meta skills

[Demis] Hassabis [CEO of Google’s DeepMind, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry 2024] emphasized the need for “meta-skills,” such as understanding how to learn and optimizing one’s approach to new subjects, alongside traditional disciplines like math, science and humanities. —AP 2025-09-12

In the third bucket I discussed a conversation I had with a senior Human Resources executive at a large corporation in 2016. He noted that when it comes to managing people and their talents, there are three buckets. Two of these are easy to fill, while the third is the real challenge:

1. Tools
2. Skills
3. Meta-Competencies:
—Learning how to Learn (e.g. PKMastery)
—Working in Digital Networks (e.g. Perpetual Beta)

I chose the image of two water buckets and one flower pot. The water buckets are quick and easy to fill. The flower pot takes the right soil, water, seeds, sunlight, and nurturing. That’s how meta skills differ — they take time and nurturing — in communities.

Later I observed that soft skills are permanent skills and they are more difficult to develop than the hard skills often demanded by business leaders. I concluded that soft skills are human skills. They separate humans from machines. For the past several centuries we have used human labour to do what machines cannot. First the machines caught up with us, and surpassed humans, with their brute force. Now they are surpassing us with their brute intelligence. There is not much more need for machine-like human work which is routine, standardized, or brute.

This is why I am continuing to offer and improve the personal knowledge mastery workshop. Its focus is human intelligence, not artificial intelligence. This six week online workshop continues to align people, work, and learning. It is based on +20 years of research and practice and emphasizes learning in communities and networks.