The Art Of Competence

A few months ago, the CEO of Moniepoint came out to talk about how many Nigerians are unhirable, which sparked a lot of debates and backlashes amongst many Nigerians, but is it really true? or was he respectfully just spouting nonsense? nope, he isn’t. Two days ago, I was talking to my friend who is a freelance software engineer, and he was lamenting about how hard it is for him to land a gig nowadays on Upwork as many competitors bid for gigs with a huge amount of connects just to rank higher with their applications, and he also talked about how most of these people lack the qualifications for the job, they take it then outsource it while keeping a chunk of the pay, hmmm…..

There is another case of a video I saw over the weekend where a guy talked about how many Nigerians are unhirable, as he has chaired multiple interviews featuring alot of Nigerian applicants, and most of these applicant are unable to meet the bare minimums, then a business owner commented on how she has been looking for a social media manager for a while, and many of the applicants have been unable to meet the requirements for the role while claiming to be a social media manager with “literally no“ experience.

To me, this is not a mistake, but a result of how alot of youths get thier qualifications through backdoors, pass exams with miracle centres and logistics, get a job through who they know, and many more. These short cuts has been able to induce not just laziness, but also promoted INCOMPETENCE.

Alot of indviduals, especially the young ones lack competence, as many are motivated purely by profit, which means they don’t care about how good something is being done, as long as they get paid. But I think this is a moat for me and you. Another major cause of incompetence is overestimation of one’s ability which isn’t neccesarily bad as ignorance is often a bliss but not always, as being in over ones head is not just a form of arrogance depending on how much you overdo it, but also an act of ignorance.

Being competent is an art that needs to be mastered through repetition, consistency and discipline as before you become a competent performer in any field, you need to have peformed that set of activity over and over again that competence becomes a matter of course as you do not strive for it now, but you are able to demonstrate it unconciously which is the final and the fourth level of competency from Unconcious Incompetence, to Concious Incompetence, Concious Competence, and finally Unconcious Competence.

Performing isn’t the same thing as practice, that was the conclusion of Anders Ericsson after following a group of violin students at a Berlin music academy, and then realizing that the top group (ten violinists) averaged about 10,000 hours of practice by age 20, and half of them had not reached 10,000 hours by then. By age 18 the top students averaged about 7,400 hours. He further on said “nothing special or magical about ten thousand hours.“ His definition of deliberate practice: constantly pushing beyond your comfort zone, following training designed for specific abilities, and using feedback to find and fix weaknesses.

This is a vision carried from my own self, to the community of the people who want to grow with me, and to get to “THE ZENITH“ competency is a non-negotiable, which I won’t say is just an essential, but also a requirement to becoming The Empyrean of your own niche, industry, or field. Over the past few months, I have been sharpening my skills, just so I won’t just be called the best, but also be able to defend with a sharp confidence stemming from what I know I can do competently.

Being recognized as the best has to do with how competent you are, which is inferred through performance. Competence can’t be measured automatically, it needs to be performed before it is perceived, and for you to perform excellently enough to draw the approval and the warmth of your judges you need to have practiced enough for people to call you crazy.

To the zenith,
Abdulmalik A. O,

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