Skill Debt is Like Any Other Kind of Debt

by Justin Skycak (@justinskycak) and Sanjana Kulkarni on

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If you skip building foundational skills, you can get by temporarily using compensatory strategies:

  • favoring favoring your forehand over your backhand
  • recalculating multiplication facts every time you need them
  • outsourcing your homework to ChatGPT

But skill debt is like any other kind of debt: it accrues interest and eventually comes due.

When you rely on a compensatory hack, you quickly hit a ceiling.

The ceiling quickly produces a skill gap.

And the longer you lean into the compensatory hacks and avoid doing the real work to shore up your weaknesses…

The quicker the skill gap grows into a chasm of incapability.

The bottom line is, you can’t succeed as an engineer if you can’t do algebra.

You can’t be competitive in tennis if you can’t hit with your backhand.

Discussed here: Math Academy Podcast #6 Part 3: Learning Debt and Skill Insolvency


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