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A skill is the Learning or innate ability to act with determined results with good execution often within a given amount of time, energy, or both. Compare: " 6.a. Capability of accomplishing something with precision and certainty; practical knowledge in combination with ability; cleverness, expertness. Also, an ability to perform a function, acquired or learnt with practice .... Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills. Some examples of general skills include time management, teamwork and leadership, and self-motivation. In contrast, domain-specific skills would be used only for a certain job, e.g. operating a sand blaster. Skill usually requires certain environmental stimuli and situations to assess the level of skill being shown and used.
A skill may be called an art when it represents a body of knowledge or branch of learning, as in the art of medicine or the art of war. Although the arts are also skills, there are many skills that form an art but have no connection to the .
People need a broad range of skills to contribute to the modern economy. A joint ASTD and U.S. Department of Labor study showed that through technology, the workplace is changing, and identified 16 basic skills that employees must have to be able to change with it. Three broad categories of skills are suggested: technical, human, and conceptual. The first two can be substituted with hard and soft skills, respectively.
A British definition is "the ability to communicate effectively with people in a friendly way, especially in business." “Macmillan Dictionary” Retrieved on 2009-08-18 The term is already listed in major US dictionaries. Dictionary.com definition. Retrieved on 2009-08-18
The term people skills is used to include both psychological skills and social skills but is less inclusive than life skills.
In his 2008 book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell proposed the "10,000 hour rule", that world-class skill could be developed by practicing for 10,000 hours. This principle was disputed by other commentators, pointing out feedback is necessary for improvement, and that practice is no guarantee of success.
In his 2019 book , David Epstein argues that a period of sampling different activities (whether musical instruments, sports, or professions) can be helpful before choosing a specialization. Epstein argues that many tasks require a variety of skills which tend to be possessed by more well-rounded people, and finding a task which is a better fit to one's personality and interests can overcome the advantage otherwise provided by having more practice earlier in life and attempting peak performance as a younger person. Someone who has demonstrated a high level of knowledge or skill in multiple disciplines is known as a polymath, or in musical performance, a multi-instrumentalist.
A long-standing question is to what extent skills can be learned versus the degree that innate talent is required for high-caliber performance. Epstein finds evidence for both sides with respect to high-performance sport in his 2013 book The Sports Gene. For thinking tasks, the heritability of IQ has been extensively studied to try to answer this question, though does not necessarily map directly onto skill level for any given thinking task.
A study of professional and master Tenpin bowling found that average scores declined less than 10% from age 20 to age 70. This decline in a sport focusing on skill and technique is considerably smaller than that of events dominated by muscular strength, cardiovascular endurance or agility—which are known to decrease about 10% per decade.
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