I want to spend an essay talking about tacit knowledge, and why I think it is the most interesting topic in the domain of skill acquisition. If you are a longtime Commonplace reader, you’ll likely have come across this idea before, because I’ve written about it numerous times in the past. But I think it’s still good idea to dedicate a whole piece to the topic.
The reason I think it’s important to write this piece is because every time I touch on the topic of tacit knowledge, inevitably someone will pop up on Twitter or Hacker News or Reddit or email and protest that tacit knowledge doesn’t exist. I want something to link to whenever I come up against someone who says this, mostly so that I don’t have to repeat myself.
There is one other reason I think it is good to explore what tacit knowledge is: tacit knowledge does exist, and understanding that it does exist is one of the most useful things you can have happen to you. Once you understand that tacit knowledge exists, you will begin to see that big parts of any skill tree is tacit in nature, which means that you can go hunting for it, which in turn means you can start to ask the really useful question when it comes to expertise, which is: that person has it; that person is really good at it; how can I have it too?