I have kept blogging for as long as I have is that it has helped me to learn. Every word that I write is taken from my unstructured thoughts and is made concrete in the abstract form of our written language.
This is true whether I’m writing a blog post such as this one or synthesising an idea into a permanent note within my Zettelkasten. It quickly identifies what I really know and the things I don’t yet know.
You can learn more about permanent notes in my post Beginners guide to permanent notes.
Metacognition as a Meta-skill
Metacognition is an awareness of your own strengths and weaknesses, and includes the following:
- Self-directed learning
- Problem solving
- Decision making
- Critical thinking
- Adaptability
- Motivation
- Focus
- Emotional awareness
The likes of self-directed learning, critical thinking and focus are meta-skills, as these skills help your learning. So does the overarching metacognition skill that they help form.
I have written about how you can look to improve your metacognition skills in How to Protect Your Cognitive Abilities in the AI Age.
Why meta-skills compound
A standard skill gives you one return; a meta-skill gives you a return on every other skill you learn. Without reading, you could only learn a new skill from someone who taught it to you in person. Once you can read, you can read books on the subject.
Learn to use the Internet and you can read blog posts, watch YouTube videos and listen to podcasts.
Learn to write and you can take notes and start a personal knowledge management (PKM) system like my Zettelkasten, which, for me at least, is a bicycle for the mind. You can learn more about the Zettelkasten in my post Introduction to the Zettelkasten system.
But compounding has a downside. A meta-skill you don’t develop loses you the interest it would give you when learning future skills. Over time, this could be a huge loss. It is a bit like keeping money under your bed when it could be in a bank savings account.
Why this matters now
We are living in an age of uncertainty, with new skills arriving and others no longer required as new jobs are created and old ones disappear. This has been the case for the last forty years of my working life, due to the industrial revolution driven by computer and Internet technology.
Generative AI and related technologies may well drive another period of job changes and a need to keep learning new skills. Any meta-skills you have will help you to learn these new skills more effectively and more quickly.
The newest meta-skill is the use of generative AI. It has the potential to improve your ability to learn new skills, if you use it effectively by asking the right questions.
But there is a paradox with AI: its use can reduce our cognitive skills, and that is why you need to keep considering how you use it. You can learn more about this paradox in my post Cognitive Debt: The Real Cost of Offloading to AI.
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Further reading
- How to Protect Your Cognitive Abilities in the AI Age: My post on protecting your cognitive abilities in the age of AI
- What writing costs us: A post exploring what the invention of writing cost us
- Beginners guide to permanent notes: My beginner’s guide to permanent notes
- Introduction to the Zettelkasten system: My introductory guide to the system my own vault is built on
- Cognitive Debt: The Real Cost of Offloading to AI: A post in which I explore the paradox between knowledge & AI